A Waist of Time would make a good sci-fi title, I think.
Yes, it was a spelling mistake seen on an online news site in the comments section, and my first instinct was to want to correct it, but then I got to thinking about how "A Waist of Time" could work (a little in the vein of Asimov's "The God's Themselves") and I visualized an egg timer.
Have you seen any mind-expanding typos recently?
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Next
by Michael Crichton
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
Next was a 2006 technothriller fiction novel, the very last published in author Michael Crichton's lifetime. When explaining how he got the idea, he spoke of the issue of nature/nurture and how our genetic material interacts with the environment. As such, he included transgenic (an organism with genetic material that's been altered via genetic engineering) characters--in the form of a chimp-boy named Dave and a parrot with human genes called Gerard--navigating a world overrun with greed and not always legal, let alone, moral agendas.
In at least one back cover blurb I read for this book, it says: "We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and test our spouses for genetic maladies. We live in a time when one-fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else--and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes…"
Crichton has the power to terrify in just this short paragraph, and I remember reading Next for the first time, wondering how real any of it was, or if it's actually possible that, like one of the characters in this book who has an aggressive form of cancer, someone could unwittingly find his disease and treatment becoming little more than a pretext for genetic research being done in a shrouded background. The hospital university of this character's own physician has sold the rights to his cells, and a judge goes on to rule that they were "waste" that was lawful for the college to dispose of in whatever manner it saw fit. In another case, the lawyers for a genetic engineering company claim they have the right under United States law to all of an existing patient's cells and thus the right to gather replacement cells at any time, by force if necessary, and that's not all--they can also take them from any of the patient's descendants.
So much in this story feels too realistic and terrifying to read with ease and freedom. The tension starts right from the very first page and doesn't let up often, if at all. The cast, especially those in the transgenic characters' families, are so well fleshed out, readers will be racing alongside them through a whirlwind plot filled with terror, hoping they're victorious in escaping capture by those who consider themselves owners of human, genetics, and genetically engineered property. We want to see these heroes securing their individual rights, just as we want to maintain our own. But that outcome is in constant doubt fictionally, and potentially even realistically.
There's no way to elude the haunting qualities of this gripping, thought-provoking novel. The story might have been ripped from current headlines. It seems foolish to even consider that simply because we go to experts who can help make us medically well, we're giving away things for all time that no one but we ourselves and those we specifically designate should be allowed to rule over. But, all too easily, something like it may happen sooner or later.
I was reminded of two quotes from another favorite book of mine, The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, after I finished reading Next for the first time:
"Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread..."
"I do not expect that the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about at my fellow-men; and I go in fear..."
Whether or not you've read this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale from a master of the fantastic.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an
award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
Happy Halloween!
Cory Doctorow on the worsening and non-negotiable clauses in typical publishers' contracts:
Reasonable AgreementFor instance, some demand all existing, hypothetical, and future-conceivable rights, regardless of the unlikelihood of ever using them. As Doctorow mentions, the confidentiality clause is a bit weird. Recent contracts I've signed all include it, but when would I normally receive confidential information from a publisher, and why or to whom would I think of revealing it? No problem agreeing to that clause, since the possibility of violating it is remote.
I've heard of most of these abuses but not suffered many, happily. As for indemnifying publishers against liability, from my limited experience there's no avoiding some version of that clause. Nowadays standard contracts include it, and an author who refuses to sign simply won't get the contract. One can only hope for an agreement that doesn't include the outrageous versions described by Doctorow.
My one experience in having a novel bought by a major publisher was with Harlequin. For a first-time, unagented author, their contract is a non-negotiable boilerplate document. Fortunately, I've had no problems with them or the agreement. By the time I sold them my stand-alone vampire novel EMBRACING DARKNESS (part of my Vanishing Breed universe but not dependent on any other work in it), their former restrictive pen name policies I'd heard about no longer existed.
The small presses and e-publishers who've published my books and stories have been almost always fine to work with. I did once have a narrow escape from a noncompete clause. A startup small press that a friend in an online writers' group connected me with offered to accept the novel I sent them. The offer included a contract with a clause that made me gasp in horrified disbelief. A broad interpretation would have forbidden me in perpetuity to "compete" with the book, which included vampires, by publishing anything else on the same subject. Vampirism -- my specialty. That's enough gall to divide into three parts! I wrote VOID over each page of the contract they'd preemptively signed, filed it in a drawer, and notified the publisher that I refused the offer.
Doctorow's essay condemns noncompete clauses in the strongest terms. In my opinion, an author of nonfiction might reasonably be asked to refrain from writing anything else that might be considered duplicative for, say, a year at most. As for fiction, how would "compete" even be defined? Maybe in terms of allowing one company exclusive rights to a series? Fortunately, I'd already had lots of stories and novels in the Vanishing Breed universe published in multiple venues long before there was any chance that question would arise.
Margaret L. Carter
Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.
My sainted father used to call my mother's cooking "slopdosh" on occasion. Slopdosh, also absquatulate, are not words in common parlance these days, which is a pity, I think.
