Other people have had trouble describing this book without spoilers. Here's my own attempt: "Total Recall" meets "The Matrix" with an Amish protagonist. That should give you the gist of it.
I've met the author, and he told me that he reads a lot of Russian dystopian literature. He also told me that he doesn't do happy and neatly tied up endings. Based on that + his lifestyle in a Plain community, I assumed that his take on sci-fi would be dark and possibly dreary, with maundering insights about a pastoral lifestyle. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by a fast-paced, action-packed, intense science fiction novel. His writing style is much more Daniel Suarez than Dostoevsky. This was a thoroughly enjoyable story that kept me hooked and turning pages. The mystery pulled me along. A few ideas and characters really stood out. (If you've read it, I'm sure you remember Go Eagles! Super awesome in the audiobook edition.)
This book will stay in my mind for a long time. I want to thank Shane Burcaw for his unflinching honesty about painful and intimate parts of his life. I've read a number of memoirs/autobiographies, and I don't think I've seen this level of honesty before. He's willing to discuss his insecurities, his deepest fears, his shortcomings—and also his hopes, and the people he loves—all made fascinating through the lens of a debilitating disease that affects not only him, but also his family and friends.
I'm researching SMA for a series of science fiction books I'm writing. This memoir fulfilled my research needs and then some. I feel as if I have a much better understanding of what this disease is about and how it affects those who have it.
For another perspective on this neuromuscular disease, check out the awesome blog of Alyssa Silva.
I read FLEX a month ago, dictated notes for my review, and now I can't access those notes because Dragon Dictation keeps crashing upon open. So I'll try to rely on my memory here.
There's a lot to love about this book. I'm a fan of Breaking Bad and "Firestarter," and this has some of the best elements of both. Paul is a law-abiding citizen who makes a drug in order to save his daughter—but once he gets sucked into that underworld, it's hard to get out. And his drugs are particularly pure, which makes them perfect aids for the worst criminals in society.
To me, the character relationships and emotions were very well-written. There's a swiftly moving plot, and some really fun dialogue and such. I'll definitely read the sequel!
Because I'm the world's most critical audience member, I do have gripes. I gripe about almost every story. In this case, my major gripe has to do with world-building and theme, which means I can't talk about it without giving spoilers. If you don't care about the cogency of a magic system or consistency in a story's premise, then skip this next part! It's an awesome book.
Major gripe:
At first, I loved the idea of obsessive behavior translated to sorcery. An art lover has power to make paintings come to life. A video-game collector has power to weave video-game-based spells. A bureaucrat insurance agent has power to override or examine anything related to paperwork. It's a fun idea ... except (view spoilers on Goodreads).
There was enough pure awesome joy and fun in this novel for me to enjoy it, despite what I saw as a flawed premise. I can't wait to see what this author does in future novels!
After reading many of the negative reviews on Goodreads, it looks like people picked this up expecting cerebral Hard Sci-Fi, a la "Contact" or "Blindsight," and what they got was Hollywood action, a la "Sphere." Expectations were blown to smithereens. The science is glossed over and half-baked, while the focus is on sex and action--and psychology, although the exploration of that psychology may be on the shallow Hollywood side of things.
Personally, I liked "Sphere," and I liked "Fluency" for the same reasons. A group of humans are the first people to enter an unknown spaceship and make contact with something that affects them in strange ways. It may give them powers. It may kill them. It affects each person differently, and they need to figure out why. The people swiftly get tested to their psychological limits.
Maybe this ought to be classified as Sociological Sci-Fi. Whatever the classification, I read it within a day, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
To me, the worst quality of this story was an abrupt ending that left too much unaddressed. I love a great series, but I'm unsure where these characters are going, or what their goals are, and that's not good. This series doesn't seem to have a clear path. I'd feel more confident about it if The Swarm was more believable and well-defined ... but (view spoiler on Goodreads)
Due to those grievances, I never got fully immersed in the story. However, this was a very fun, light, and easy read, with a style reminiscent of Michael Crichton. I had a good time! The plot had several surprise twists which kept me smiling and turning pages. I may pick up the sequel, depending on reviews.
