Graduations

Earlier this week we attended the high-school graduation of one of our grandsons. (Summa cum laude!) Recently I read a joke somewhere to the effect that speakers at a graduation resemble the corpse at a wake -- they have to be there, but you don't expect them to do much. Actually, the talks at this ceremony were short, pithy, and uplifting. One student speaker applied Disney's TANGLED as a metaphor for the end of high school. School was like Rapunzel's tower sheltering them from the "big, scary outside world," and now they're ready to chase their dreams and "follow the lanterns." Brevity of speeches was probably encouraged because that venue hosts something like fourteen county school graduations in one week. As described in an article in our local paper, the staff apparently cycles the proceedings through with the speed and efficiency of June weddings at the Naval Academy chapel.

I was shocked to learn, upon first reading the Harry Potter series, that British secondary schools don't have graduation ceremonies. The students just finish their courses and leave. Academic qualifications are earned by performance on standardized tests administered externally, not by the schools -- the inspiration for OWLs and NEWTs in Rowling's series. As explained by British people posting online, the rationale for not holding a graduation is that their high-school-equivalents don't award diplomas/degrees. Degrees, and therefore graduation rituals, occur only at the university level.

Apparently different countries follow a wide range of customs. A Wikipedia page with examples:

Graduation by Country

Not too surprisingly, Japan seems to have even more elaborate ceremonies than the U.S.

Homeschooled students in the U.S. can join in group rituals or organize private celebrations as simple or elaborate as they choose.

I'm reminded of Isaac Asimov's classic story "The Fun They Had," set in a distant future when schools don't exist. In this society, students get individualized computer instruction from AI "teachers." Here Asimov anticipates not only distance learning but also e-books. The two children in the story find hard-copy books, as opposed to an electronic device that can hold hundreds of texts, as strange as the idea of human teachers. The kids envy children in the olden days for gathering with their friends instead of slogging alone at a computer terminal. Most comments I've read on this story seem to assume it's an unironic exercise in futuristic nostalgia. In fact, Asimov didn't enjoy public school and probably would have welcomed a system like the one in the tale. Anyway, we must assume students in this future world don't have graduation ceremonies at all, not even similar to those of contemporary homeschoolers, since they don't have even a vestigial concept of "school" as a group activity.

When we establish colonies on the Moon or other planets, or social groups on starships, how much will present-day academic rituals be preserved? Will the kids in those cultures participate in something analogous to school as we know it or study individually on computers? Will they "graduate" or simply earn certifications for each phase of what may become a continuous course of lifelong learning? I like to believe some kind of completion rites will still occur for important life transitions, including educational ones. Human beings need ritual.

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: Warriors Anthology Edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Warriors Anthology

Edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

This post contains my 154 review on the Alien Romances Blog! 

Warriors, published in 2010, is another cross-genre anthology George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois edited and assembled together. As before, this collection with 20 shorts (two of them novellas) was originally published in one large volume. Later, the stories were separated into three paperbacks, and all include Martin's introductory article titled "Stories from the Spinner Rack", which I very much enjoyed reading for its shared nostalgia (though I did wonder if the author actually tried to read a few romances or nurses novels before deciding he'd "never did get into" them). All the authors are big names, award-winning and undeniably gifted, and Warriors won the 2011 Locus Award for Best Anthology. 

While I love cross-genre fiction, there were far too many war stories in this one, which probably makes you laugh as much as it does me at this point. For the most part, I picked up this anthology for one story--the George R. R. Martin Dunk and Egg installment (the third in his A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms series). 

I guess the word "warrior" has a positive, noble context in my mind. Most of the "warriors" in this anthology, however, weren't necessarily good people in my estimation. I'd call them "rogues" (or something similar) instead. I prefer to believe the best of warriors, and, in my way of thinking, warriors tend to be ordinary joes or janes who step up and become heroes in a crisis, even if they never wanted to be that in the first or last place. 

Truthfully I was hoping there would be more fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction selections, or that those types of stories would have something more compelling than run-of-the-mill soldiers who follow orders without actually thinking for themselves, or who fight for a good cause and not simply for whatever the agenda on tap is. A few of the stories stood out in this collection--the ones I'll review here--but, with the exception of The Mystery Knight and The Scroll, even those weren't really what I was looking for. I also feel compelled to inject that one story in particular (that I'm choosing not to name here) was so disturbing, I felt dirty after I read it and I'd give anything to just blot it from my mind for the rest of time. Make of that what you will. Another was written in a way that frustrated me and put me off the story instantly. I don't know if I would have liked it if it'd been written differently or by someone else altogether. Again, since it's a subjective opinion, I won't name that particular story either. I was also sad that I didn't like one of the stories by a popular author I've been reading much more of lately and was looking forward to. 