I write in praise of slopdosh, not literally of a mixture of mud and water but of the domestic economy of stews and curries. In hindsight, perhaps my father was not overly complimentary but his vocabulary was probably influenced by an institution that calls their fine dining facilities a Mess.
My father served in Burma and India during the Second World War. He brought home some interesting western oriental weapons, some exotic health problems, and a dislike of curry.
Curry contains garlic, cumin, turmeric and many other spices, and it is a wonderful preservative of elderly food and also a fine disguiser of less pleasant tastes and textures. The more times you cook a curry, the better it tastes, but the more indistinguishable its ingredients become. Hence, slopdosh.
I've got arthritis, alas. For a few months, I gave up potatoes (which I love), also tomatoes, peppers, chillies, and eggplant, and was doing well. Last weekend, I mashed potatoes and made the most delicious fish pie (rather like cottage pie or shepherds pie, in that, instead of pastry, one has mashed potatoes on top of the protein slop). Well, that was a bad idea!!!!! I had a flare up and could hardly walk or lift anything as heavy as a bottle of water, and if I got on my knees, I had to crawl for quite a distance before I hit a position from which I could get back to my feet. So, I had to call in a professional to help me clean my kitchen and my fridge this week.
My all-American cleaner said I am disgusting. What prompted this feedback? She saw a well-wrinkled apple, a half cabbage, some slightly wilted beetroot leaves, some carrot top leaves and the green ends of a couple of leeks, green stalks of broccolini, and a bowl of the parts of two cauliflowers that most people discard, the root end of a heart of celery, the remains of stewed prunes in cranberry juice, and a coffee mug full of kale stalks. She would have thrown it out.
On the bright side, she put my trusty electric crock pot within reach.
In times of food insecurity and rising prices, slop dosh is a good thing. I put a good splash of virgin olive oil into the crock pot, added diced onion, shredded leek greens, torn wilted beetroot leaves, chopped nasty bits of cauliflower (not actually nasty, in fact, surprisingly tender if the knobbly bits are discarded) and most of my other fridge contents (including the kale stalks) and seared it in the oil with half a jar of curry powder, then added reserved vegetable water and simmered the lot on and off during off peak electric hours.
By the way, I have attended two presentations by Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic in which his wife and daughter flourishingly strip the leafy bits from kale, but in my experience the stalky bits can also be snipped with kitchen scissors, cooked in slop dosh and are excellent fiber for bowel health.
My internist tells me that I eat the most healthy diet of any of his patients. My gynecologist tells me that I am the only patient she has who eats sardines. (Sardines are good because they are the whole fish, soft, calcium rich backbone and all.)
This boiling of leftovers gave me a base for at least 8 meals for two, assuming that I add cooked chicken, or chick peas, or beans, or mussel meats, or shrimp/prawns, etc for protein respectively to each double portion. I've frozen some, recooked the rest. The French call reheated leftovers "rechauffe" which sounds ever so much more acceptable, doesn't it?
Curry can be as fruity as you wish. Old pineapple does well, or blueberries, or dried raisins or cranberries or cherries or ginger... or apples or figs. Wilted lettuce works, as does peeled and well cooked parsnip. I cannot recommend bananas, though. You can thicken your slop dosh with Bisto gravy powder or granules, or Taco sauce powder, but it won't need much thickening.
Talking of ginger, the candied stuff is fine. The powder is only good for flavor. Fresh ginger has the best health benefits.
Americans don't seem to like beetroot. One tip is to boil it. Then peel off the skin by pressing firmly with a thumb, then slice it and reheat it in Braswell pepper or chili jelly with a sprinkling of chili powder.
Set aside the liquor from cooking the original beetroot, because no matter how well you wash your beets, some sandy grit remains. Let the grit sink, pour off most of the water and discard the last inch. Use the red water to cook red or black beans from dry, and/or barley.
Another gross but fascinating thing I like to do is break a cob of corn in half, leave it out to dry overnight, then use a thumb to tease out the niblets, row by row, and add them to a dish every third day. Some always survive digestion. Nuff said.
Apologies that this has nothing to do with copyright law.
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: State of
Fear by Michael Crichton
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
State of Fear was a 2004 technothriller fiction novel written by Michael Crichton that I found utterly authentic each time I've read it. I'll state upfront that there really isn't anything "alien" about this book. No strange beasties or supernatural elements anywhere, beyond extrapolation of current events pushed to the extreme edge toward one possible conclusion. I chose to cover it here because the series of Michael Crichton reviews I've been rolling out for more than a month now and will continue for a few more weeks simply wouldn't be complete without this book included.
Also, let's dispense with the climate controversy surrounding this particular title right from the off. The author included at the back of the book not only graphs and footnotes, an appendix, but also a 20-page bibliography containing a list of 172 books and journal articles presented "to assist those readers who would like to review my thinking and arrive at their own conclusions". In all this, the author supported his own highly-controversial beliefs about global warming. A host of so-called experts in numerous fields disputed his views, and he fought back with a statement on his website (which you can read here: https://www.michaelcrichton.com/works/state-of-fear-authors-message/). Crichton has also stated that he didn't want to write the book. He was encouraged to do it, tried to ignore the idea, felt like a coward, worried he'd be killed for going ahead and writing it, and, against all logic, he ended up doing it anyway.
