Tag Archives: scifi

Writing prompt: Puzzle day

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Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“National Puzzle Day” (This list is an awesome source of completely silly prompts.)

Cyn reached the front door at 12:03. She keyed in her entry code. Instead of turning blue, the key pad turned red and displayed a string of text. Who had the lowest average with over one hundred home runs?

“Damn,” Cyn spat. She hadn’t meant to get home after midnight. Some of the puzzles were solvable, but some, like this one, were ancient nonsense. She looked around the street. A few other bewildered people stood at their doors. It was a dangerous night to be on the street. Thousands of other people like her would wander the street. Police cars would challenge their operators too.

Every member of the city dreaded puzzle day. That’s what they called it. Exactly every 400th day, everything that worked smoothly the other 399 days would torture its users.

“Why does this happen?” the inevitable lament would arise. They lived in an ancient city of wonders. Most of the time, they took the functionality for granted. But not on puzzle day.

Cyn started toward Elbie’s house. Public transportation was out of the question. All of their questions were antique unit conversions. It was still quiet this time of night. She’d never been out on puzzle day, but like everyone else, she’d read enough.

Book review: The Dispossessed (Ursula Le Guin 1974)

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Rating: 2/5

I first read The Dispossessed in high school. I wasn’t wild about it. But high schoolers lack knowledge of government and people and how we get along together, major topics of the book, so I figured I owed it a reread.

I wasn’t wild about The Dispossessed the second time either. It may be the talkiest modern book I’ve read. With all the talking, I never felt like I emotionally connected with the countries, the characters, or the conflicts. In contrast, Le Guin’s other Hugo and Nebula award winner, The Left Hand of Darkness, is structurally similar and is one of my favorite books.

The Dispossessed takes place on a world and an inhabitable moon, the Earthlike Urras the harsher Anarres. Politically, Urras has rich and poor and countries of different political persuasions. Anarres is inhabited by descendants of anarchists from Urras. On Anarres, the people are equal and they struggle together against the harsh climate. They don’t own anything and they are free because of it. The main character is Shevek, a brilliant physicist from Anarres. The book alternates between Shevek’s childhood on Anarres and Shevek’s visit to Urras. Shevek is the first person from either world to go to the other. The book contrasts to the two societies using Shevek’s eyes, a man who doesn’t quite fit in on either world.

Much of the book describes the society of anarchist Anarres. People work for the good of society. No one is strictly obligated to, but social shame is applied to those who don’t, those who “egoize”.  Everyone, even the physicists, is expected to spend part of their time laboring for society. Men and women are equal, the intelligent and less intelligent are equal too. The book does discuss where these ideals start to break down, but still, I had trouble believing in the Annaresti society. It felt one-dimensional, like its whole purpose was to be a foil to hedonistic, classist Urras, and moreso, hedonistic classist Earth.

Ultimately, I didn’t believe in the book. All the characters orated on social issues, and I often forgot who was who. I didn’t feel for any of the characters. The two different societies never felt real to me, just exaggerations of two extremes. Neither Urras or Anarres was shocking or insightful to me.

I wonder how the book felt in 1974. Roe vs. Wade happened in 1973. Title IX passed in 1972. A book by a female author about equality and respect was probably a breath of fresh air. Today, to me, maybe the story’s equality read a little too like a fairy tale. Too neat and tidy when we see female leaders like Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno pilloried for being ugly. There’s a lot of steps in between 1800’s style ownership of women and the ideal of female equality that the book tidily skips over.

Interestingly, The Dispossessed has a similar structure to The Left Hand of Darkness. A man who exists outside two societies visits and contrasts both of them. But for me, Left Hand has so much more feeling. I felt both cultures, and I loved the main characters. In both Left Hand and in The Dispossessed‘s Anarres, the battle against the elements forces a sort of communal behavior. Both books examine gender in society. But for me, The Left Hand of Darkness works, while The Dispossessed doesn’t.

Writing prompt: Measure your feet day

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Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“Measure your feet day” (Technically, today National Blonde Brownie Day, but I care zip about them and drew a huge blank. So I opted for tomorrow’s, measure you feet day. This list is an awesome source of completely silly prompts.)