Though similar to other Martin/Dozois anthologies, in that each story in this collection was preceded by a fairly in-depth author biography, the introductory blurbs included for each were so slim, they were all but worthless. It's difficult for me to enjoy something that I don't get an adequate summary for in advance of reading. Probably another "me" thing on that count. I was initially pretty unhappy about the lack of illuminating blurbs until after I read the stories. Then I wondered how to describe them myself. So many defied summary! 

Below you'll find the stories I'm covering in this review listed in the order they appear in the original publication in one volume. Technically, they came in 1st, 9th, 12th, 13th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th. For those of you following my anthology reviews, if I'd edited and assembled this collection, I would have started with "The Scroll", ended with The Mystery Knight, and placed the rest of them in this order: Story #4, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 instead, with the rest of the stories around them.                                                 

1)              "The King of Norway" by Cecelia Holland: Bloodthirsty Vikings, complete with violence and vows, about sums up this story. While I'm sorry to say I found it predictable, especially as the make-or-break-it first included in the collection, I did like the line "All dreams are true somehow". I spent a lot of time considering that line apart from the story, if nothing else.

 

2)              "Seven Years From Home" by Naomi Novik: This was an interesting sci-fi tale about a researcher's role in a manufactured war. I was drawn in by the theme of time not healing some wounds and about how war, "politics and the great concerns of the universe" leave one content to withdraw into a place where peace and simplicity are the rule, not the exception, as it is in reality's ever-present state of violence.

 

3)              "Out of the Dark" by David Weber: Compelling. Literally (and I mean that), humanity's only hope for survival when the Earth is invaded by canine-like aliens is the very last being one would think of in terms of providing help to mankind. All in all, kind of an insane story that makes me laugh in shock each time I think of it now.

 

4)              "The Girls From Avengers" by Carrie Vaughn: Set in 1943, a woman in WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) investigates the death of her friend. While I might have liked this if the subject matter and themes were more interesting to me, I will say that this story did fit the brief of fascinating, worthwhile warriors, the way most of these tales didn't (in my opinion anyway).

 

5)              "My Name is Legion" by David Morell: Set in 1941, members of the French Foreign Legion do their duty, even if it means fighting each other. While the story was generally enjoyable, I felt like I was missing something all the time I was reading. I just didn't get it, which may be more of a commentary on my dislike of war and stories containing that theme than anything actually wrong with the piece.

 

6)              "Defenders of the Frontier" by Robert Silverberg: For two decades, the troops manning a fort that was once teaming with soldiers have done their duty to their realm so completely, they've wiped out every last enemy. There are only 11 defenders left, and they've had no contact with the Empire in long enough for them to wonder if they've been forgotten. I read this in a state of horror from start to finish. These men struck me as the worst kind of monsters--the kind that doesn't even realize what they've become by blindly following orders. After submitting without question for so long, someone and something snaps. It has to. Is all shred of humanity lost at that point? The story tries to answer that question after a fashion by the way the survivors react, but I suspect that my answer to the same question would be on the opposite extreme.   

 

7)              "The Scroll" by David Ball: A French engineer and his fellow slaves under a new regime are mere pawns in a diabolical game in which the madman in charge of building a new city from the rubble follows the whims of an ancient scroll said to prophesize (and predict) what the engineer will do next. Wow, was this yet another horrifying refrain! The engineer trapped in this sad, sordid drama would do anything to stop playing the role he's been cast into. But it seems like everything he says and does, everything he doesn't say and doesn't do leads to one thing and one thing alone: Death. There's no escape. It reminded me a lot of the videogame Fable II, in which the hero is forced to go to the Spire, where the cold, calculating, nutso Commandant tries to teach submission to all the slaves. Devoid of choice or freedom, blindly following some random edict, leaves nothing but no-win situations. This was my second favorite tale in the collection, mostly because it held me so spellbound while I read it.

 

8)              The Mystery Knight (Book 3: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) by George R. R. Martin: This was hands-down my favorite included in the anthology. I reviewed it back on March 14, 2025 with the two previous stories in its series. 

Warriors had a theme that wasn't really geared toward someone like me, who dislikes war in nearly every context. Those who are fans of war stories and not-necessarily noble warriors will probably enjoy this anthology much more than I did.

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/

The Power of Stories

The blog of fantasy author Deborah J. Ross, "In Troubled Times," includes a post on the healing function of stories:

How Stories Save Us

She's writing here mainly about true stories, the sharing of our personal experiences, both storytelling and "story-listening." Stories "can heal and transform us" and "also become beacons of hope." Shaping experience into a narrative structure brings patterns out of "seeming chaos." "No matter how scattered or flawed our lives may appear, as we tell our stories, we gain something." Storytelling helps us realize "even tragedies have order and consequence."