I think everyone needs to be reminded from the beginning of this review that this book is a work of fiction, one grounded in the very realistic science that Crichton was famous for delving into and finding the "potentially terrifying underbelly" beneath.
That said, I don't have anything nearing an educated opinion about climate change or global warming. (I, in fact, doubt there's a single person alive who actually does. It would take great arrogance and audacity to believe anyone could know much, if anything, about an ancient planet that's been in existence long before any of us appeared on it.) I only know that I believe each and every one of us is a steward and caretaker of Earth by default, given that we were all born here. As such, we need to take care of it and do our parts in protecting our portion of it in whatever ways we can. I'll say no more about this subject than that.
State of Fear runs the gamut of settings--from Ireland's glaciers to Antarctica's volcanoes, to Arizona desert and Solomon Islands' jungle, the streets of Paris and the beaches of Los Angeles. You won't be bored on the setting front. Each of these locations is described brilliantly, and the characters involved are finely drawn with a lawyer for a rich philanthropist, Peter Evans, leading the extremely large cast. Evans manages contributions to the fictional National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF). Misused funds are noted, and it comes to light that international law enforcement agencies are following the trail of an eco-terrorist faction with the acronym of ELF, a fictional group that's modeled after the existing Earth Liberation Front. This particular group is so fanatical about convincing the world that global warming exists, they're willing to simulate natural disasters, killing countless, in order to get their message across. Surrounding the controversy is the planning of a NERF-sponsored climate conference. Evans, along with a host of others, intends to stop ELF from causing a tsunami to inundate everyone and everything on California's coastline.
The only reason I can see anyone not liking this book is because they've forgotten it's written in Crichton's usual modus operandi of fiction with "the absolute ring of truth" (stated by Larry Nation, American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), after the author received their 2006 Journalism Award, which has since been renamed the "Geosciences in the Media" Award, for the research he did for State of Fear). This story has everything a reader could want in a tightly-written thriller. It's sad when fiction has to be saddled with overwhelming and usually toxic political agendas.
Whether or not you've read this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale from a master.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an
award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
Robots controlled by electrical impulses from fungal mycelium threads:
Robot Blends Living Organisms and MachinesThe "rootlike threads" are grown into a robot's hardware. I was surprised to learn fungi generate electrical impulses. Because the mycelia are light-sensitive, scientists can control the direction and speed of the robots' movements with ultraviolet light.
It's hoped that, when perfected, such biohybrid machines could have agricultural uses, among other applications. The article includes a photo of a robot covered with a "self-healing skin. . . that can react to light and touch." The picture looks a bit like the conventional image of a golem.
I'm reminded of T. Kingfisher's riveting novel WHAT MOVES THE DEAD, a retelling of Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" in science-fiction terms. It attributes the eerie phenomena -- e.g., the climactic rising of a dead character from her tomb -- to an intelligent fungal colony that lives in the tarn and infiltrates the bodies of animals (and at least one person). The organism seems to be trying to communicate and apparently doesn't mean any real harm. How could it understand why humans get upset when corpses walk around?
Has anyone ever produced a horror movie about a swarm of intelligent fungi? If mushroom-robot symbiosis ever results in a successful commercial product, surely such a film couldn't be far behind.
One expert in the ethical implications of technological innovations expresses concern "that if biohybrid robots become more sophisticated and are deployed in the ocean or another ecosystem it could disrupt the habitat, challenging the traditional distinction between life and machine." However, there's no mention of a potential for mycelium-powered machines to become conscious and demand civil rights or fair salaries, fringe benefits, and working conditions.
Margaret L. Carter
Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.
Everyone has 32 of them, more or less...
There's an interesting book by Dr. Joel "Gator" Warsh, "Parenting At Your Child's Pace" that discusses the potential that up to 20% of the causes of autism might relate to environment and diet. And there is a documentary by Dr. Malhotra, "First Do No Pharm" which claims, among myriad things, that a poor diet drives disease (chronic disease), and that up to 60% of the calories in the Western diet come from ultra-processed foods.
Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Prey
by Michael Crichton
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
Published in 2002, Prey is the technothriller result of author Michael Crichton's interest in extrapolating where three current trends of the time might go, including distributed programming, biotechnology, and nanotechnology (a concept proposed in 1959 by theoretical physicist Richard Feynman).
The story opens in a Nevada desert where a secret facility has been built. The scientists there have undertaken an experiment using predatory micro-robots they've constructed. These creatures have the potential to evolve…and they've escaped.
Main character Jack Forman is an unemployed software programmer and a stay at home dad while his wife Julia in an executive for a nanorobotics company called Xymos. Her team's development of a revolutionary imaging technology takes up most of her time, and Jack finds himself worried she's having an affair. When Julie shows him a video of what she's been working on, he's impressed but uneasy about the ramifications it could have.