This book kept me fascinated from beginning to end. A sensitive and starkly honest portrayal of the era, and of the socioeconomic situation driving the forced labor and huge loss of life in the Belgian Congo. I'm always interested in trying to figure out how cruelty on a massive scale can happen, and this book provided me with fresh insights.
One takeaway I got was this: Isolation and de-humanization and is necessary for cruelty on a massive scale. Slavery had been abolished in the Western world during the era of the Belgian Congo, and sure, the Western world acknowledged Africans as human beings, at least in public documents ... but the popular books and essays of the era clearly show the attitude that most Westerners denigrated Africans as less human than themselves. When someone isn't quite human, then their lives don't matter as much. If they're far away, then their lives matter even less. If the massive cruelty happens behind a dense jungle wall, or a barbed wire fence, then the rest of the world might not even believe it's happening.
Before this book showed up on my radar, I knew almost nothing about the colonial era of Africa. Why don't U.S. schools teach this history, instead of focusing solely on the U.S.? Why doesn't the History Channel cover things like this?
New writers are often told that they can write a novel; it's easy. Does this leave the wrong impression? If storytelling is an art form--like music or dance or fine art--that should imply years of training and practice. Do you believe that writing a great novel is easier than painting a masterpiece, or composing a concerto?
Is there a major difference between writing and storytelling? What do all memorable stories have in common? Does great storytelling require talent? What, exactly, is it?
Some science fiction is more akin to epic fantasy, but the most popular of these swashbuckling space novels are a generation old. Are we overdue for a Renaissance in soft, pulpy, epic adventure space fantasy stories?
Hi! My last two episodes were about hard versus soft magic systems. Now I'd like to take this time to talk about my favorite subject, or my favorite genre, which would be Soft Science Fiction. I'll cover Hard Science Fiction in a future episode.
Soft Sci-Fi is pretty much what I write. People might call it Space Fantasy or Space Opera. When most people think of what this is, they think of "Star Wars."
There seems to be a lot of it missing in books, as far as recognizable titles go. I'm aware that the "Vorkosigan Saga" is very popular, and I have read that. There are a lot of popular Space Opera books, but none of them have really hit, like, the mega mega masses of the world, like, in a way that Stephen King's books and J.K. Rowling's books have become household brand names.
So, there does seem to be a lot more of it in TV and film--and in comic books, of course. There are Techno Thrillers that sort of blur the line, and I would say there's some Hard Science Fiction that kind of goes to the fun and pulpy side of things.
One might say that books like "Wool" and "Ready Player One" fall into that category. Or "Snow Crash," even where it's a crazy virtual reality world, and there's fast-paced action. The same thing with a lot of Michael Crichton's work, such as "Jurassic Park."
It's still based on hard scientific concepts, though.
So, the way I see it, the main difference, really, is that in Hard Sci-Fi, in all those Techno Thrillers and so forth, they're built around an idea; a scientific premise, such as: What if there was crazy nanotechnology or bioengineering? What if we could bioengineer dinosaurs? The story is built around that 'what if' premise.
Whereas with Soft Science Fiction, it's a little bit more like Epic Fantasy and that sort of thing, where the story is built around a sociological issue. What if you had magic powers and you could take over the world? So it's a little bit more of a personal or sociological issue. The science falls around it, and it's part of it, the advanced technology is in there, but science or tech is not the main premise of the story.
So that's what I'm writing. It's more like an Epic Fantasy premise. The scientific research involved is ... well, there's different ways you can approach scientific research. Like, I think, "Okay, my characters need high-tech weapons to shoot each other." If I was writing Hard Sci-Fi, I would think, "Well, let's see. What's the best kind of futuristic weapon?" I'd build the weapon from there. But because I'm writing a different type of story, I think, "What kind of weapon would be really wearable and easy to use for the bad guys and the good guys?"
So I come up with a good weapon design, and the armor that might counteract that, and then, once I have that in my head; I've imagined how it's going to look, how it's going to feel, how it's going to be used in the story what the victims look like when they're shot, and so forth ... at that point that's when I started debating, "Okay, well, how can I accomplish this? Would it be laser guns or ray guns or rail guns?"