Ross also reflects on the power of stories to inspire empathy. We feel a bond with characters we can care about. At this point she brings up the effect of fictional characters on readers. "Hopeful stories provide an antidote to fear-driven stories," a principle that applies to both real-life narratives and imaginary ones. The strongest such narratives have the potential to "create a bridge of empathy, even with people who appear to be 'on the other side' of arguments."

I'm especially interested in how this process works with imaginative creations -- stories and characters effective enough to inspire what Tolkien calls "secondary belief" (a step beyond mere "suspension of disbelief"). Empathy reminds me of "mirror neurons," which activate in our own brains when we witness someone else performing an action or displaying an emotion:

Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons can "help explain how and why we 'read' other people's minds and feel empathy for them." A neuroscientist quoted in that article says, "This neural mechanism is involuntary and automatic. . . . with it we don't have to think about what other people are doing or feeling, we simply know. It seems we're wired to see other people as similar to us, rather than different. . . . At the root, as humans we identify the person we're facing as someone like ourselves." There seems no reason why we shouldn't react this way to characters in novels as well as people in the primary world.

In AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM, C. S. Lewis declares that fiction enables us to share the viewpoints of others, not only people different from us, but nonhuman creatures as well, and not only sapient species such as elves or extraterrestrials, but plants, animals, maybe even stars or rocks. "In reading great literature," he writes, "I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see." In our experiences of stories, we can recognize entities very unlike us as "someone like ourselves."

Ross connects experiences of viewpoint-sharing and empathy with positive stories, which she maintains can counter "fearmongering" and thereby bring about concrete change in a troubled world. Let's hope so.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Not What He Meant

I hang out on a prolific, partisan news-discussion site, and it is obvious to some of the commentators that inferior Ai is being used, and a live proof-reader is not being employed.... or, if one is, he/she/whomever is semi-literate.

This week, several of us noted an erroneous use of Litotes. When in doubt, go for Cambridge.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/litotes

The journalist wrote of an unflappable senior administrator in the current Administration --who was testifying before one or other of the branches of Congress-- that he was "not unfazed". 

"Not unfazed" is Litotes. The meaning is a wittier variant of saying "fazed", of course. In fact, it was the  interrogating Senator who was visibly outraged, or "fazed" by a remark from the testifier about the Senator's career in the creation of fiction. 

As far as I know, the good Senator does not write or orally relate alien djinn romances, but there are many types of fiction. Or alleged fiction. One term that I remember from my youth was calling a lie a "terminological inexactitude". (Attributed to Sir Winston Churchill).

The EPA administrator was the one who was "unfazed".

Another figure of speech that I have noticed on aggressively-moderated sites is the use of Spoonerism, not for the sake of humor, and not as a mistake, but as an intentional device to avoid censorship.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/spoonerism

One can publish some fairly scandalous allegations, if one transposes two initial letters. Ai has not caught up with that... yet. Not about to test it by giving an example, but if you see a reference to something other than a rodeo horse or bull bucking... you might be getting warm.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Terror by Dan Simmons by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Terror by Dan Simmons

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Two irresistible subjects for me are Antarctica and fictional horror creatures. The Terror came close enough to having both of them for me. This 2007 novel by Dan Simmons takes place in the Arctic, the most northern place on earth, while Antarctica is the most southern, but "ice everywhere you look" is a tidy description for both places. Simmons' fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to find the Northwest Passage from 1845-1848 has everything a boring, dry history book might skim over or even leave out--and it has the goods aplenty.   

The story starts with two HMS ships, Erebus and Terror, trapped in the ice 28 miles north-northwest of King William Island. They've been there for more than a year, their provisions are dwindling, and there's no wildlife to be hunted. But something is hunting them. Called "the terror", this indestructible monster seems to have taken the form of a colossal polar bear with a hideously long neck. Additionally, one of the parties sent out earlier encountered "Esquimaux" (Eskimos) while out on the ice. They shoot the old man, supposedly an accident, and end up bringing the young woman back to the ships with them. When they discover her tongue has been bitten off, they begin calling her "Lady Silence". 

The main character is Captain Francis Crozier, second to Sir John Franklin, who quickly becomes commander of the expedition when their leader is lost. Crozier is initially a drunk (forced into sobriety by a lingering illness) with insecurities stemming from his Irish heritage and his societally unimpressive beginnings which surely led to him being rejected as a suitor by the Captain's own niece. Crozier may or may not have psychic abilities. Other characters of note are Commander James Fitzjames, third in command, an upper-class officer in the Royal Navy. Dr. Henry D. S. Goodsir, an anatomist, considered the least of the four doctors caring for the crews, was a phenomenal character. In his unflagging humility and compassion, he gained the respect of both crews. The antagonist is most certainly Caulker's Mate Cornelius Hickey, who compels a desperate band of rebels to attempt mutiny. 