As the story progresses, Julia's behavior becomes increasingly strange and abusive toward her family, culminating in a car crash. Compelled to investigate what was going on with his wife of late, Jack is led straight to Xymos. The project manager admits to him that they've lost control of the micro-bot swarms that can replicate humans and they've escaped to the outside world. With Jack's help, the team has to figure out how to destroy something that only cares about survival at any cost and sees us as little more than its prey.
As is so often the case with this author, Prey is a cautionary one. One reviewer for The Observer pointed out that in this novel Crichton does what he does best--probing the latest scientific advances and showing "their potentially terrifying underbelly". Even critics who found the story absurd confessed to being unable to stop turning the pages feverishly. This story has all the elements of great horror. It's grounded in believable science, populated with multi-faceted characters in an intriguing setting, and filled with all the suspense the best thriller novels have in abundance.
Rights to a movie version of the story were purchased but thus far it hasn't been made that I know of--a shame because this would make a great film.
Whether or not you've read this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale from a master of the fantastic.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth
another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
Quinton Smith, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at one of the colleges I attended, the University of California (Irvine), is working on organoids -- "organs-on-a-chip." Stem cells are grown in "three-dimensional gel molds" to mimic human organs in order to explore "how tissues interact." For example, he has reprogrammed stem cells into liver cells to study the connection between liver disease and diet; he grows miniature placentas to investigate preeclampsia. Lab-grown organoids have an ethical advantage over animal experimentation. They're also preferable to animals, which aren't precise counterparts of human subjects, in being composed of actual human cells.
The OrgansmithHere's a Wikipedia article explaining the process in greater depth and technical detail:
OrganoidsOf course, I realize these scientists aren't creating independently living organisms, much less generating life from inanimate matter, but the concept still sounds intriguingly Frankensteinian.
Remember the lab-grown miniature brains being studied by neuroscientists?
Artificially Grown Mini-BrainsIt's fun to imagine the mini-brains attaining sapience, then conspiring to radicalize the other organoids, overthrow the experimenters, break out of the lab, and rampage through the wider world like the Blob in the vintage movie.
Margaret L. Carter
Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.
This is about your voice: your singing and speaking voice, not your writing voice. AI can steal either, or both.
As a writer, you may not have thought very much about your speaking voice, but if you are published, you have probably taken part in a vlog, or podcast, or been interviewed, or posted a recording of yourself reading a teaser scene, or a chapter of your book (aloud, obviously).
You probably have not copyrighted your voice. Voices cannot necessarily be copyrighted. Yet, banks and brokerage houses try to bully you into allowing your voice to be used as verification of your identity.
My advice is, never agree to it. Moreover --and I have said this before--never participate in any telephone call on a recorded line, unless you initiated the call and know with whom you are speaking. Don't answer polls on the telephone, especially if the self-described pollster wants you to answer "Yes" or "No" (and only those precise words will suffice).
They may tell you that the call is being recorded "for quality assurance", or "for your protection", or "for your convenience", don't speak up. Hang up. "Quality assurance" is to make you think twice about swearing, it's to protect the caller. "Your protection" is "their" protection at the very best, and could be the opposite.
Convenience is a Trojan Horse.
Beware of geeks bearing gifts. Or Greeks (a jingoist might say).
Just to weave a little -- "weave" being a newly-envisioned synonym for an extended rhetorical digression which always returns to the original thought -- there are several stories in Greek mythology about toxically masculine men hiding inside a benign-seeming hollow statue in order to enter a fortress and wreak havok, and about one particular queen who was cursed by the gods with a specific taste for a love of animals and who is alleged to have hidden inside a hollow model of a cow in order to seduce a straight white bull.
Their interest was piqued, as they recount, when a client of theirs came to them with suspicions that this client's famously recognizeable voice had been snagged from other contexts, manipulated and published in a voiceover that gave viewers the impression that the client endorsed a cryptocurrency.
The article explains existing Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) "right of publicity" laws, which are state laws, not federal. Their article is worth reading for that alone.
However, one's voice is not one's name or one's likeness. Enter E.L.V.I.S. in Tennessee.
"Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act of March 21, 2024, explicitly treats an individual’s voice as protected property in any medium. “Voice,” according to the act, means “sound in a medium that is readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual, regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice.” The ELVIS Act guarantees post-mortem protection for 10 years if a voice is commercially exploited by the state; otherwise, protection terminates two years after death. The ELVIS Act provides for civil liability and equitable relief but makes exemptions for “fair use” — the right to use a copyrighted work under certain conditions without permission of the copyright owner — and for fleeting or incidental use."
Luke de Leon and Anthony Mendoza go on to examine other celebrities and public figures who live in other states, whose voices have been ripped off with impunity (my words). Or not!
