The Pros and Cons of the Publishing Industry

I stumbled across this over at the Independent Publishing Magazine. Guest blogger Andrew Deen outlined the pros and cons of traditional and self-publishing. Thorough yet succinct, it's a must read for every writer about to embark on the road to publishing their work. But if you're not a writer and you've wondered what's involved in publishing, then it's worth checking out.

\_/
DED

Book Review: Medusa Uploaded

The Executives control Oichi's senses, her voice, her life. Until the day they kill her.

An executive clan gives the order to shoot Oichi out of an airlock on suspicion of being an insurgent. A sentient AI, a Medusa unit, rescues Oichi and begins to teach her the truth—the Executives are not who they think they are. Oichi, officially dead and now bonded to the Medusa unit, sees a chance to make a better life for everyone on board.

As she sets things right one assassination at a time, Oichi becomes the very insurgent the Executives feared, and in the process uncovers the shocking truth behind the generation starship that is their home.

The Giger-esque cover and the book blurb did their job: I got hooked. But upon reading the story, it struck me as far less dark than it was made out to be. Oh sure, we had the nefarious dystopian aristocracy which gets to control servants through their cybernetic implants, overwrite security protocols seemingly at will, spy on everyone, and flush people out the airlock with impunity, but I found them to be caricatures ripped from some 18th century aristocratic drama like Dangerous Liasions.

Still, I wanted to find out how this civilization came to be on a kilometers-long generation ship. But as information is tightly controlled by the Executive class and Oichi was a worm—the derogatory term for the lowest class of workers who maintain life aboard the ship—it was a mystery for her to solve. We learn right away that this civilization has incredible cybernetic technology. Everyone seems to have a chip in their heads that they use to access communications and limited data. Some others have artificial eyes, voice boxes, and hearing (hence the Executives' ability to control their servants so that they don't disrupt their dinner parties). And Oichi has a chip in her skull that enables her to 'bond' with Medusa, the sentient AI.

But for all of their amazing tech, they abuse the hell out their airlocks. The Executives use them to murder and assassinate people all the time. They override the safety protocols (so what good are they) and flush out the bodies, sacrificing breathable air and biomass to the void. This is so stupid. I don't care how big the ship is. If you're going to flush out 800 cubic feet of air (sometimes more), the atmosphere on board your ship is getting that much thinner. And the 100 to 200 lbs of biomass is also wasted. Everything on a generation ship gets recycled. Everything. It's one less mouth to feed now, but all that calcium, water, and organic matter? You're not getting that back. Why not suffocate the victims in the airlock (since no one literally wants blood on their hands) and take the body to the waste reclamation unit where it can be ground up and anaerobically digested? Not as dramatic, perhaps, but after the airlock scene plays out several times, it loses its ability to shock the reader.

Another problem was with the voice of the narrator, Oichi. She flitted from "adolescent waitress" to "big sister" to "impressionable debutante" to "happy-go-lucky sociopath." She interrupted her own narrative constantly by name dropping classical music pieces whenever she had a moment of reflection or introspection or just for the hell of it. At times, the interactions between Oishi and some bots created by kids—and her interaction with one kid in particular—popped images of cutesy anime into my mind. It undercut the seriousness of the plot.

One last complaint: I couldn't get a sense of how much time passed. There were flashbacks and flash-forwards dictated to us by Oichi, but the way they were presented I wasn't always certain when "now" was. Late in the novel, she matter of factly states that several years had passed, but it seemed like only a few months.

To summarize, I loved the tech, the concept, the plot, and the mysteries, but the narrator's constantly shifting tone, 18th century aristocrats, anime cuteness, and wanton airlock abuse irritated me.

2.5 stars

\_/
DED

Book Review: Spiderlight

The Church of Armes of the Light has battled the forces of Darkness for as long as anyone can remember. The great prophecy has foretold that a band of misfits, led by a high priestess will defeat the Dark Lord Darvezian, armed with their wits, the blessing of the Light and an artifact stolen from the merciless Spider Queen.

Their journey will be long, hard and fraught with danger. Allies will become enemies; enemies will become allies. And the Dark Lord will be waiting, always waiting…

The book blurb is misleading. It would have you believe that this is just a straight up high fantasy novel about a quest to defeat the typical evil overlord. While it certainly starts out that way, with the familiar collection of D&D characters fighting their way through a forest that is the home to the nest of a terrible spider queen, it's more than that. After that opening, we get to meet the characters and learn more about them. Rather than being the noble sort that one would get from Tolkien, we get a fractious lot prone to jealousy, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, sexism, vanity, and cruelty.

And these are the good guys!