And then I start researching the science or technology. But all that research? I would say that 5% of my science research goes into my stories. It's not the main thing.
The characters don't sit around listening to lectures about how the faster-than-light technology works, or anything like that. They don't usually know how it works. It's part of their universe, in the same way that moving staircases are part of the "Harry Potter" universe. It's just there. The rules never change, and there is science behind it but it's not necessarily talked about in the story.
Now, I would say that pulp sci-fi is alive and well in books, but it's usually categorized elsewhere. For instance, Stephen King's books? "It" and "The Tommyknockers" both involve aliens coming to Earth and wreaking havoc, with one alien or aliens or alien ghosts. So it's a pulpy premise, but those are categorized under Horror. They're never really talked about as being Soft Sci-Fi. And I see that a lot.
So Military Sci-Fi and Hard Sci-Fi are definitely alive and well in books, but I believe that Soft Science Fiction is overdue for a Renaissance. I think that it needs to be its own sort of thing, in the same way that Stephen King revitalized Horror, and in the same way that J.K. Rowling sort of revitalized the Young Adult genre.
I think that there's a lot of room for Space Fantasy with sweeping battles, epic scope, high-stakes, romance, and so forth. We just haven't seen a lot of yet that's hit big-time, that's really hit the public consciousness. But I think that that's going to happen. I hear that a lot of writers are writing stories along those lines, and I can't wait to read more of it!
If you or anyone you know is writing Soft Science Fiction or Space Fantasy that you think has best-seller potential, and it's just really something you rave about, and tell all your friends.... Please let me know about it!
And don't forget to hit "Subscribe!" See you next week.
Since it's hard to write a story where everyone in the world has awesome magic powers—isn't that like having ubiquitous technology?—authors write about individuals who become wizards or superheroes. They're special people who inherited their specialness. But if it's inherited, doesn't that imply superiority over everyone else? Even if the hero is nice and only uses magic for good deeds, well, their descendants might choose a different path. A world where less than 1% have inherited superpowers has dark implications. I'd like to see more stories that address this, and thoroughly explore the implications.
Manna, the One Source, allomancy ... a lot of fictional heroes require a specific fuel to power their magic. This defines the limit of their power. But aren't there are other ways to define limits to magical powers? Focus, for instance. One can only keep track of so many bolts of lightning or knives flying through the air.
Do you define limits of magical power for your character that's not tied to a fuel source?
Magic ... at puberty. Or because of trauma. It's a common theme in fiction with supernatural, superhero, psionic, or magical powers. But why should this be the case? We all want to avoid magical babies, since those are dangerous, but I'd like to see magical manifesting that's more thought-through, and more creative, than "I got magic along with with my period."
After marathon-watching all five seasons of "Breaking Bad," Abby Goldsmith analyzes why the show is so addictive, and why so many viewers respect the characters. It's all about good storytelling. That, and clever problem-solving, and ironic contrast.
How can meth cooks be so fascinating? Abby delves into the world of Walter White (aka Heisenberg) and Skyler, Jesse Pinkman, Saul Goodman. Note that their names all have socially benign connotations--white, sky, pink, good. And they're not so different from the right side of the law, aka Hank Shrader.
It's the biggest criticism against self-publishing. With an ever-increasing plethora of ebooks available to readers, debut authors have increasing trouble being discovered. Literary agents and editors complain about 'the slushpile' of manuscripts they receive. Has that burden shifted to readers? Is indie publishing doomed due to a lack of curation?
Hi! Today I am going to talk about juggling multiple creative projects.
In the last year, I've started designing some mobile games, I've started an animated web show, I started a new novel, I worked on a few short stories, a few articles, I started this vlog. I don't even know what else I did.
That was all in one year. I am also teaching myself UX design and website design. I never run out of things to do. I am never bored. This is just my life. I am always doing something creative.
When I was in high school and college, I wanted to be a top animator for Disney or Pixar. Now I am aiming towards becoming a best-selling author. I guess a lot of creative people have these kinds of problems. There are not enough hours in a day, not enough years in a lifetime. You have got so many projects that you just keep starting, and you do not know how you are going to finish it all.