"From this experience, it is clear that the legal frameworks protecting an individual’s name, image, likeness and voice are inconsistent from state to state, and the advent of AI technology and its proliferation across the internet is going to test the effectiveness of those laws. We anticipate that there will be more legislation — and calls for legislation — in this evolving area. In the meantime, however, an individual should look to the right of publicity (if recognized in their state) and federal copyright law to protect their voice from being misappropriated in the age of AI."
Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Timeline
by Michael Crichton
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
I confess I'm not a fan of time-travel fiction, other than The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, but that's a worthwhile exception. Basically, every other time-travel story tends to get very convoluted (as the second season opener of the otherwise enjoyable Loki proved to me almost beyond a shadow of a doubt), especially when these stories are usually accompanied by an impossible "convergence" which has to be perfectly timed to pull off. What are the odds? Too astronomical to calculate. The incredulity is more than I can believe, let alone bear, in almost every case. However, Michael Crichton's 1999 time-travel thriller Timeline combined the usual things I love about his books: scientific and technical authenticity, high action, incredible characterization, and (for this particular one) quantum and multiverse theory. Finally, I love anything medieval. My biggest regret as an author intending to retire by 2025 is that I never got to write a series set in a medieval time period. I had some ideas for one and had even named the saga and the individual titles in it, but I have no plans to ever write it, despite that I continue to collect books about medieval lore left and right. Sigh. In any case, given that Crichton almost never fails to live up to my expectations and that the medieval world he created in Timeline is so fantastic, there was really no way to lose in betting I would enjoy this story the first time I read it.
Travelers through the desert happen upon an elderly man and take him to a New Mexico hospital, where doctors discover before his death that he's an ITC company employee and that all hell has broken lose in his blood vessels.
Meanwhile in southwest France, a team of archaeologists and historians study fourteenth-century Castelgard and La Rogue. They make disturbing discoveries, including the very modern lens from their leader Professor Edward Johnston's glasses and a message from him that appears to be over 600 years old. Graduate students Chris and Kate, along with assistant professor Andre, and technology specialist David are flown to their funds' provider ITC's headquarters in New Mexico. There, they're told that Johnston traveled to the year 1357--an extremely dangerous medieval time period--using their quantum technology. They're forced to go back in time to retrieve him.
Not surprisingly, the time-travel transit pad is damaged upon their arrival to the place and time their leader was last deposited by the technology. Returning to their own time period might be impossible if it's not repaired. The locals are involved in political strife and war (the Hundred Years' War) that the time-travelers are inadvertently pulled into and become emotionally embroiled in with the key figures they meet. The only way to prevent suspicions that they're not who and what they say they are, which could get them killed in such a superstitious age, is to go along with the events as they play out, all while hoping the opportunity to get home comes soon.
Crichton said about writing this story that it took twice as long to write as Jurassic Park, what he considered his last adventure story. What he found the most fascinating about it matches my own assessment--the medieval setting he wanted to be brutally authentic. When recalling the development process, he commented that he'd uncovered a world where you might be killed if you picked up a fallen glove, you risked death just by claiming you're gentle, where pastry was designed to look like animal intestines, where monasteries were utilized as tennis courts, where women were killed just for cutting their own hair short, and where wet gunpowder exploded.
This story is tightly woven, the situations in the present and past fascinating, and the characters are ones readers can't help but root for. A film adaptation came out in 2003 but wasn't well received, though it's not bad--simply not as good as the book version.
Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, well-developed tale with depth from a master of the fantastic.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an
award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
Last week Cory Doctorow posted a review of JULIA, by Sandra Newman, which coincidentally I've just finished reading.
Novel-Writing MachinesNewman's novel is an authorized retelling of Orwell's dystopian classic from the viewpoint of Julia, the protagonist Winston Smith's lover. As Doctorow mentions, Winston thinks of the Party as omniscient and omnipotent -- "Big Brother is watching you." Viewing this society through Julia's experience, we realize it's as corrupt and inefficient as the bureaucracy of any other dictatorship. She knows how to take advantage of cracks in the system, for instance with bribery and tricks such as getting a break from her job by signing out under the category "Sickness: Menstrual." (After all, nobody checks up on that excuse.) As a mechanic who maintains novel-writing machines in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth, she has the skills to fix other things as well, e.g., the perpetually clogging lavatories in her dormitory. She's valued for her abilities and enjoys her work. She also enjoys frequent sexual flings despite her membership in the Anti-Sex League. I wondered how women who take those risks, aside from the danger of getting arrested for sexcrime, avoid pregnancy given that contraception is illegal. Well, there's a dodge for that, too. Many single women who suspect they're in the early stages of pregnancy seek artsem (artificial insemination). If they've actually conceived already, they're covered; if not, the procedure didn't "take." And it seems to be common knowledge that some women volunteering to bear children for the Party are already pregnant. Newman's perspective flip opens up Orwell's fictional world from these and many other angles. Everybody knows the proper behavior, language, and facial expressions necessary to stay out of trouble, and for most of them it seems to be mainly an act. In one of the few relaxed scenes, workers joke about the intricacies of Newspeak. Julia excuses her linguistic mistakes with the claim that she isn't a bit intellectual, which is true. Winston's fascination with forbidden political, philosophical, and literary topics bores her, although she maintains a facade of enthralled interest.
