God's War by Kameron Hurley

I owe Kameron Hurley an apology. She doesn't know me, doesn't know about this debt, and likely wouldn't recall if I told her. Still, I do.

I met her, briefly, at WorldCon in Chicago almost three years ago. She was a panelist on something—a promo for Nightshade Books if I recall—and at the end she had a copy of her debut novel God's War to give away. I turned out to be the lucky recipient, but before she handed it to me she asked, "Are you really going to read this?" To which I replied something quick and positive like, "Absolutely!"

I read the first page or two that evening in my hotel room, but then I put the book aside. It hadn't grabbed me by the throat immediately.

About three weeks ago I finally picked her novel up again. I gave it a second chance, and I'm happy to report that it was well worth it.

This isn't really a review, and I don't want to spoil anything for the odd person who might actually be reading this, so I won't give much detail. I will say that Kameron paints a truly fascinating world on a planet inhabited by the spiritual descendants of Muslims, who use bug-based biotech for much of their needs, and who are engaged in a very long war.

Having just written that, I realize that it would be easy to think the book was primarily a milieu-type novel.* This is when the special world of the story is dominant.

What I read, however, is an action-y book about characters and relationships, with some complexity and mystery to the plot. In fact, I would have to say a bit too complex, or at least too mysterious. A fault I find with the story is that some characters and events are shaded too much, with insufficient explanation. I found myself wondering on a few occasions, "Why did that just happen? Who the heck is she?"

I get what Kameron was doing. The technique of showing events as they happen, without explaining everything at the time, makes for a more realistic story. She used this very effectively with significant portions of the back story of the main character named Nyx, and at least one other. Yet she over did it in several other places. (Whether or not she meant to is another question.) This didn’t stop me from reading once I got momentum, but the road could have been just a bit smoother.

What more than makes up for the road bumps, however, is the depth of characterization of Nyx, and some of her team. She is a tough, driven, sometimes-bounty hunter, yet very far from a stereotype. She's drawn gradually and completely, with multiple blended aspects of her personality. Just like a real person. She's admirable and detestable. She's intimidating and pitiable. She's the best friend to have at your back, and the worst. She's strong, and vulnerable, and wise, and stupid.

There's one scene in which the ruthless killer Nyx is comforting her friend and teammate while he goes through a particularly humiliating full body search. That may not sound like much, but for his situation and culture, the process is agony, and Nyx knows it. She can't truly help him, but she stays by his side, softly doing what she can.

I read that scene three times when I hit it, and thought to myself, "Wow. I wish I had written that."

Then I finished the book. As I already said, it has some flaws that didn't need to be there. But it is powerful, and compelling, and it makes me wish that I had written the character of Nyx.

So, I apologize to you Kameron Hurley, for taking almost three years before reading the novel that you gave to me. And I thank you, sincerely, for providing an experience that I expect will stay with me for a very long time.


*See Orson Scott Card's M.I.C.E. quotient. http://triton.towson.edu/~schmitt/311/pages/tsld004.htm And if you're a writer, I highly recommend his books Characters and Viewpoint, and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Terry Pratchett walked the black sand

He made death less scary, and life much happier.

The Other Side of Space Completed!

Okay, so it's only the first draft, but it feels fantastic. The final fourteen to fifteen chapters (out of forty-one) went pretty quickly. More importantly, I enjoyed writing them more so than any other large chunk of text I ever produced. I'm not saying it's my best work, but I had such fun writing it, even the more challenging bits.

I'm feeling a strange mixture of pride, relief, and to a certain extent a little bit of loss. I'm reminded of what Churchill said about his History of the English Speaking Peoples.

"Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind." --  From Churchill's The Gathering Storm.

Not that I'm suggesting my little fiction story is worthy of even cleaning up Mr. Churchill's cigar ashes. It's simply the idea of a long piece of writing being a friendly comfort that resonates. Of course my friend and companion is still there, patiently waiting to have his face mashed and his limbs twisted as I begin the second draft, but it's not the same thing as fresh creation.

I hope to finish the re-write in short order, and then present it to my son Alex. I wrote this one for him.

Forbidden Island, Universe Sandbox, and Falling Pianos

George, Alex and I played a game of Forbidden Island last Saturday night. This is a very good game in which all the players must work together to a) retrieve four treasures from the island, and b) escape the island together. Meanwhile, the island is trying to kill you by flooding!

The cooperation aspect is unusual and a nice change of pace from most games. As in real life, however, even well-meaning teammates can occasionally grind each other's gears, especially under the pressure of imminent death. It can be remarkably intense -- but very fun! -- for a cooperative game that lasts maybe a half hour.

One thing we've learned in about ten different sessions: We always discover a new rule or detail of the game. I'll admit that the rules aren't super simple, but neither are they a complex web. Nevertheless, we've never failed to be surprised by some little feature. For example, we just realized that each treasure can be picked up at either of its two possible locations in any given game, even though there is only one treasure figurine of each type. We've dubbed this "quantum entanglement of treasures." We didn't exploit this feature, and Alex hates it, but it's there and we'd always missed it before. Maybe we're just dense.


A couple of years ago I bought the Universe Sandbox astrophysical simulator. I also purchased Newton's Aquarium, and another program whose name I can't recall at the moment. U-Sandbox is my favorite. I'm a physics geek so I'd have wanted them anyway, but I specifically went looking for easy software to help me work some problems in The Other Side of Space. I did so when I was first outlining the book, and it gave me a good jump start with the plot. Now that I'm closing in on completing the first draft of the novel, I've had to dive into the sandbox again. (Things change during writing.) I won't spoil anything of the book here, but I just crashed a 500 kiloton teapot onto the Moon, multiple times! If you have clear skies, you might see the impact craters next time you look.