I have finished six novels as an adult, and a few as a kid. I've drawn comics, and done a few things like that. So, I have finished a few projects.
Where I get hung up with those is the marketing, and the editing. I tend to stop when the work gets less fun and more tedious. The things I am really passionate about, I don't seem to have a problem doing. I could probably lock myself in a room and write for 16 hours a day, if it is a first draft of a novel that I'm passionate about. When I work on those, I sometimes forget to eat, forget to sleep. I just want to work on it, that is all I want to do.
When it comes to the editing, the querying, the marketing ... that is when I start to say, "Oh, I see another project I would like to work on."
So there is some difficulty there. I think what makes me stick with the things that I am really passionate about—for instance, the ultimate goal of becoming a best-selling author—I will stick to that, because after I have poured I don't know how many years and hours into writing novels, I feel like I owe it to myself, and to the projects themselves, to put in that extra mile of effort.
Maybe it is because the fun part was up front, for me, whereas maybe for you, the fun part comes later in the project. But I do think that when people say it is important to work on what you are passionate about, that is very, very true. I heard some indie author say something about "if it does not feel like playing a video game; like, if the level of fun is not at a video game level, then maybe it is not the right work for you." Maybe some people disagree with that, but that is how I feel about it. I really, really enjoy writing.
I also really enjoy drawing and animating, a lot. But with drawing and animation, there is some tedious work involved. For instance, with the web show I want to do: audio editing is not my strong point, and it is not something that I find fun, so I get hung up at places like that, whereas with a novel, even the editing I can sort of enjoy. Even the marketing. I can get myself to enjoy that, by putting a lot of effort into it. So, I guess it is all about doing what you are really passionate about.
I would love to hear from you in the comments on YouTube, or G+, or Facebook, or whatever. See you all next week!
Abby interviews her father, a pioneer in the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He talks about his thesis in bioelectrochemistry, publication in scientific journals, the Nobel Prize, cancer research, and the early days of Fonar Corporation.
Science Fiction has changed since the "Golden Age" dominated by American 1950s and 1960s authors, such as Heinlein and Asimov. Abby chats with her father, a scientist and inventor, about why he stopped reading SciFi.
Abby discusses creativity and her early novel writing experiences with her mother, who also has a creative background in arts, cartooning, and writing.
Abby Goldsmith describes her series of epic science fiction novels. The first novel will be available in late 2015 or early 2016. Five Torth novels are complete, and she's working on the final book.
AG Vlog Ep02 Transcript
Hi, my name is Abby Goldsmith. I'm going to talk about my series of novels. I've completed five, and I'm going to complete the 6th one this coming year. It's science fiction. Epic science fiction with telepaths versus slaves.
The telepaths are all networked together in a ... something like the internet on steroids, where popular opinion gets up-voted or voted on by the majority. And, uh, the majority rules.
They do have individual personalities, so it's not quite a hive mind. But the more popular, the more celebrity type people among them, are the ones in charge.
And they've conquered the galaxy. They've taken over hundreds of planets and alien civilizations. They have all the technology in the galaxy, all the resources. They own everything. They have just countless slaves. And they consider themselves a superior master race. Earth is their next target. So ...
My first novel in the series starts on Earth, with unsuspecting humans, and, um, one of them happens to be a telepath who, indeed, was left on Earth by these people by accident. Well, not by accident, but I don't want to get into that backstory.
Basically, he's one of them. He was raised among humans. He has human sympathies. He was raised by a foster family that he cares about.
And the telepaths come and abduct them all. They're considering enslaving Earth. They're definitely enslaving his friends and foster family, and they're going to execute one of his friends. And so he thinks he's gotta save them. And the only way to do that is to become--join--the telepaths and learn their ways, become one of them, and figure out some way to persuade them. Or if he can't persuade them, use his new authority as a telepath to save his friends.
