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Bits on ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’

I think I can safely assume the premise of the book is clear.

Lincoln led a miserable life. Dead mom, drunk dad, dead kids. This book assumes this was all the work of the US vampire menace. And it works; the guy suffered so much loss that a recounting of the events of his life begs for something greater than mere mortal influence simply to make sense of it. Giving old Abe some stakes (the wooden kind, not the plot kind) and pitting him against the forces of evil feels right.

The book is set up as a story within a story, with some dude in upstate New York being entrusted with Lincoln’s private journals. Naturally, I expected to go back to this fellow’s tale at the end and see how this knowledge has changed his life. This did not happen. Maybe it was vampires.

My rating? 2 Galactic Credits

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Bits I learned from The Quantum Thief

Zee mind, she is blown. The Quantum Thief is one of those ‘why do I even bother writing’ books. Memorable characters, wildly intelligent science, solid action scenes, and a well-conceived world. Feel free to troll the ‘nets for reviews – suffice it to say I recommend giving it a read.

The presentation is today’s topic.  We see two points of view for the most part: the titular thief and a detective. Sure, sure. Two plots which have no choice but to collide at the climax. All well and good.

But the thief’s chapters are all in first-person present, and the detective’s in second-person present.  First-person present, I said. “I walk into a bright room and see all sorts of crazy business”.  As opposed to the detective: “Isidore walks into a bright room and sees all sorts of business, crazy and otherwise.”  And definitely not “Jean walked into a bright room and saw some business going on.”

As much of a psycho-noogie as the plot can be, the choice of tense here really sent me around the proverbial bend. The chapters don’t need to be tagged to explain who’s speaking, because the two stories are presented in different tenses. So whose story is it? Clearly the thief’s, but why not the detective’s as well? Why the different treatment?

When a mind can be copied, stored, reinserted into bodies et cetera, concepts of a person’s past and future change. The present tense works here, because all the characters can really say for sure is what is going on right now. Well done.

———

A few of the tips I’ve gleaned from other books (see previous posts) are represented well in The Quantum Thief:

 

A good sci-fi universe envisions the end-results of many technologies, not just one.

Nanotech, the mind as software, the cultural effects of MMOs, et cetera. The story could not work without these.

 

Give the reader some new vocab, and make it awesome.

Chock damn full.  Rajaniemi grabs words from Hebrew, Russian, from other lit – from all over the place.  Referring to a space elevator as a ‘beanstalk’ is bloody genius. The bit I’d most like to steal is the use of the prefix “q-“ with any quantum tech.

The setting is a character.

The majority of the story takes place in a city moved along the surface of Mars by giant robots controlled by the uploaded minds of the citizenry, forever running from the self-replicating killer drones which have taken over the red planet’s surface. Come on now.

The Oubliette is obsessed with personal privacy, to the point that every person has a way to completely control who can see or hear them. Shared public memories, open (and closed) spaces, the etiquette involved in just saying ‘hello’ to a stranger — the city’s privacy system is a part of every decision the characters make.

Final note: I  must admit I find the US cover to be totally bitchin’.

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What I Learned from Embassytown

Oh man.  I finished up Embassytown on audiobook last week, and if I hear the word “language” one more time I’m gonna stab someone. I don’t care how sexy british her voice is.

That’s not true. I do care.

A few tid-bits that stick with me:

A good sci-fi universe envisions the end-results of many technologies, not just one. Aliens from whom speech and consciousness are the same. Aliens whose technology is all biological. Almost-sentient robots. A human diaspora via an adjacent dimension, and what happens when they get to the end of space.

Give the reader some new vocab, and make it awesome. Read: floaking. immer. exot.

Build that world through the eyes of your character. We’ll catch up. And if some aspect of the place’s history doesn’t have anything to do with the characters or the plot, who cares about it anyway?

 

Embassytown was very satisfying read/listen,  and a big influence on my trying out the whole first person thing in my latest.

Also, Simon LeBon likes it!

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What I Learned from The Help

Yes, I read The Help. It was more or less the last book on Earth I would read normally, but I did.

I mean, come on:

  • It’s a NYT Bestseller.
  • There are neither spaceships nor sailing vessels.
  • It’s about race relations.
  • It’s set in the sixties (1960’s, not 1860’s or AD 60’s)
  • It’s about women.
  • The cover is yellow and purple, and has birds on it.

Sweet Jesu. Books with any of these traits don’t find their way on to my radar very often.  But when I saw this series of posts on novel structure using The Help as an example, I decided to go for it.

So what did I take away from this adventure?

  • The antagonist does not ever have to be the narrator/POV. Miss Hilly came across just fine without taking the reins at any point.
  • Set up a character with a flaw/obstacle about which she is unaware, then have another character bring it up.
  • The incident that kicks off the plot can be subtle, but it has to be about the main character’s life changing.
  • The most interesting scene in the book from a writerly standpoint is a party in which the POV is third person, as opposed to the first person used in the rest. This is the only time in book this happens, and it works. All three narrators are present at this big do, and the one-scene switch gets the plot point across without having to chop it up or repeat it three times.

Now, I have a number of criticisms for The Help, but that’s not what I’m here to accomplish today. From a structure standpoint, the book is solid.

Ok, just one thing. I don’t know what book the movie was based on, but it sure doesn’t look like The Help. There is a very real threat of physical harm and socially-sanctioned murder underlying everything in the text – the trailer looks like a bunch of ladies having a grand old time.

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Bits I Learned from Hull Zero Three

Hull Zero Three: a neatly-done amnesia mystery on a spooky old spaceship.  So, what did I take away from it as a writer?  I warn you: spoilers.

 

The setting is a character. It’s moody. Fickle. Mean. It doesn’t care if you die. It wants you to die. It provides for you. It reacts to your touch. You wonder what it wants from you, if it even knows you’re there. These are the makings of a complex and memorable character. It’s even called “Ship”, as if it were a person by that name.

 

You don’t have to explain it all.  Why the strange bodies of the characters? They vary widely in size, shape, and color based on some sort of functional utility — but were they like that on Earth? Or were they created on-ship? The honking people had their own language; was it developed before the ship launched?

 

Many questions, but it’s OK. I didn’t need the full history of the world, just enough to keep me going in the story.

 

Everyone is superstitious, even in the future. The issue of the silvery beings was my favorite of the novel. Hearing sci-fi characters talk about something as if it were a fairy or a yeti or the Virgin Mary rang very true to they way people actually act. Everyone has experiences they can’t explain, and the most logical solution isn’t always the right one. Giving characters an odd phenomenon to react to provides an opportunity to show (or discover) more about who they are.

 

All in all, a good take.