JULIA answers questions many readers of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR may puzzle over. Why does she initiate a love affair with Winston, a rather stuffy man twenty years her senior? Does Big Brother, as an individual, literally exist? (Yes.) Is there really an anti-Party underground, and was its demonized alleged leader, Goldstein, a real person? (Yes.) Is Oceania really at war? Yes, we witness the bombed sections of London, though we never find out if the enemy is Eurasia, Eastasia, or neither. We also learn about the lives of the proles, including the thriving black market with which Julia regularly deals. Newman's work delves into potential features of Orwell's fictional world that he either didn't consider or deliberately left outside the frame of his narrative.
Cory Doctorow reasonably classifies this type of novel as fanfic, or as he defines it, "writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head." Whether an amateur or professional publication, fanfic expresses the drive to explore shadowed or underdeveloped areas of canonical works, or speculate on how the world of the original looks from the perspective of a different character. ROSENKRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, which he also mentions, is a prime example of the latter.
Similarly, WIDE SARGASSO SEA, by Jean Rhys, a prequel to JANE EYRE, creates a personality and a backstory for Bertha, Rochester's deranged first wife. In Rhys's re-imagining, Bertha isn't even the name she goes by; Rochester calls her that for the sake of respectability. They arrive in Britain near the end of WIDE SARGASSO SEA. Rhys explores the question of whether she was ever in fact "mad" before being taken from her Caribbean home to England and relegated to nearly solitary confinement in a suite of upstairs rooms (not, contrary to popular impression, the attic).
Doctorow also refers to THE WIND DONE GONE, which a court decreed to be a "parody" of GONE WITH THE WIND. It really isn't, but that classification served as a defense against a charge of plagiarism. When I read THE WIND DONE GONE, I was mildly surprised that Mitchell's estate claimed copyright infringement at all. Alice Randall's book doesn't literally retell the classic novel. It tells the story of the enslaved narrator, Cynara, mixed-race daughter of Mammy and half-sister of Scarlett, with transformative references to the events of GONE WITH THE WIND. None of the white people from the latter are named in THE WIND DONE GONE. Cynara gives Mitchell's characters satirical nicknames, e.g. "Planter" and "Lady" for Scarlett's parents, "Mealy Mouth" for Melanie, "Dreamy Gentleman" for Ashley (I love that one). Scarlett is simply "the Other" or "Her."
Then there's GRENDEL, by John Gardner, wherein the monster reveals his side of the events in BEOWULF. Of course, creating variations on works in the public domain doesn't risk legal problems.
My own all-time favorite professionally published fanfic, the book I'd always wanted to write, is Fred Saberhagen's THE DRACULA TAPE (1975), a retelling of DRACULA in which the Count himself sets the record straight.
Margaret L. Carter
Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.
Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Sphere
by Michael Crichton
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
I admit I've always been fascinated by submarines. Here we have a deluxe trailer with all the bells and whistles that's put on the bottom of the ocean where people live in it. Mind you, the fact that I'm claustrophobic and terrified of allowing myself to be encased in a tin can--regardless of how fancy it is--holds zero appeal to me anywhere except in my imagination.
Michael Crichton's 1987 supernatural psychological thriller Sphere depicts the perfect storm in a book that ticks all the boxes for me with incredible characterization, the coolest setting ever, and a plot that absolutely blew my mind the first time I read it and all the countless times I've re-read it since. The United States Navy discovers an enormous spacecraft of unknown origin on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean--that has English writing on it. They put together a team of the best scientific minds in the country to study it. This group includes a psychologist named Norman Johnson, the main character in the book, along with a mathematician, a zoologist, an astrophysicist, and a marine biologist who ends up being too claustrophobic to make the trip down and is therefore returned to the surface. They're joined by military personnel as they travel to the deep sea habitat that's been constructed at the bottom of the ocean to study the anomaly.
Figuring out how to get inside the spaceship is the first hurdle the team has to overcome. Once they do, they find inside a mysterious sphere that couldn't possibly have been made at any point in Earth's past. Upon making this discovery, they're contacted by an alien entity that at first seems friendly and eager to communicate. As the being that calls itself Jerry begins to display increasingly child-like, bizarre behavior and "manifesting" deadly, seemingly impossible sea creatures that attack and kill the crew, its power over the humans on the submarine grows. But is there actually an alien entity, or is the culprit someone or something much closer to home aboard the submarine? Even the most brilliant minds would find it hard to cope with the isolation and claustrophobia involved in being trapped in such a confining, remote, and exotic environment. Their grip on reality slips until even the protagonist isn't entirely sure what's real or true.
Norman conjectures that the sphere allows subconscious thoughts to manifest in reality for those who figure out how to enter it. The sanity of the team members quickly begins to unravel as their trust in each other erodes hour by hour. The power of the sphere is irresistible to all of them, alternately too awesome and terrifying for any human being to wield responsibly.