Before and after the dwindling crew abandons both ships, they're beset with one catastrophe after another in the form of starvation, illnesses and an unending catalog of maladies. It's discovered by Goodsir that the tinned provisions are all tainted with lead from soldering and are often putrid--the result of His Majesty's Navy taking the lowest bid to stock the ships with foodstuffs. Any help from the indigenous tribes is quickly squandered by the cannibalistic mutineer and his despairingly hungry band of insurgents. As if that isn't enough, the "Chenoo" ice monster that pursues them wherever they go seems to have a personal grudge against them. Does the Lady Silence, herself a shaman, know something about that? 

This book is absolutely not for the faint of heart. The landscape is ruthless and bleak (so well written, you'll feel the icy wind at the back of your neck, making you shiver). The themes explored arise from hopelessness, desolation, trapped and depraved conditions, where human beings are pushed right to the edge of humanity as well as sanity. With players being picked off left and right from every direction, you'll soon lose track of who you're rooting for, in some cases, because the protagonist is ripped from the story by a sudden and shocking death. The ending is unexpected and equally horrifying but I was somehow gratified by how it came back around to the beginning. (Beware spoiler below!) 

 

Crozier and Lady Silence, now lovers with children, are the only survivors of the tragedy. Their family comes upon the HMS Terror, still afloat almost 200 hundred miles south of her original "prison". After touring it, he sets it on fire and watches it burn and finally sink, lost to the ice, as the man he once was is and will now always be. 

 

Another reason this massive tome isn't for the meek is its sheer length. The hardcover is nearly 800 pages, larger than even most history books! One other thing threw me a bit--the story opened in medias res ("into the middle of things”), so chronologically, we were put in the middle of the plot instead of the beginning in these opening pages. I normally wouldn't mind that, but I entered a historical-like account in present tense, and whenever I was thrust in medias res, I felt like I was floundering and ungrounded. Luckily, most of the book wasn't written that way, but that nearly kept me from continuing both times I read this book--the first time when it initially came out as a hardcover in 2007 as well in as my recent reading. 

Additionally, Simmons has a very Stephen King-esque style of writing, in that he includes details that you either didn't want to know or would have assumed anyway if he'd just had the good manners to leave them out. Some call such information flavor. I call it bad taste. (I really don't care what color pubic hair or areolas anyone has, nor what someone's body does involuntarily while he's sleeping. Though flatulence did drive one particular plot of King's, I don't know of any other story that actually "benefits" from sensory details like this.) 

In any case, despite a cast larger than most encyclopedias, the characters in this setting, immersed in such a tense plot, are well worth the endeavor of taking on this intense reading project. Nearly twenty years after its publication, it certainly stands the test of time. 

If you're not up for this in-depth read, though, you don't have to miss The Terror's incredible story. There's a TV series that at least starts on the basis of Simmons' novel. The first season, making up 10 episodes, covers the entire novel, and pretty faithfully at that. Season 2 (and the upcoming 3) is also based on another mysterious event with a supernatural twist. Jared Harris as Crozier, Ciarán Hinds as Franklin, Tobias Menzies as Fitzjames, and Paul Ready as Goodsir were standout actors. In whatever form you choose to take in this story, just don't miss it. 

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/

Yesterday's Tomorrow

Another glance at some futuristic inventions from fiction that have come into real existence, in this case from the cartoon series THE JETSONS:

5 Things from "The Jetsons" That Actually Exist

While middle-class families still don't have flying cars (much less a two-day work week that counts as full time or homes in cities above the clouds), we've caught up with the Jetsons in several respects. The article lists video calls, flat-screen televisions, robot vacuum cleaners, tanning beds, and ingestible, wireless, pill-shaped cameras. But they don't mention holograms, another technology brought to life in the decades since THE JETSONS.

One of Isaac Asimov's stories predicts pocket calculators, with the intriguing though rather implausible outcome of their omnipresence that even professional mathematicians have lost the skill of performing basic arithmetic on their own. Another story, "The Fun They Had," postulates remote schooling through computers, taught by AI programs instead of human teachers. J. D. Robb's mid-21st-century "In Death" mysteries have featured handheld devices called "links," essentially the same as present-day tablets or smart phones, since the beginning of the long-running series, well before such personal electronics existed in real life. Her flying cars and fully humanoid droid servants, though, seem as distant from practical commercial application as ever. Admittedly, however, some personal care robots currently produced in Japan show droid-like potential. Consider the over-optimism of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. We didn't get commercial shuttle travel to a permanent lunar base in 2001 in the primary-world timeline, and we still aren't there. No HAL-type self-conscious computers, either. Robert Heinlein anticipated video calls on personal computers in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. Yet the world of his HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL combines moon bases and lunar tourism with -- slide rules. And I WILL FEAR NO EVIL pairs subcutaneous contraceptive implants for women with the inconvenience of waiting several days for a pregnancy test report, not necessary even when the book was published. (The waits arose from lab backups, not limitations in the test itself.) Even brilliant science fiction authors can display blind spots as to the possibilities of technological advancement.