“Measure your feet today!” the full-page ad screamed. David had seen this ad, heard this commercial, for weeks, though he’d done his best to ignore it. It was weird that a hoax had so much money.

The shoes of Tutankhamen’s have been found! Top scientists indicate that his reincarnation is living today in our great nation. Measure your feet today… are they regal?

*

“Did you measure your feet?” Andy asked at recess before school.

“No. I’m not simple.”

“I guess there’s no way you’d be regal.”

“Nope,” David said.

Andy twitched. “Come on, where’s your sense of imagination? I’ll do your homework for a week if you measure your feet!”

David sighed. “Well, okay.” There wasn’t any advantage to buying into the hoax, but he could get behind not doing homework.

One of the other schoolboys, in the midst of this craze, of course had a tape measurer that he would loan out for a nickel. Andy paid it and gave David the tape.

As Andy instructed, David measured the length of his foot, the distance around his foot at the arch, the length of his big toe and the length of his second toe. He reported the numbers to Andy.

“Nuh uh!” Andy erupted. “You’re still messing with me!”

David was confused and growing annoyed. “I played along with your stupid game, are you going to honor your part or not?”

“You made those numbers up!” Andy grabbed the tape and David’s foot and proceeded to measure, too fired up to be squeamish now.

“Those numbers…” Andy trailed off. “You have to tell the New Tut organization immediately! Those are all the numbers!”

*

After Andy told David’s father about the measurements, there was no way he could avoid going. His mother dragged him to the regional center. The waiting room was filled with other boys, and even a few girls. Art work of feet in the Egyptian style adorned the wall.

Diversity in Science Fiction: Some Diverse Reads

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Science fiction often touts itself as the genre of the future. But science fiction is a reflection of today as much as it is a dream about the future. Science fiction has been too white and too male, both in authors and in protagonists. This is a reflection of the biases in our society.

My own top 20 sci-fi novels list features 18 books by white men, and two books by Ursula Le Guin. The Guardian’s list of top 500 scifi novels featured the names of 18 women. Any scifi reader starting out will hear about Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. Too many people get defensive when someone points this out. (See: the Great SFWA Shitstorm.)

The answer is to read widely, and to continue to read widely. So in that spirit, I list below some diverse science fiction*, some of which I have read, and some of which I ought to. For further reading, here is a great article listing a lot of great authors from the LA Times.

  • Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler: we destroy ourselves with war and aliens come in and save the survivors, mostly people from South American cultures who avoided the bombs. Oh, and the aliens want weird weird sex. A fun and weird read.
  • Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi: A western man goes to future Bangkok. The native Thais and the genetically-engineered windup girl are the stars of the show, though.
  • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu: One for me to read! A best seller in China, recently translated into English.
  • Downbelow Station and Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh: Distant future novels where women kick ass in militaristic and scientific settings, if you can get past the info-dumping at the front.
  • Who Fears Death by Nnedi Orakafor: Another for me to read! Far future, post-apocalyptic Africa.
  • The Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold: I have looked for these for years in used bookstores. I guess they fall into that awkward old-enough-to-be-out-of-print-, not-so-old-as-to-be-reprinted phase. They won a buttload of Hugos. And they feature a disabled protagonist.

*Note: I think it’s currently easier to find diverse fantasy. Maybe this is because it’s straightforward to use alternate mythology to Western mythology. I personally vastly prefer sci-fi. I think diversity in far future sci-fi is a challenge, because our whole concept of diversity is rooted in today’s culture. Just giving everything Chinese-ish names isn’t very satisfying. In LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness, Genly is black, but this isn’t relevant to the story at all. But I would like to see more female protagonists!

 

Writing prompt: National Hat Day

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Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“National Hat Day” (It’s true, January 15th is National Hat Day! This list is an awesome source of completely silly prompts, such as the Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day)

“That is the ugliest hat in history,” Sita giggled.

Alma giggled too. It was an exercise in atrociousness. It had scraggly feathers sticking out at inharmonious angles. The fabric was threadbare in inexplicable spots. The pattern of the fabric was a loose checker, with the pattern misaligned at the seams. At all. It was several sizes too big, and clearly meant to fit snugly.