What he doesn't ... what he realizes, or learns very quickly in Book 1, is that there's no privacy among telepaths. They are all networked together. Every thought he has is known, and the telepaths are very interested in him because he's something like a feral child, raised among these primitive humans. So he's under intense scrutiny all the time. He's got tens of thousands of people in this mental audience, in the back of his mind. He can't escape their attention. So he's got to figure out a way to subconsciously, or in some some way that the Torth (telepaths) aren't gonna notice, help his friends. But the problem looks insurmountable because they own everything. The telepaths own everything. They're called the Torth.
Meanwhile, his friends may have a trick or two up their sleeves that the Torth weren't expecting. I'm not going to get into it any more than that. Pitching is hard to do. The technology the Torth have is like, they've got cloaking devices and the Torth themselves, as telepaths, can, if you come with a range of them, they know what you're thinking. They can see through the eyes of other telepaths, and hear through their ears. They have instant communication.
So, hurt one telepath, and an army will descend upon you very quickly. That's how they operate.
Until now, in the present time in my series, slaves have not been able to rebel. They haven't been able to plan anything because the minute they do, they're sentenced to death. The few that do live in the wild, so to speak, are just terrified of telepaths. They know that if they're caught ... if a runaway slave is ever caught ... they're executed.
So anyway, then my heroes come along and start changing all of that. I do not want to give away much. But it's very much a series that's about what it means to be human, good versus evil, and a lot about privacy. A lot about group-think. Not group-think, but crowd-think. What happens when you have a society where there's no privacy and everything is ruled by a majority. Where popular opinion becomes law. The Torth are not evil. They are just in a society where individual thought is dangerous.
So yes, there are good Torth, there are bad Torth, and later in the series, some start switching sides, and I'm not going to get into that. But, ooh, I hope I'll be able to give a better pitch next time. Anyway.
An intro to SFF author Abby Goldsmith, and why she chose to talk to a camera despite feeling uncomfortable about it.
AG Vlog Ep01 Transcript
Hi, my name is Abby goldsmith. Welcome to my blog/podcast.
This is an experiment for me. I've never done anything like this before. I'm not entirely used to talking to a camera in the solitude of my house. It's a little bit awkward.
So you may be wondering why am I doing this. Well, I've thought about just blogging, and it's true I feel more comfortable typing at a computer than speaking to a camera, but a lot of authors do that. I like media. I like going on YouTube. I like podcasts; listening to them. And I figured, well, I'll give this a shot. I can talk for three minutes without a script, which is what I'm doing right now.
A new topic every week, that's my plan. And for me, this will be less work than a blog. A little bit more nerve-wracking ... well, quite a lot more nerve-wracking. But I would like to try to just reach people in different way.
I already have a YouTube show, Aspiring Writers, and I plan to continue that. I took it on a very long hiatus for about a year. I'm going to be starting that back up pretty soon, and I'm thinking this will just be a great supplement for my blog. I could talk about writing for hours and hours to friends. Anyone who knows me in person knows that I can go off on any topic. So I think I'll enjoy this, once I get a little more used to talking to a camera.
You may wonder: why am I even trying to market things at all? Well, I'm very new to marketing I would like to just write books; that's my main passion. However, after a lot of research, it seems like even debut authors that have a major publisher behind them tend to not get a very large marketing push from the publisher. So there's a lot of ... it looks to be, just from from many authors I've been following, whose careers I've been following, that marketing is something that we need to learn.
It's one thing to write a great book, it's quite another thing to reach people with it. So yeah, from what I've seen, all the indie authors I've seen become successful in the last two years, they're good at marketing. They may not be any more comfortable in front of a camera than I am. They've found ways to reach readers, and that's what I'm learning how to do.
So I'm probably going to be talking about some risky topics that I wouldn't even want to blog about. I'm thinking that talking about them, you can see my face and body language and tone, and maybe taking on some controversial topics this way will be are a little bit less "stirring up the pot" than doing it on a blog and the written word.
I'm already over time. I'm planning to keep each of these to three minutes and that's it. My topic today was simply "why I'm doing this." So hopefully that answers that question.
Feel free to reach me on social media. On Twitter I'm @Abbyland, and I'm on Pinterest. Of course you can just Google my name, Abby Goldsmith, and find me, and I'm on YouTube and everywhere else.
Pennsylvania Omnibus by Michael Bunker