It's amusing to notice future-set stories with space-age technology alongside social customs frozen in the time period of their writing. Although office drone George Jetson and his housewife spouse are obviously played for laughs, Heinlein seems quite serious with the 1950s-style drugstore soda fountain in HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

By No Means Nostril Shots

As is my wont, (or good habit), I check the meanings of words in my titles or works about which I mean to "snark".

It appears that, in the thirty years since I was a full time corporate wife (and spending a lot of time with professional automotive-world photographers), the meaning of "Nostril Shot" has changed.

Words will do that. It is a pity that AI is so literal. 

Once one gets past AI's arrogant assumption that the stupid searcher meant "nasal" and not "nostril", and that the searcher is searching for substances to insert rapidly into facial orifices, one finds that, these days, deliberately immortalizing someone else's nostrils is an art form.

In my day, which was before cameras made it easy to edit-out unwanted elements, "a nostril shot" was a serious annoyance for a professional, and referred to the unfortunate sudden appearance of an unwanted foreign body part into an important portrait, or shot of a show car.

However, my nostril research was a gold mine, especially for authors who might be doing their back matter portraits themselves. Alas, I suppose I need to look up "back matter". Thank goodness, it means what I intend it to mean.

I found Chris Gampat and his article on how to pose a nose.

https://www.thephoblographer.com/2020/08/06/photography-cheat-sheet-how-to-make-a-nose-look-flattering-in-portraits/

Chris Gampat shares some great tips, and a helpful diagram.... and a what-not-to-do photograph!

For Blurb, Dan Milnor (a name that the AI "help" on this platform would love to edit!!!!) shares photography tips but not an url for giving Dan credit.

But, I found him on YouTube and he is worth a second look. 

For Blurb, he tells photographers to use the view finder; to avoid overshooting; to refrain from copying someone else's location photo; to eschew posting in real time; to be sure to edit your work; and to print your photos.

That last tip reminds me of the advice to authors to read their prose aloud as a means of editing.

Final tip:

Angela Hoy of Book Locker and Writers' Weekly shares a list of gigs for freelance creatives

https://writersweekly.com/freelance-writing-jobs/051425?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=writersweekly-com-112119_67

All the best,

Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ 
https://www.spacesnark.com/  
https://www.rowenacherry.com

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: "Caver, Continue" by Caitlin Starling by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: "Caver, Continue" by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Back in June 2023, I reviewed Caitlin Starling's first novel, a 2019 sci-fi horror The Luminous Dead. (Check out the review here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/06/karen-wiesner-book-review-luminous-dead.html.) In that story, the protagonist, 22-year-old Gyre Price, has risked everything to join the Lethe expedition, supposedly tasked with mapping the cave system, performing mining surveys, and restocking the camps set up along the way. Gyre quickly learns her handler isn't a team of professionals but a single person: Em, who owns the company and has poured a fortune into this cave and investing in perfecting a suit capable of functioning on so many levels to keep cavers alive. Em isn't what she seems, nor is this mission or its endgame. Em had apparently hired on cavers like Gyre often in the past, losing 34 to the horrors of the cave. In that story, readers were treated to the author's expertise concerning diving, climbing, caves, spelunking--things I love to read about, especially in horror and science fiction tales. 

I left The Luminous Dead completely satisfied with every part of the story. But I wanted more. I would have loved a whole series set in just this world but, alas, it seemed as single-title as it gets. I never imagined I'd get anything else connected with the novel. When I heard Starling had a story in the thirty-fifth issue of Grimdark Magazine, I bought it immediately from Amazon (for only $3.99--but keep in mind the magazine is electronic only). The short story "Caver, Continue" (a little less than 15 pages long) is set before and during the events of The Luminous Dead. Interestingly, it's told from the point-of-view of Eli Abramsson, one of Em’s lost cavers. I started it without any clue the two were related and spent a confusing several minutes reading, wondering if this was an early version of the novel that maybe had been written in a male perspective instead. Although I read The Luminous Dead years ago, I remembered the distinctive setting so vividly, I knew there had to be a connection. I did figure out it must be one of the earlier lost cavers long before I finished the story, which I read in one sitting. Eli begins to realize that his handler is seeing him fight for his life--and doing nothing to help him. This is a story well-worth the price I paid for it. My only complaint is I'll never have a hard copy of it. If I lose the e-mag, that's it. I won't be able to read the story again in the future. Sigh, why is everything so throwaway these days? 