One interesting observation I made is that your initial velocity doesn't have as much affect on your impact velocity as one might think. For example, suppose you start from the radius of the Moon's orbit and you drop a tungsten piano onto the Earth, maybe with the Coyote as your target. When it hits his head, it will be traveling about 11.1 kilometers per second. This is almost enough to kill him. (By the way, this is just slightly less than escape velocity for Earth.) On the other hand, suppose you throw the piano down really hard, at 5 kilometers per second? The Coyote is done for, right? It must hit him at 16.1 kilometers per second. Except it doesn't! It brains the poor slob only doing about 12.2 kilometers per second.

I leave it to the student to think about why this should be the case. Don't worry about details, unless you're really interested, just the general concept. I'll offer this hint: A constant acceleration (or an accelerating force) operates on an object to change its velocity. Near the Earth's surface this acceleration is 9.8 meters per second per second toward the Earth's center. What that means is (ignoring air resistance) that  for every second that an object falls near the Earth's surface, it goes 9.8 meters per second faster. You drop a hamster hammer and it starts falling. At the end of the first second it's falling at 9.8 meters per second. At the end of the second second it's falling at 19.6 meters per second, and so on. The same basic idea is true even if the acceleration isn't constant, such as starting far away from the Earth's surface and falling for a long time.

No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog entry. All coyotes and hamsters were simulated. Teapots and Tungsten pianos were real.

Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps!

Maybe it's time for me to re-read Chesty's biography, Marine!

"We’ve been looking for the enemy for several days now. We’ve finally found them. We are surrounded. That simplifies the problem of getting to these people and killing them.”
—Col Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, Chosin Reservoir, Korea 1950

Willingham, Correia, and space opera: Oh, my!

Item 1) I received my "Greetings from Fabletown, NY" postcard from Bill Willingham. You only get one if you write a real, paper letter to Bill. Remember those? One swell piece of news from him is that he's planning on returning to GenCon next year, along with a significant comic book writers track that he and Marc Tassin are working on. That's not what I write, but I'll be in the front row anyway. Bill's a great panelist.

Item 2) I've now read the first two Monster Hunter novels (Monster Hunter International and Monster Hunter Vendetta), the first Grimnoir novel Hard Magic, and I'm a third of the way through the second, Spellbound. Larry Correia sure knows how to make you turn a page!

One thing he sometimes does that violates conventional wisdom, or at least oft heard admonition, is "head hopping." That's switching point of view from one character to another mid-chapter if not mid-scene. The worry is that it can confuse the reader. So far, however, Larry seems to do it pretty seamlessly. I've not had the chance to study his technique yet because I've been too engrossed and turning those pages, but I'll try to back up sometime and analyze.

Item 3) I've completed about three fourths of the first draft of The Other Side of Space, and I can see the finish line. What a terrific feeling! I'm in that groove now where you've got all the parts laid out on the table, and you think you know how they're all going to fit together to make a beautiful, purring mechanism. Well, maybe not that beautiful for a first draft, and maybe growling instead of purring, but at least functional, and doing kind of what you'd visualized at the start. If you squint hard, and don't look at your original notes.

More Scrabble poetry

George Daley, Tom Redding and I play Scrabble and Boggle regularly. Tom's game has definitely improved over time, although victory usually belongs to me or George. Nevertheless, I was prompted to write this next poem with Tom as the hero. It came about years ago during the infamous "Scrabble Poetry War" between me and George. I think this might have been the last barrage that finally overwhelmed Dr. Daley.

Inspired by The Charge of the Light Brigade:

Happily! Happily!
Happily onward!
All holding their breath,
while Tom played for six hundred:
Forward past the others he played,
Charging with the mighty word he made,
still holding their breath,
as Tom played for six hundred!

Forward, past the others he played,
Was there a man dismay'd?
You bet!!!
'Til someone noticed he'd blunder'd:
There's not a FASH in the book,
There's Tom with a phony hook,
There's nothing like it, why even look?
All letting out their breath,
when Tom played for six hundred!

Challenge to the right of Tom,
Challenge to  the left of Tom,
Challenge in front of Tom
voluble they thundered
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
But Tom said, "Oh, what the hell."
Huffing out a breath,
with confidence he tried to sell,
Tom played for six hundred

FASH would be there, they'd all see
FASH as George turned past letter E
While Spencer giggled, "Tee hee hee"
Charging into F he paged
All the table wonder'd:
Plunged into the book,
Bella barked, the table shook,
Coffee and Pepsi spilling,
Then reeling from the brilliant stroke,
Shattered and sunder'd, George spoke:
"It's in there!
Tom scores six hundred!"

Challenge to the right of Tom,

Challenge to the left of Tom,

Challenge in front of Tom

voluble they thundered

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

But Tom had said, "Oh, what the hell."

Huffing out a breath,

with confidence he played so well,

Tom wins with six hundred!

And then he woke, from fever'd dream,

To find no tiles on the scene,

He looked around and wonder'd:

"They really were a pack of cards",

or… something like that old canard.

No honor for such skill with lingo,

No Triple, Triple, Triple bingo,

No awesome score of six hundred.

"But next time I'll take all your damn ears!"

So... I guess I'd better get back to work.