Alma shrugged. “I guess it’s a conversation starter.”

Sita shook her head. “No. I’d take one look at a person wearing that and I’d be out of the room. A person wearing that hat has bedbugs and halitosis, and those are the better aspects of their personality.”

Alma tried to laugh, but couldn’t manage. “In all seriousness, it called out to me. I feel like it belonged to someone I knew, or that by holding it I know the people who wore it.”

Sita frowned. “Okay, whatever. Is it for a Halloween costume?”

“No,” Alma said, troubled by the depth of her feelings for what objectively was a horrific hat with nothing that should appeal. “Ah, dammit, maybe I’m just feeling the stress of exams. If an offensive looking hat should cheer me up…” she shrugged.

*

Alma set the hat on the table next to her bed. She was repelled by it, but fascinated. It still smelled faintly human, and the front band bore a section darkened inside by sweat.

She dreamt of the hat. A strange rumpled woman wore it, the sort of woman who would exist more in fairy tales than real life. Her clothes suited the hat, inappropriately threadbare and likely assembled by someone with severe sight deficiency.

“Alma!” the woman said, a command more than an address. Alma woke in a cold sweat. The hat remained on the bedside table.

Book Review: The New Jim Crow

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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander discusses the racist similarities between the Jim Crow Era and the War on Drugs. A non-fiction book about social justice is a bit afield of this blog’s usual science fiction fare. But as with Guns, Germs, and Steel, this book provides insight into how societies do, and sometimes don’t, work.

Science fiction is often concerned with the other. Science fiction can never truly be alien–as with all fiction, if it isn’t plausible, it doesn’t enchant. In a current project, I write about two alien species living together in a city, but apart, one above ground and one below ground. If I wanted to write about racial and class segregation, I figured I should read further about it in the real world. How would the two species feel about each other? What would they say about each other? I had them growing together after intense fighting– how could they plausibly do that?

That silly motivation convinced me to read the book, rather than say “that sounds interesting” and read something else. I’m glad I read it. It’s an important American topic that we remain quiet about, due to indifference or discomfort or lack of knowledge. I knew that our country imprisons an insane percentage of the population. I knew that many of these prisoners were black or brown, but I assumed this was because blacks and browns are statistically more likely to be poor and unemployed. I found that unfortunate, but not racist or alarming.

The New Jim Crow’s central thesis is that the War on Drugs, and the subsequent mass incarceration, has been enforced in a racist manner. Whites and blacks use drugs at similar rates, but blacks end up in prison far more often for it. Since the War on Drugs was declared in the early 80s, the prison population has increased from 400,000 to 2 million. During this period, decisions by the legislature and the Supreme Court have destroyed constitutional protections such as the 4th and the 14th amendment. This allows conscious and unconscious bias to target blacks. Police departments have enormous financial incentive to make arrests, and so they do, and minorities bear the brunt of it.

The book addressed my skepticism and convinced me. This is an issue that the left and right should be united on: it’s a violation of human decency and it’s expensive. To me, the main thing sustaining the War on Drugs and mass incarceration is the appeal of punishment; it’s easier to sell being tough on crime than helping criminals. We also don’t appreciate the scope of the problem.

I strongly recommend this book. I hear people debate racial issues so often. I participate too. But to be honest, this is my first long form read on the topic in today’s society. Because I read this, I better understand a complicated topic. I think if more people read this book, we would have a more intelligent conversation about this important issue that only grows more important. Oh, and it also might help you write about aliens.

Book Review: Player of Games (Iain M. Banks 1988)

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In this review, I avoid spoilers, but since nothing really happens in this book for about 100 pages, that means some of the things I mention do happen a good percentage into the book.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Iain M. Banks Culture series is renowned for its great far future space operas and artificial intelligences. I like space operas and I like artificial intelligences, so I picked Player of Games as one of Iain Banks well-rated books on amazon.

I almost didn’t make it through this book. The main character, Gurgeh, is a professional game player who lives in a wonderful castle on a wonderful world with other people who like games and parties. They live in the Culture, the future civilization of humans (and presumably others) that is mostly controlled by artificial intelligences.