As for the rest of the magazine, Grimdark focuses on the "darker, grittier side of fantasy and science fiction". It's published quarterly, and each issue has articles, reviews, interviews, and a selection of short fiction. Issue 35 had 5 short stories. You can find out more about the magazine and a subscription on their website (easily found with an internet search). While I like off-beat fiction like Starling's (among others), I have to say that I wasn't in love with the rest of the material in this issue, which I, in general, found gory and needlessly gratuitous, especially one particular piece with a "fight hate with hate" theme that came off as a thinly disguised metaphor for social injustice alive and well in our current world. I don't condone hate for anyone or anything, and overdosing on negativity is a surefire way to increase violence and turbulence. That said, readers who enjoy dark fantasy will probably like everything this e-mag has to offer. 

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/

Stages of Enchantment

The latest issue of MYTHLORE (the journal of the Mythopoeic Society) contains a review of a book called ART AND ENCHANTMENT: HOW WONDER WORKS, by Patrick Curry. The reviewer quotes this author as positing, "The heart of enchantment is an experience of wonder." Curry is also paraphrased as declaring "enchantment is not something that can be planned on, or willed or forced to occur. . . bidden, created, commanded or managed." As the reviewer describes the message of this book, its definition of "enchantment" or "wonder" seems related to C. S. Lewis's concept of "joy," a spontaneous upwelling of rapture that blurs the distinction between enjoyment and yearning, a feeling that often evaporates just as we realize its existence. Whether enchantment in Curry's sense and joy in Lewis's overlap or not, both can be found, of course, in other realms besides the arts, such as nature, religion, or falling in love.

Patrick Curry's concept of "enchantment" as summarized in the review reminded me of an essay by Lewis on that very topic. He traces the way our lived experience of that phenomenon evolves through three stages -- enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment -- using bicycles as an example. Many of us remember the thrill of getting our first two-wheeler, the sense of freedom, almost flying. Eventually, though, a bike becomes simply a mundane device for routine transport from place to place, possibly to school or a job. We experience disenchantment, not exactly disappointment, but a kind of letdown. Yet at a later age, if we're lucky, we recapture the original thrill of riding a bicycle, in a deeper, more mature way -- re-enchantment.

We go through these cycles in many areas of life. For instance, starting a dream job and discovering the tedious details associated with the day-to-day tasks; or as the title character mentions in THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, studying Greek because you're captivated by the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY, then having to tackle verb tenses and noun declensions. Keep at it through the tedium and the rough spots, and you may find the excitement reviving when least expected.

We especially live through the enchantment cycle in the process of falling in love and embarking on marriage. At first, we're enthralled with the beloved, wanting to be with him constantly, thrilled by everything about him. However, as Lewis remarks in the "Eros" chapter of THE FOUR LOVES, should we really expect to feel for the rest of our lives exactly the way we felt on our wedding night? Would we even want to be perpetually consumed by that excitement? The all-encompassing enchantment, no matter how rapturous, doesn't last, at least not in its original form. After marriage, we soon notice our true love isn't perfect. He has some annoying little habits, and doubtless he notices similar flaws in us. The breathtaking surges of ecstasy become less frequent, swamped by the mundane chores of running a household and maybe herding children and pets. I remember how satisfying it felt, early in marriage, to iron my husband's shirts. Later, I was just heartily thankful for the merciful Providence that invented perma-press. Partly because of the idealized images of romantic love in popular culture, some couples react to the disenchantment stage by deciding they've fallen out of love and don't really belong together after all. Yet those who stick together in lifelong marriages often grow into a deeper, richer love in the re-enchantment phase.

The romance fiction we read and write deals more often than not with the initial enchantment, the thrill of falling in love. Traditionally, the story ends with the wedding. But the subgenre of "second chance at love" also has an enthusiastic readership, and some stories explore the rekindling of passion between long-married spouses. As treated by skillful authors, both the enchantment and re-enchantment phases of romance can evoke powerful emotions.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Off Topic And Off Target

When one creates or invents something, one wants to consider ones options for copyright protection, patent protection, trademark protection or at the very least, attribution rights.

If one cannot be bothered, one at least wants to be sure that someone else does not take one's ideas and ingenuity etc, monetize it and take all the credit. There ought to be attribution.  

For example, as I understand Open AI, one of the original founders intended it to be free and for the benefit of all humanity, but other persons wanted to monetize it for their own profit. Humanity did not benefit as "openly" as originally intended, and as the name clearly implies. Not that a better urine bottle is any kind of comparison, of course.

That is why, today, I am blogging about my thoughts on how to improve urine collection bottles.

For the good of humanity, especially mankind, Urine bottles ought to be re-designed. Astronauts probably have superior urine collection mechanisms. Not that we can all pee like astronauts, but we might be inspired by the way their collection bags nestle snugly into their crotches.