I won't say anymore because the spectacular ending needs to be experienced personally. Suffice it to say, I can't imagine anyone who picks up this book will be disappointed with any aspect of the story contained inside it.
With Sphere, Crichton apparently wanted to write a story about the discovery of an alien artifact with its host intact that was distinctly different than anything "recognizably human" whether it was "9 feet tall with spike teeth and it wants to eat you" or "3 feet tall and it wants to hug you". I'd say he succeeded gloriously. The 1998 movie adaptation with an all-star cast including Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, and Liev Schreiber didn't do particularly well in the theaters but is nevertheless a decently watchable rendition of the novel.
Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale of the fantastical variety.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an
award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
Cory Doctorow on DRM, conflicts of interest, "bricking," the undermining of consumer privacy, collection of surveillance data, identity theft, and other abuses of consumers:
Thinking the UnthinkableAs one example of zero tolerance, he proposes, "We should order every data-broker, every tech giant, every consumer electronics company and app vendor to delete all their surveillance data." Not likely to happen, though, is it?
Concerning DRM, he half-seriously suggests products infested with it should be required to carry a warning that their advertised features are subject to "revocation without notice." When DRM began to become widespread, he observed that it "didn't just restrict how you used a gadget today, it provided a facility for nonconsensually, irreversibly field-updating that gadget to add new restrictions tomorrow." Also, "This device and devices like it are typically used to charge you for things you used to get for free."
I don't have much to say about this article aside from a general reaction of "good grief!" I'm opposed to DRM on e-books and grateful my publishers don't include it. From what I've read, any halfway competent hacker can disable that feature, which therefore just inconveniences legitimate readers. I already knew we don't literally buy software products such as word processing programs but only "license" them. I knew electronic files of music or visual media can be deleted from the purchaser's access at the whim of the seller, which is one reason I always buy such products on CD or DVD if possible. (I "bought" the live-action LADY AND THE TRAMP from Disney as a streaming movie because it wasn't available in tangible form; I'm still waiting for them to release a DVD so I can own the film permanently instead of provisionally.) I knew tech companies could "brick" gadgets such as phones or tablets, i.e., remotely render them inoperable. However, I didn't know powered medical devices such as wheelchairs and exoskeletons were vulnerable to the same abuse.
While I agree with most of Doctorow's rant, I'm not optimistic about solutions. The convenience of these kinds of technology would be too painful to give up, and the companies that produce it have probably grown too powerful to rein in effectively. Doctorow mentions the example of cars in the pre-seatbelt era, when the sensible rule would have been "don't buy a car." But how practical would that have been for most Americans? Must we simply fall back on "Caveat Emptor" (as an anti-regulation acquaintance of mine seriously declared way back in the late 1960s)? No wonder Doctorow's title includes the word "unthinkable."
Margaret L. Carter
Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.
I'll start with a disclaimer. This short post is about life, productivity, romance, and stress. Before I started this hopefully-inspiring post, I performed an internet search, and it seems that the metaphor of Swiss Cheese appears in a very dark and different context.
Swiss Cheese is known for the holes. Varieties of Swiss cheese include Emmental, Gruyere, Sbrinz. The latter is not known for its holes.
There are other European cheeses with holes such as Gouda (Dutch), Jarlsberg (Norwegian), Havarti (Danish), Tilsit (German) to name a few.
Apparently, as global hygiene standards improve, the holes in cheeses shrink. The holes are the result of bacteria and whatever carries airborne bacteria into fresh milk, such as hay fragments in the milking barn. The bacteria survive for a while and emit gas bubbles which are set (as holes) inside the cheese.
My philosophy of "Swiss Cheesing" centers on facing an overwhelming task by picking holes in it. It could be a big hole, it could be a tiny hole. The point is to make a start.
There is a time-honored saying in romance writing. You cannot edit a blank page. Therefore, you have to make a start, write a word, a sentence, a paragraph. When getting started, the first words absolutely do not have to be perfect. You may discard them later, anyway. "The Muse" tends to kick in later, when you are in the flow, or the zone.
I saw an article this last week (between power cuts and internet outages) about some research that found that the most prolific and speedy authors tend to also be the best. I want to say it was Margaret's.
Swiss Cheesing also works as a philosophy when you come out of your writing binge (or whatever else has occupied your attention for some time), and realize that your hallway is full of Amazon boxes, your kitchen sink is full of dishes, spiders have been breeding like fun in your recessed ceiling can lights, and the autumn leaves have piled up on your deck.
At this point, my own earworm would be the 1991 Michelob jingle, "Some Days Are Better Than Others", which is a cup-half-full take on a bad day.
Then, you pick a hole in your massive, mental "To Do" list, reject the temptation to play a game on your smart phone or to take a nap (procrastination city!), and do something. Not everything. That would be overwhelming to contemplate. Maybe just wash the spoons.
Happy Swiss Cheesing!