We don’t start the book with the Culture, we start it with Gurgeh. Gurgeh (whose name kept reminding me of Gurgi from The Black Cauldron) is famous across the Culture for the fact he can play basically any game and almost always win. The entire first 75 pages are consumed by Gurgeh’s ennui and partying. I hated these 75 pages.

Then the book picks up. We get to see more of the Culture, and eventually a different civilization called the Azad. The Azad are a barbaric people whose society rotates around a game called Azad. The Culture sends Gurgeh to go play Azad against the Azad.

This isn’t a book for character development or sparkling prose, it’s a book with neat ideas. Azad is neat, the Culture is neat, and the interactions between the two lifestyles was neat. The drones are interesting. I liked the Azad planet Echronedal, which is always on fire.

I really enjoyed the last 200 pages of the book; it was full of fun and interesting things. I want to read more Culture books in the future. But I don’t want to read this one again and I would recommend it only with the caveats above. I didn’t find the posturing and sparring in games that I didn’t know and didn’t mean anything to the protagonist either. But obviously a lot of people loved this book and probably enjoyed the early game play.

The people who recommended Banks to me compared him to Vernor Vinge, whom I love. I can see why people would compare the two, but Player of Games didn’t stack against my favorite Vinge books. We’ll see what I think about future Culture books.

Writing prompt: Jump forward in Nano and write (again)

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Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts. Find me on NaNoWriMo as Vironevaeh!

“For Nanowrimo: Jump to a new section and write” (Yes, again… I am just catching up after falling behind over the weekend. I’ll think of something more original next week.)

 

There was a knock at the door. It was Uncle Oraeus and a woman in a lab coat she didn’t know. “Jainus, just who I was looking for,” Oraeus said.

Jainus had a sinking feeling. Since she’d moved to the big kids house, she wondered when this conversation would come. She was growing up, and the other kids had already gotten to it.

“You’re old enough to have a Vitsen now,” Oraeus said. “You know what’s involved?”

Jainus nodded, but that didn’t stop Oraeus from explaining. “We’ll move your brains to your feet, and then convert your skull to an apartment for a Vitsen companion to live in. It won’t hurt. The surgical part is the easy part, really. Learning to get along with a Vitsen is the hard part. And you shouldn’t run for a while until you learn to soften your gate. Concussions are serious business,” Oraeus said nodding with his eyes closed.

Jainus was fighting enough to Jonnelt’s Vitsen Agartha, which seemed determine to make her feel inferior. It would buzz right by her ear when she was reading or say something unsettling. Jainus had always been told that Vitsens were advanced creatures, unknowably advanced. Creatures that had helped her people many, many times, extended her lifespan, and opened the galaxy for trade. Knowing Agartha, it was hard to imagine. Agartha seemed petty and spiteful.

“Do I have to?” Jainus asked.

Oraeus frowned. “You know you don’t, but you wouldn’t want to disappoint your family.”

Jainus sighed.

“You won’t always have a Vitsen.” Oraeus opened the door behind his own ear, showing the vacancy. “Just at this age, and occasionally when you’re older. As one of the favored families, it’s important that you start to understand Vitsens. You’ll find them really annoying at first, but you’ll get used to it, I promise. I even miss mine. We annoy them even more, I’m afraid. They don’t like being away from their mountain, you’ll learn. But they recognize they importance of the exchange, and so do we.”

Jainus couldn’t think of any way to say no. She nodded, then excused herself to go take a walk along the beach. The Vitsens’ home, Mount Vit, loomed to the north.

Writing prompt: Jump forward in your Nano project

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Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“For Nanowrimo: Jump ahead to some future part of your story that excites you and write about that”

Gainarain went into the room. Jainus could hear him speaking over the link, but she couldn’t make out the words. They sounded serious, as Gainarain so rarely was. Everything seemed so serious these days. Terran sat next to her on the couch nearest the door and leaned against her, trying to eavesdrop as well, but also seeking company.

Gainarain stopped talking and came back out. “The queen’s been deposed,” he said.