1. No man (unless post penile surgery) needs such a large (2 1/2 ") opening to the bottle.

2. Few men can spread their thighs wide enough to fit the 3" width of the body of the bottle close to the crotch.

3. Uncomfortable men probably have very short penises.

4. Men without their eyeglasses or with poor vision cannot see the outline of the opening.  It ought not to be the same color as the rest of the transparent bottle. It ought to be target-colored.

5. Older men tend to have larger, lower-slung scrotums on which they often sit, and which are painfully squashed by a closely held, hard urine bottle.

The design of Y fronts etc is not conducive to pulling out a pain-shrivelled penis at the optimum level for seated or recumbent urination into a bottle. 

The current design is prone to back-flow, overflow, misalignment.  Which leads to hurried nurses thinking the patient is incontinent and their time is wasted on changing bedding, cleaning floors, and everything else when urine does not go where it is supposed to go.

It adds to the expense of laundry, additional soiled sheets, use of bed pads etc. Which is not environmentally-friendly.

Spilled urine also throws off the records that nurses purport to keep of a patient's urine output.

Spilled urine humiliates and adds to the patient's depression.... which is not the least of my concerns with the standard of care and the design of this medical accessory.

Therefore:

Urine bottles for men ought to have a much longer, narrower neck.

The body of the urine bottle ought to be longer and narrower and sloped to receive and hold more urine when held flat, without backflow.

The handle maybe ought to be on the long neck, not on the body.

The opening should have a brightly colored ring around it.

Possibly, the opening could be more ergonomically designed, spoon shaped with more receptacle/support under the penis and more opening above the penis.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince and Words Like Coins (The Realm of the Elderlings) by Robin Hobb by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince

and Words Like Coins (The Realm of the Elderlings)

by Robin Hobb

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Robin Hobb is the author of The Realm of the Elderlings. Within this umbrella series, she's written five "miniseries" and numerous short stories. In previous Alien Romances Blog posts, I've reviewed The Inheritance & Other Stories, which contains a couple Realm of the Elderlings offerings. I also reviewed the first trilogy of novels within this series, The Farseer Trilogy. Do a search on both of them if you missed them previously. 

After recovering from the intensity of that first offering, I took a month or so off before I could get myself to read anything else the author has written within this overarching saga. Following that break, I was able to read two miscellaneous novellas in the series, "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" and "Words Like Coins" which are the focus of this review. I was only able to buy ebook versions for both of these stories, which disappointed me as a collector. If I love a series, I want tangible copies. 

I was expecting to dislike both of these stories since I've found I prefer Robin Hobb's full-length novels immeasurably more than her short work (especially the stuff written under her real name Megan Lindholm), but I was very impressed with both of these short tales. I read them within a few hours. "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" was the first I read. I opened "Words Like Coins" immediately after, and I simply couldn't put it down. 

"The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" was published January 1, 2013. It's referred to as a prequel to The Farseer Trilogy (#0.5). At 159 pages, the novella takes places before the time of Chivalry Farseer (Fitz's father from the original trilogy), and deals with another imprudent royal. Princess Caution Farseer is anything like her name. As queen-in-waiting, she's headstrong and rash. Caution has absolutely no interest in learning anything about the duties, responsibilities, and politics of running a kingdom, and rules and regulations have nothing to do with her! Caution falls in love with a Witted (a human bonded with an animal, allowing them to share thoughts and behavior) man with piebald markings. He possesses a piebald horse that will act tame with none other than himself. Caution literally throws all care to the wind and becomes pregnant by this Witted one. But can a happily-ever-after be in store for a spoiled princess and a man who's partly beast through his Witted skills? 

The story is told from the unvarnished point of view of Felicity, a low-born who becomes a sometimes treacherous companion to the princess almost from birth. Felicity more often than not follows the ill-advised, selfish wisdom of her own mother, and this leads to her own downfall as well as that of her charge. That made for some very excited reading! While it was often difficult to feel sorry for many of the characters in this novella, since they made their own beds, so to speak, with their poor choices and behavior, the plot nevertheless held me enthralled from start to finish. 

This tale serves as a kind of explanation about why the Witted are looked upon with such disdain in The Farseer Trilogy and more firmly establishes Fitz's origins there. 

 

"Words Like Coins" (first published in the 2009 anthology A Fantasy Medley) is considered Book number 1.5 in The Realm of the Elderlings. The 10,000 word tale was published as a standalone ebook on May 10, 2012. 

Mirrifen is the failed apprentice of a hedge witch (utilizing "natural" herbal magic). She married for security, as did her sister-in-law Jami, who's pregnant. When their husbands go off in search of work, a severe drought overtakes the farm in their absence. Rats accumulate, and Jami becomes paranoid about the fact that rats are rumored to bring pecksies. 