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Congo
by Michael Crichton
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
In 1980, Crichton wrote another scary book about ancient creatures inhabiting a forgotten world in the dense tropical rainforest of the Congo. The novel Congo starts when an expedition sent there in search of diamond deposits by Earth Resource Technology Services, Inc. (ERTS) is attacked and killed by unknown beats that look like gray gorillas. Instead of diamonds, this team apparently found the (fictional) lost city of Zinj.
Led by the independent and compelling Karen Ross, another expedition is launched to discover the truth. This time, they decide to bring along a female mountain gorilla named Amy, trained to use sign language, and her trainer Peter Elliot, hoping Amy will be able to communicate with the creatures. Ironically, after the book was published, reviewers found Amy's abilities too incredible to believe. Yet Crichton modeled his fictional gorilla after Koko, who'd been on the cover of National Geographic twice at that point and had done interviews on television using sign language. Apparently, she wasn't famous enough at that point to be a realistic example. Go figure.
I found everything about this novel binge-worthy and convincing. The characters, including lovely, funny Amy, were utterly beguiling, smart, and interesting. I truly enjoyed their journey from start to finish, rooting for them in the face of rival competitors also searching and set against a ticking clock--with a nearby volcano threatening to blow and bury the intriguing find under lava and ash for all time.
A bit of an aside, but while researching this review, I discovered that Crichton apparently pitched the idea of producing a "modern-day version of King Solomon's Mines" to a major film company, who bough the rights long before the book was written. Not surprisingly, the author found himself suffering from writer's block in the face of pressure no doubt instigated by the astronomical advance he was given to produce a novel, screenplay, and secure directing rights. Fortunately, he finished the book, which quickly became a bestseller. A year later, he started writing the screenplay, hoping Sean Connery (who starred in Crichton's The Great Train Robbery) would fill the lead role. The film was released in 1995 with neither Crichton or Connery involved. While enjoying a successful box office performance, the film version was ridiculed most notably with Golden Raspberry Award nominations for Worst Picture. While I found the film decent and worth watching, I strongly recommend that you don't judge the book by this movie. The story version itself is not to be missed.
Whether or not you've read or watched this story before, you might want to consider it if you're looking for a fast-paced, deep and well developed tale of the fantastical variety.
Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too.
Karen Wiesner is an
award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
Are quantity and quality incompatible strategies or goals? Not according to the observations in these and other similar essays:
The second article concerns a ceramics class whose teacher divided students into two groups. One would be graded on the quality of the work produced, while the other would be graded solely on amount of output. "Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the 'quantity' group was busily churning out piles of work -– and learning from their mistakes — the 'quality' group had sat theorizing about perfection."
Similarly, we've heard of writers who endlessly polish the first paragraph, first page, or first three chapters to perfection, but when an agent or editor requests the full manuscript, the rest of the work doesn't measure up to the meticulously crafted opening.
The "quantity vs. quality" opposition seems to underlie the contemptuous -- and invalid -- dismissal of prolific writers as "hacks," as if high productivity automatically implies mediocrity. Stephen King used to publish two or three books per year and most years still produces at least two. Nora Roberts regularly releases two "J. D. Robb" mysteries per year and at least one "Nora Roberts" romance (probably more, but I don't keep close track of her output in that genre). Those figures may sound "prolific," but consider: A professional, full-time author, living solely on writing income, probably treats that vocation like a "job," writing several hours most days. Even a slow writer can produce at least 1000 words in two hours, and a faster one more like 1000 words per hour. Postulate only three hours per day, possibly a low estimate for a bestselling pro. 3000 words per day add up to 90,000 words in a month, a draft of a typical novel (if weekends aren't included, allow five to six weeks). A producer of "doorstops" like Stephen King, at that rate, might take two months for a first draft. With that time allotment, the writer could generate three novels in six months -- presumably not continuously, but with breaks in between -- with half the year free for revising, editing, polishing, marketing, and business minutiae. This kind of schedule, of course, assumes abundantly flowing story ideas, but from what I've read, the typical professional writer never has a shortage of those.
I'm reminded of Robert Heinlein's famous rules for success as an author: (1) Write. (2) Finish what you write. (3) Send it to an editor who might publish it. (4) Repeat number 3 until somebody buys it. I don't remember whether he addressed the question of when it's time to give up on a story -- maybe when you've exhausted all possible markets? However, I clearly recall the other "rule" he sometimes added: Never rewrite except to editorial order.
His point was that your time is better used in creating new stories than obsessively revising old material. He would probably agree with the "quantity over quality" proponents who maintain that each fresh project gives you a chance to learn something new about your craft. I would allow for one exception, though -- when you're deeply emotionally invested in one piece of work and have your heart set on getting it "right." My first vampire novel, DARK CHANGELING, conceived in embryonic form when I was thirteen or fourteen, went through multiple incarnations before I felt ready to submit it. After that, rejection feedback showed me its remaining flaws. Another extensive revision finally got it published. The protagonist, half-vampire psychiatrist Roger Darvell, continues to hold a special place in my heart. On the other hand, throughout that multi-decade process, I was writing and publishing other stuff, too.
Margaret L. Carter
Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.
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