“Deposed?” Jainus said. In an instant, too many ideas filled her mind. Was there still a monarchy? If so, who was monarch? And if not, who would rule and what would become of them? Terran clearly did the same calculations, she could feel him grow tense and adopt that wide-eyed look that until last week had been reserved for especially large insects.

Gainarain saw their faces and seemed to register their fear. “Oh, no, it’s not a coup or anything. By Terrigan, her brother,” Gainarain said.  “Things shouldn’t change too much otherwise, but of course it’s a big deal.”

They all nodded, but Jainus at least couldn’t calm down enough to figure out the ramifications of it.

“Why?” Dielel asked, dancing her bear around a miniature chair. She didn’t understand any of it, but she saw everyone else’s unease, which prompted her to ask questions.

“Well,” Gainarain said. He seemed uncomfortable. Jainus had a sense it was going to be something personal to them, rather than something for the whole planet. “Terrigan’s your great-grandfather. The next in line after him is your grandfather, and next after him is your mother.” He stopped as if the conclusions were obvious. To Jainus, at least, they were not. She looked around, confused.

Tempest took on a superior look. “We’re directly in line now, not some distant relation anymore.”

Gainarain looked pained. “Yes. So this means no more wandering off of the safe zone, and a lot more supervision. Especially right now, that we’ve been attacked and we’ve changed monarchs.”

Tempest stopped looking superior. “So nothing fun,” she sneered.

Gainarain rolled his eyes. “No, nothing fun.”

Book Review: Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie 2013)

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Note: in this review, I spoil nothing beyond the first few chapters or back cover blurb.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie grabbed me quickly, with tight writing and careful and intriguing word choice. The winner of both the 2014 Hugo and the 2014 Nebula Awards, the most prestigious in sci-fi, it clearly had this effect on others. Only on page 3, we get the wonderful phrase “She was probably male”. The novel reminded me a lot of C. J. Cherryh’s Cyteen, with high space opera and sophisticated scheming. The protagonist, Breq, is a semi-human fragment of an artificial intelligence. I found Breq interesting in expression and nature, and she was easy to root for.

You will notice gender in this book. Breq is from the Radch Empire, where gender is not determinable from appearance nor is it important to try, and thus everyone, male or female, is referred to as “she”. Surprisingly, this totally achieved gender anonymity for me. In Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, all pronouns are male, which left me picturing every character as male even though some of them are physically ungendered. Perhaps because female doesn’t seem like the default pronoun, using “she” didn’t feel the same. We know that Breq is a female human and her companion Seivarden is a male human, but we don’t know the gender of most of the characters.

Unlike Left Hand, Ancillary Justice doesn’t dwell on gender. The Radch convention is what the characters use, unless they are speaking in another language, and that is that. We never find out why the Radch in particular ignore gender in a way that must have been a determined effort at that level. Have their sexual proclivities evolved with their language too? I wondered. In a way, not knowing answers to questions that had inspired such curiosity in me bothered me. But in a way, it was in keeping with the Radch Culture– gender wasn’t important there and it wasn’t important in the book, and it was my hang-up only that kept it there. Why did anyone’s gender matter to the story?

I suppose it’s strange to devote such a chunk of my review to something that the book doesn’t dwell on. But still, in the contexts of our language, it was a major choice on the part of Leckie. It makes my brain itch in such a delightful way.

The novel has several other nifty science fiction ideas. Breq’s current sentience versus her life as an AI is wonderful. Leckie uses music to characterize Breq in a way I really enjoyed. The Radch Empire is also pretty interesting, though it sounds obnoxious. They run around and brutally conquer and are filled with narcissistic oligarchs like Seivarden. The empire is run by several thousand clones of the same person, Anaander, who for some reason I kept on picturing as Edna Mode from The Incredibles, but that weird detail is almost certainly on me as a reader.

I ended up giving the book a 4/5, though I still debate myself over the rating. A book that I read in a day and a half because I was so enthralled, a book that still has me thinking a week later should be a 5/5. But I felt like the book didn’t quite come together for me at the end, like it was all sweetness and no substance. I didn’t ever feel uncomfortable or uncertain as to the outcome. That said, I would read it again, and recommend it to others. Read it yourself and see what you think.