A pecksie is a mythological fey creature (something like a pixie) about half the size of a cat. Humans can bind them by providing assistance to one, who will then give favors. Pecksies don't take kindly to any human doing this to them, of course, since the binding can't be reversed. Jami relates the story about how her folks tried to bind a pecksie and soon paid the price when they were overrun with them. 

Mirrifen doesn't believe a word of it--until she comes across a pecksie who begs for a drink at the well, even if it means she'll be bound to Mirrifen. The fey brags that her people hunt in silence, no words necessary. "Words are like coins. To spend carefully, as they are needed only. Not to scatter like humans do." But her people are too small to draw water from the well. Only Mirrifen can help them. 

When she does, the binding between them is accomplished. This particular pecksie is a charm-maker. When Jami and her baby need help, the only one capable of saving her may not be Mirrifen but the pecksie Jami fears most. 

"Words Like Coins" is such a delightful tale with irresistible characters and a conflict that's not easily solved. As I said, I read it in almost no time at all, since I couldn't put it down until I found out how it resolved. 

While "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" has a direct connection to the world and characters the previous trilogy created with the Farseer kingdom and royal line origins, "Words Like Coins" is simply a story that takes place somewhere in that world without any real connection beyond the author's word for it that it's related. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Both are definitely worth your time and money. "The Willful Princess" will only set you back $5.99, "Words Like Coins" $2.99. 

As I'm writing this, I'm in the process of reading the next novels in the series with The Liveship Traders Trilogy, so that review is coming up soon. 

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/

De-Extinction, Yes or No?

You've probably read about the recent alleged re-creation of dire wolves:

Dogs Who Birthed Dire Wolves

Colossal Biosciences claims "they have brought the Dire Wolf back from extinction with the birth of three Dire Wolves." In order to perform this feat, they went through the following steps -- "to extract and sequence DNA from two Dire Wolf Fossils, assemble ancient genomes from both, perform gene editing from their closest living relative (the Grey Wolf)." The embryos thus produced in vitro were implanted in dog surrogate mothers. Are these cubs really dire wolves, however, or merely "high-tech lookalikes" constructed by supplementing fragments of an extinct creature's DNA with genetic material from a closely related modern species? An article linked below points out that the alleged dire wolf puppies are in fact "genetically much closer to modern wolves than their prehistoric namesake."

Future projects under consideration include reviving the "Woolly Mammoth, the Dodo and the Tasmanian tiger."

One step toward breeding mammoths has actually occurred, the creation of an oxymoronic-sounding "woolly mouse":

Woolly Mouse

Projects such as these are regarded with skepticism by many experts on the same grounds as the "de-extinction" of dire wolves:

Can We Really Resurrect Extinct Animals?

Any such creatures won't really be resurrections of extinct species, but rather "hybrids, mosaics or functional stand-ins." Gene editing of this kind, though, does have potentially useful applications in preventing the further decline of endangered species and reviving bloodlines of nearly extinct creatures such as the northern white rhino.

Ethical considerations arise about lavishing resources on re-creation of extinct species rather than the conservation of still-living endangered animals. Another concern, if extinct species such as mammoths could be literally de-extincted and released into the wild, is how they would affect present-day ecosystems. The critical question is whether we use this technology "to heal broken ecosystems, to preserve the genetic legacy of vanishing species or simply to prove that we can."

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Deer, Damage

 Of Deer and Damage

What do deer and damage have in common, apart from nibbled tulips in the Spring?

Neither has a plural, at least among educated folks (except for one rate lawyerly example).

A hurricane does damage, but it does not "do" damages, even if it hits multiple locations.

The difference between “damage” and “damages”

The technical name is " Uncountable Nouns".

https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/countable-and-uncountable-nouns/

Some examples of uncountable nouns are:

news 

traffic

weather

flour

luggage

safety

Some may come with a definite or indefinite article, or a possessive adjective, others may not.

Then there are the exceptions that prove the rule, such as Baggage, Work, Water, Air.

Take Work/ works.   "Good work" is praise for effort or achievement.  "Good works" are saintly doings, unless they are factories, or earthworks.

https://blog.harwardcommunications.com/2011/02/21/don%e2%80%99t-confuse-%e2%80%9cwork%e2%80%9d-and-%e2%80%9cworks%e2%80%9d/

In the case of baggage vs baggages, the singular refers to clutter with which one travels, or encumbrances . The plural is slang for a countable number of naughty women.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/baggage

Some would say that the elements, such as air, and water, and earth, and fire are uncountable, but a haughty person puts on airs. I think the EPA mentions "the waters" of America, and sometimes includes low parts of private property that may flood and retain a temporary pond.

Headwaters are something else... where surface runoff collects to form a stream or river, or where several brooks come together.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry