And...We're Done

Okay, there are still a few things to fix over at the new blogs, but I'm going to go ahead and launch.  Everything that needs to be in place is.  All's that's left is cleanup and learning how to tweak details in WordPress, such as changing the background of the posts to something other than white.  (That apparently will involve editing the source code.  I'm going to make sure I know what I'm doing before I try that.)

Anyway, Blogger has been good, but it's time to move on to my own website.  All of the content here has been moved over, although as is the case with WordPress, the formatting didn't always follow.  Instead of running two blogs, I'm running four.

They are:

Adventures Fantastic:  heroic fantasy and historical adventure
Futures Past and Present:  classic and contemporary science fiction
Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams:  noir and detective fiction
Dispatches From the Lone Star Front:  Texas and Southwest history

All four are up and live.  There's a new email address associated with them, keith@adventuresfantastic.com.

See you over there.

Mothballing

Since I'm between summer school and the start of the fall semester (which always starts at least a week earlier for me than the students), I've actually had some time to work on the new website.  It's almost done.  There are a few things I've still got to do.  I'm not going to rush on them, since I don't want to do anything I can't reverse.  I've already made one bad call setting up WordPress that I later discovered WordPress won't let me change.  I don't want any others.

I've transferred the archives over to the new site.  Not everything made the transition.  WordPress dropped some of the formatting.  That includes breaks, meaning that all posts in their entirety are on one page, rather than the first few paragraphs with links to read the rest.  I can put them back in by hand, but that will take a while.  It won't be an immediate priority.  Once the site launches, all the posts will have the proper formatting.

I'm hoping to have everything ready to go by the first part of next week, if not over the weekend.  I'm not done with the details by any means.  In some respects WordPress is more complicated than Blogger, but it allows me more freedom to tweak some things.  There will be changes as I go along and learn things. But the basics will all be there when I launch.

So, unless something cataclysmic happens in the next few days, this is the penultimate post of Futures Past and Present in its Blogger incarnation.  The next post will be the announcement of the new (and hopefully improved) version, with a full set of links.  I'll still leave this site up, since any links to previous posts will point here.  At least until I change them, which may turn out to be more trouble than its worth. 

Man Walks on the Moon for the First Time 44 Years Ago Today

On this day, July 20, in 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to walk on the Moon.  Armstrong, who left us last year, uttered the now immortal words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."  He was the first of only 12 to do so.  I pray there will be more, preferably within my lifetime.

Rest in peace, Mr. Armstrong.

Big Changes Coming to the Blog

This is the same post I ran yesterday at Adventures Fantastic.  The readership of the two blogs overlaps quite a bit but isn't identical.  I'm reposting the announcement here in case anyone missed it.  If you saw it yesterday, it's the same thing, verbatim.

Traffic the last few days has been up quite a bit, so when traffic today was down, I wasn't too worried.  I've noticed that trend before, a drop in hits on the day following higher than usual traffic, even thought the traffic drop today is greater than usual.

Then I noticed something in my inbox.  It was from Google.  It had come in overnight, and at first glance I thought it was spam that had slipped through the filter.  Instead it was accusing this blog of being spam.  The second line read, in part, "As a result of your site having pure spam, Google has applied a manual spam action..."

Excuse me!?!

Happy Birthday, James Gunn

James Edwin Gunn was born this day in 1923.  He's still with us, and I  hope he will be for many years to come.  His best known works include The Listeners (1972), Starbridge (with Jack Williamson, 1955), The Immortals (1964), and Kampus (1977).  He edited the six volume historical anthology, The Road to Science Fiction (1977, 1979, 1982, 1998). This is one of the best overviews of the field.  Nearly every story in it is a classic.  Gunn was a Professor of English at the University of Kansas and is currently Professor Emeritus and director of The Center for the Study of Science Fiction.  This is the organization that gives out the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which is not the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer) and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award at the Campbell Conference.  He was awarded a Grand Master Nebula by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2007.

I only met him once, in 1989 if memory serves.  There was some sort of gathering at the UNT in which a number of science fiction authors were present.  I think it was a meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association.  Among the other attendees were Fred Pohl, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague and Catherine de Camp, James Frenkel, and Brad Denton.  I remember Gunn as being a quiet and pleasant man.

Happy birthday, Dr. Gunn, and many happy returns!

Essential Space Opera

I've been in the mood for space opera lately.  And I have some in mind that I'm planning on reading.  Just for grins, and because in spite of my best efforts I can't read everything, I thought I would see what some of you think are the essential works of space opera.  So, what do you think are the essential works of space opera that every well-read fan should be familiar with?

More Androids with a Dash of Grandmother

iD
Madelaine Ashby
Angry Robot Books
UK Print
Date: 4th July 2013
ISBN: 9780857663108
Format: Medium (B-Format) Paperback
R.R.P.: £8.99
US/CAN Print
Date: 25th June 2013
ISBN: 9780857663115
Format: Large (Trade) Paperback
R.R.P.: US$14.99 CAN$16.99
Ebook
Date: 25th June 2013
ISBN: 9780857663122
Format: Epub & Mobi
R.R.P.: £5.49 / US$6.99

I reviewed the initial novel in this series, vN, last year and was quite impressed by it.  It held my interest when I wasn't able to read it for days at a time.  As a result, I was looking forward to the sequel.

Unfortunately (for me, at least), the sequel didn't live up to its predecessor.  Part of that is because the viewpoint character in this one is Javier rather than Amy.  Javier doesn't interest me as much as Amy and her grandmother Portia do. Portia isn't dead, BTW.

RIP, Jack Vance (1916-2013)

The science fiction and fantasy world is saddened to learn that Grandmaster Jack Vance passed away on May 26 in Oakland, California.  Vance was 96.

Locus Online has an obituary that summarizes Vance's life, plus there's the Wikipedia entry linked to in the above paragraph.  I'll not repeat what they've written.  Rather, I want to make this a more personal reflection.

Out on the Galaxy's Edge

Galaxy's Edge
Mike Resnick, editor
Published bimonthly
paper edition $5.99 Amazon  Barnes and Noble
ebook $2.99 direct from publisher Amazon Barnes and Noble
online free

I posted an announcement that this magazine was coming over on my companion blog, but since most of the contents are science fiction, I figured this would be the more appropriate place to review it. 

The format is one that we've seen before.  Stories are posted online for free over the period of an issue.  Subscriptions or individual issues are available for purchase.  Just off the top of my head, other practitioners of some variation this model include (but may not be limited to) Nightmare, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Apex.

That's pretty good company.  So how does Galaxy's Edge stack up?

Coming Home to the Moon

Apollo's Outcasts
Allen Steele
Pyr Books
Hardcover, $16.95, 330 p.
ebook  $9.99 Kindle Nook

Jamey Barlowe was born on the Moon, in the lunar colony Apollo, but has lived almost all of his life on Earth.  For his sixteenth birthday, he's going back.

He doesn't know this, and it's not the sort of birthday surprise you want to have.  Jamey's father works for the International Space Consortium.  Dad has just become a wanted man along with a number of his coworkers.  They signed a petition protesting a position taken by the Vice-President.  The President has just died, allegedly by assassination, and the new Commander in Chief is rounding up her political enemies. 

Jamey and one of his sisters, along with the children of several ISC employees, are hurriedly evacuated.  Jamey's other sister gets bumped from the ride to make room for a girl named Hannah. 

Jamey doesn't realize just how much his life is about to change, nor how much he's about to be forced to grow up.  None of the kids do.

Ruby Serenades the Creative Fire Home

The Creative Fire:  Book 1 of Ruby's Song
Brenda Cooper
Pyr Books
Trade paperback, 351 pg $17.95
ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook
Cover art by John Picacio

Every now and then events conspire to keep you from accomplishing simple tasks, such as reading a book.  This one took me exactly a month.  Normally, I could finish a book like this in days.  But it's been one of those months.  Days have gone by when I haven't been able to get any reading done, and much of it was due to pesky little stuff that had to be dealt with so it would go away.

It wasn't because I didn't enjoy the book.  I did.  Revolutions on generation ships are a staple going back to Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky.  It's a narrow subgenre, but one I enjoy.

The basic set up is this:  The Creative Fire is a generation ship that is heading home to the planet Adiamo.  The crew has grown into a caste society in which the castes are delineated by color of uniform.  Ruby Martin is a grey, one of the workers on the lowest levels of the ship.  One of the disenfranchised.  She and her friends Onor and Marcelle are about to graduate from school and become adults.

Ruby is in a garden when the sky literally opens and a man falls down from an upper level.  The Creative Fire is beginning to show the strain of centuries in space.  This particular pod on the ship is breaking apart.  The man, Fox, is a blue.  Ruby knows they exist, but until now the only other color she's seen are the Reds, security forces which are junior league gestapo.

Her conversation with Fox makes her want more than a life of drudgery enough to challenge the status quo.  Although much of the ship's history has been deliberately hidden from the greys, Ruby knows she won't be the first to fight for freedom.  She hopes unlike some of her predecessors, she lives to enjoy that freedom.

A Look at the First Issue of Waylines

I discovered a new online magazine today, Waylines.  It bills itself as a magazine of speculative fiction and film.  There was a promotional issue last month, which I missed.  I think the publication is bimonthly, but I never found anything that said explicitly what the publication schedule is.  I base the previous sentence on the fact that it does say edtior David Ress-Thomas will be writing a bimonthly editorial.

I want to take a look at the first issue.  This one contained an editorial, interviews with some of the writers, artists, and filmmakers, plus interviews with Cat Rambo and Christopher Barzak. 

Rather than start with the fiction, like I usually do, let's examine the films. 

A Sneak Peak at Eclipse Online: "The Contrary Gardener" by Christopher Rowe

Over the last few years, Nightshade Books has published four volumes of an anthology series titled Eclipse, edited by Jonathan Strahan.  Now that series is going online, with new stories published on the second and fourth Mondays of every month.  (The press release says first and fourth, but an email from the editor to me said second and fourth.  Since the premier is on October 8, I'm inclined to go with the second and fourth.) 

Anyway, Mr. Strahan was kind enough to send me advance copies of the two stories he'll be publishing in October.  One is a fantasy by K. J. Parker which I've reviewed over at Adventures Fantastic, and the other is a science fiction by Christopher Rowe, the subject of this review. These are short stories, so the review aren't going to be as long as the ones I write for novels.

"The Contrary Gardener" is a quiet, thoughtful piece of relatively near future science fiction set in what appears to be Kentucky, although it's somewhat hard to tell how near future it is since no dates are given.  It's the story of a young woman, Kay Lynne, who is a gardener in a society in which genetically grown fruits and vegetables are the main source of not just food but ammunition.  All of this is strictly regulated by the government. As are most aspects of daily life, including how father and daughter greet each other.

Kay Lynne is something of a nonconformist and has a strained relationship with her father, who grows beans for the military.  There's some sort of war going on, with the usual propaganda.  The beans are used as ammunition.

In addition to advanced bioengineering, there are advanced machines, which are taking the place of people in a number of jobs. 

As a consequence of her nonconformity, Kay Lynne is pretty apolitical.  At least until something happens that forces her to make some uncomfortable choices.

That's all I'll say about the plot.  The two principle characters, Kay Lynne and her father, are well drawn, especially for such a short tale.  The world they inhabit is well-thought out and detailed.  I've read somewhere (and don't ask, because it's been so long I have no idea where) that good world building is like an iceberg.  The reader only sees the tip of all the work that went into it.  I got that impression from reading this.  Rowe has definitely done his homework here, for his world is rich in detail.  I'd be open to seeing more of it.

This story in many ways had a pastoral feel to it, not unlike the work of Clifford D. Simak.  I consider Simak to be a neglected master, and it was nice to read something reminiscent of his work.

With the story and it's companion, Strahan has set the bar high on his initial choices to launch Eclipse Online.  He's going to have his work cut out for him to keep the quality this high.  If I were a betting man, I would lay my money on his being able to do it.  Check this publication out.  It's going to be good, and I'll be surprised if the stories we see here don't pick up some award nominations as well as a few awards.

The Android That Ate its Grandmother

vN
Madeline Ashby
Angry Robot Books
448pp trade paperback
$12.99 US $14.99 CAN
448pp B-format paperback
£8.99 UK
ebook $4.89 Kindle $6.01 Nook

This book took me over two weeks to read, but please don't take that as a negative comment on the book.  It's actually a high compliment.  Life was happening at the time, and the fact that the book could hold my attention when I wasn't able to read it for literally days at a time speaks highly of the author's ability to tell a compelling story.

Normally, I don't get excited about the whole androids who act like humans subgenre, partly because I got enough of it with ST:TNG and Commander Data.   I like Data, but the whole trope gets old after a while.

Fortunately something I read in a blurb by Joe Lansdale on a novel by Christopher Golden years ago is true:  There are no boring genres, only boring writers.  Madeline Ashby is not a boring writer, and vN is anything but a boring book.  This one surprised me several times by the direction it took.

A Review of Mary Sisson's Trust

Trust
Mary Sisson
Various ebook formats:  $2.99
Amazon, B&N, Smashwords

I reviewed the first book in this series, Trang, not too long ago. It was the author's first novel, and I found it to be enjoyable.  Now, Sisson's sophomore effort is available.  It's more enjoyable than the first, which is as it should be.  Authors, especially those early in their careers should be learning and improving with each new work.

There are some mild spoilers for Trang in what follows.  No way to avoid them, really, if I want to talk about this novel, since picks up shortly after the previous one ended.  

Clarkesworld Issue 69 is Now Available

Clarkesworld Issue 69
monthly
free online or available by subscription in various ebook formats

Clarkesworld has gotten some high profile attention in the last few years, having won the Hugo for Best Semiprozine in 2010 and 2011.  I've had subscription for the past six months or so.  Time constraints have kept me from finishing all of the issues, but based on everything I've read so far, it's been a good investment. 

This magazine provides a good balance of fiction and nonfiction, and the new issue is no exception.  Here's a closer look at the contents:

A Review of Night's Engines by Trent Jamieson

Night's Engines
Trent Jamieson
Angry Robot Books
US/CAN
29 May 2012
416pp mass-market paperback
$7.99 US $8.99 CAN
eBook
29 May 2012
£4.49

UK/RoW
7 Jun 2012
384pp B-format paperback
£7.99 UK

This book won't be released for another week here in the States, and later in other parts of the world, so if you haven't read Roil yet (reviewed here), don't worry.  You still have time before the conclusion of The Nightbound Land duology hits the shelves.

This is a science fiction novel that reads like fantasy, but a careful reading of either book shows it's clearly science fiction (or at least science fantasy), which is why I'm reviewing it here rather than at Adventures Fantastic.  It's different than most anything I've seen lately, further proof of my conclusion that Angry Robot is one of the publishers you should be reading.

Night's Engines is old fashioned adventure, the kind we don't see enough of these days.   One of the advantages of being in the Robot Army is getting to read some of the most exciting new science fiction and fantasy before anyone else does.  And while not every title I've previewed has worked for me, most of them have.  This series certainly does.

A Review of Mary Sisson's Novel Trang

Trang
Mary Sisson
$2.99 ebook Kindle Nook Smashwords
Print $11.99 trade paper $18.99 large print

Although it's been years since I read them, I was reminded a little bit of Keith Laumer's Retief stories while reading Trang.  But only a little bit.  Phillipe Trang is also a diplomat, but he's cut from an entirely different cloth that Retief.  For one thing, he's more idealistic.  For another, mankind is just entering what passes for galactic society in Trang. 

Most of the novel takes place five years after the discovery of a portal in the Saturn system (that's the moon system of the planet Saturn, in our solar system, in case you were wondering).  Phillipe Trang is a rising young diplomat who has been selected to be the first ambassador to the alien station on the other side of the portal.

RIP Ralph McQuarrie

I've been traveling this weekend, so I just heard the news when I got home and logged in to the computer.  Ralph McQuarrie has passed away.  He was most famous for his work on Stars Wars, but I think my favorite work of his was the set of illustrations for Isaac Asimov's Robot Dreams, back in the 1980s.  He will be missed.  Rest well, Ralph, and peaceful dreams.

Strata in the Sun

Strata
Bradley P. Beaulieu and Stephen Gaskell
various ebook formats (Kindle, Nook) $0.99

Between dayjobbery and a number of fantasy novels I'd committed to review, it's been a while since I read any science fiction.  I'm trying to restore a little balance to what I've been reading, and so between things I've committed to review, I decided to take a quick break with Strata.  Beaulieu's The Winds of Khalakovo was one of my favorite novels last year (see my review here), so when I saw he had co-written this short novel with Stephen Gaskell, I knew I had to read it.

And I'm glad I did.  While it's not what I would consider hard science (the authors don't go into a great deal of technical detail), they did do their research.  I've always been skeptical of stories where spacecraft, never mind whole stations such as those here, get right up next to the Sun.  So when I say the authors made me suspend my disbelief, that's saying something.