Tchaikovsky, ever the arachnophile, serves up a spider character that is forced to join the group on its quest. I don't want to give too much away here, but the character, Enth, serves as a focal point for the group's ethical dilemmas. The way each character interacts with Enth reveals their true nature. Those with a conscience are forced to reconcile their actions and attitudes with the cause they claim to serve. Some succeed; others don't bother.

But it isn't all soul searching in the dark by candlelight. There are some lighter parts.

When Dion considered the world, her chief question was, Is this of Light or Dark? Penthos's main interest was usually, Is this flammable?
.......
"Shut up, Penthos," Haranthes snapped at him, which would earn the man another week of impotence once they got back to civilization, not that he'd ever suspect who was behind his intermittent problem. Oh it's good to be a magus.
.......
"Who would live at the top of a tower? Have you seen how many fucking stairs there are?"

Usually it's the thief, Lief, that delivers the satirical jabs, but he's also the one who's the most accepting of others who fail to live up to the lofty standards established by the self-righteous.

    Am I really about to rescue a monstrous servant of evil from the hands of the righteous?
    Enth whimpered. It was a human sound. Lief knew it: he himself had once or twice been beaten and broken just enough to make that sound.
    Fuck the righteous.

In the final confrontation with the Dark Lord, Tchaikovsky steers clear of the expected epic fantasy showdown. Sure there's a battle, but Darvezian's monologuing is more savage than his physical attacks, skewering the characters' belief system and self-worth and shredding them to bits.

"You go through life doing terrible, terrible things to each other, and to everything else, but you somehow still believe that you're right."
.......
"Let me hear the sad little sound of your hearts breaking."
.......
"My child, it doesn't matter if you do your best, if you don't get anywhere. It's just doubly pathetic that this, only this was your best."

Spiderlight sets aside the everyday tropes of the epic fantasy tale and opts instead to explore themes that are rarely discussed in the genre. The characters' ethical dilemmas easily translate to the real world: Misguided faith will make people do terrible things, and assuming that everyone of a certain demographic is inherently good/evil, despite actions to the contrary, is fallacy. I found Tchaikovsky's choice to be a refreshing take on the genre.

4.5 stars

\_/
DED

Book Review: A World Out of Time

Jaybee Corbell awoke after more than 200 years as a corpsicle—in someone else's body, and under sentence of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars.

But Corbell picked his time and made his own move. Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors.

Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of—perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!

I found this book last summer at the annual Newtown Library book sale. Having enjoyed Niven's Ringworld series, I thought that I'd give it a try. I didn't notice that cat-snake thing on the cover right away. I think my mind blocked out the head because you look at that thing and think, "WTF?"

The book blurb covers the events that transpire over the first third of the book. The remaining two-thirds deals with Corbell alternating between figuring out how to stay alive—he's well over a century old and not long for the world—and figuring out how the hell Earth got so screwed up while he was away.

Published in 1976, it has a lot of the literary elements common to sci-fi during this period (New Wave): sex, the end of civilization, alienation, social isolation, and class discrimination. Throw in a dose of libertarian distrust of the state and you're good to go. Niven also spends a good deal of time playing with physics puzzles to convince the reader that this is hard sci-fi and not space fantasy. I don't think it was necessary, but maybe he felt the need to placate that crowd.

It was an entertaining story despite the warts: The sex scenes were totally male fantasy, and women were reduced to the maiden/mother/crone trope. Corbell isn't the best person to be a protagonist—he could be annoying at times—but he occasionally shows promise. Ultimately, he's all we've got. We have to root for him so that we can find out why things got to be the way they are. The explanation was worth the ride, though I wouldn't blame women for disagreeing.

3 stars

\_/
DED

Book Review: No-Waste Kitchen Gardening

I don't think that it's controversial to say that too much food gets wasted around the world. Scientific American published an article in their October 2021 issue whereupon it was stated that "40% of food produced is lost across the supply chain from farm to table." At the current pace of population growth and economic development, the world will need to convert an area the size of India to farmland over the next thirty years to keep up with demand, and this was before Russia invaded Ukraine—two very important agricultural producers.

And that's not even getting into landfill issues.

What this book aims to do is offer people some ideas on how they can cut down on their fruit and vegetable waste. Some people with the means to do so already have compost piles wherein they can take this waste and convert it into topsoil. But this book offers a means to eke out more edible produce from one's leftover produce.

It is by no means a magic method to regrow everything. Some of the food we eat doesn't get a second chance to produce more food. Broccoli, for instance, is a flower. Once we eat it, the leftover stalk is only good for compost. Some of the food we eat won't re-grow in the form we want, but will get a second life as something else. Root vegetables like carrots will not become carrots again. Instead, the leaves can be nurtured to grow and then consumed as salad greens.

But that still leaves plenty of produce that can be re-rooted, re-grown from existing roots, or grown from seed taken from the fruit itself. Onions, potatoes, celery, scallions, lettuce, pumpkin, garlic, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes are just some of the produce bought from the store (or farmer's market) that can be granted an extended or new life.

Before this book had been gifted to me, I had experimented on my own with food scraps. Using similar methods, I successfully grew onion and potatoes. My favorite variety of tomatoes are Roma, but the only tomato seeds or plants I ever see in stores are for the large varieties. So I salvaged the seeds from one particularly delicious specimen, and I was able to successfully grow fifteen plants all of which bore fruit! All this is to stay that while I haven't tried the author's methods per se, I know that it's possible. In fact, I just started trying to re-grow some lettuce.

So whether you're looking to do something for the planet, start a victory garden, want to educate kids on where our food comes from, or you're a hobbyist gardener looking to experiment, this book is worth checking out.

4 stars.

\_/
DED

So this was my first attempt to re-grow some lettuce shortly after finishing this book. It got off to a good start but then some aphid-like bugs found it and ate it from inside out, leaving behind a sticky residue. Kinda bummed about that.

Book Review: The Haunting of Tram Car 015

Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities — handling a possessed tram car.

Soon, however, Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef are exposed to a new side of Cairo stirring with suffragettes, secret societies, and sentient automatons in a race against time to protect the city from an encroaching danger that crosses the line between the magical and the mundane.

This story takes place several months after the events in A Dead Djinn in Cairo, but it involves different characters. We're introduced to Inspector Hamed Nasr who is training a new recruit, Agent Onsi, to the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural. As is apparent from the title, one of Cairo's tram cars is haunted, and it is up to Hamed and Onsi to solve it.

Hamed and Onsi make for a great detective pair. Hamed is the grizzled veteran while Onsi is the Oxford educated fresh face who's memorized chapter and verse of the paranormal criminal code. Hamed's instincts and Onsi's enthusiasm for the job serve each other well. There's enough humor in it, too, that it could be an alternate history buddy cop movie.

The worldbuilding builds on Dead Djinn and fills in more details here and there. We get more elements of magic-powered steampunk mixing with Middle Eastern culture as Cairo struggles with growing pains: trying to throw off a past of superstition and embrace its future as a modern city. There's a vote on women's suffrage that runs parallel to the investigation. The detectives find themselves interacting with women that are involved with the movement as they seek help with exorcising the tram car of its foul occupant. In the hands of a clumsy author, this could've come across as agenda-driven, instead, it just enriches the story.

4 stars

\_/
DED

Book Review: Babylon's Ashes

Book six in The Expanse series. If you haven't read book five, some of this review might be spoilerish.

A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood.

The Free Navy - a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships - has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them.

James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network.

But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun. As the chaos grows, an alien mystery deepens. Pirate fleets, mutiny and betrayal may be the least of the Rocinante's problems. And in the uncanny spaces past the ring gates, the choices of a few damaged and desperate people may determine the fate of more than just humanity.

Basically, this is "life in war time," solar system edition. The book isn't focused on military engagements so much as how people are dealing with the war. Nineteen different people get at least one chapter. Besides the POVs of the Rocinante crew, we get chapters representing Marcos Inaros, the megalomaniac leader of The Free Navy; his son Filip; a few Belters working on Medina Station; biologist Prax Meng, whom you might recall from Caliban's War; Michio Pa, whom you might recall from Abaddon's Gate; the delightfully foul-mouthed Chrisjen Avasarala, and more.

I enjoyed the diverse assembly of viewpoints. It kept me engaged, which might've been difficult to do considering what little actually transpires during this 544-page behemoth. There's a lot of waiting around for things to happen, but from what I've read elsewhere, that's often what happens in war.

With the exception of Marcos, no one is really painted as evil. The authors try to show how there are good people on all sides, that the circumstances of one's life leads one to make choices, join a team that makes empty promises. There are obvious parallels to life in Axis-occupied Europe during WW2 or even the Soviet Union: propaganda everywhere, dissenters disappearing in the night, secret police interrogations, everyday people just trying to keep their heads down to avoid suspicion and sometimes failing. There's hope that everything will be alright until something happens that affirms that things are actually very wrong.

I particularly enjoyed Alex's two chapters which dealt with the importance of finding an emotional connection, someone to share your downtime with before you ship out again—and might very well die. Alex is out at a bar with his crewmates from the Roci and sharing stories with Fred Johnson's crew, deflating the tension from battle. He finds himself exchanging flirtations with one of them.

He didn't know if the way her eyes were locked on his was a sign of how drunk she'd gotten, the beginning of an erotic invitation, or a little bit of both. Either way, he found himself smiling back.

Her knee pressed against Alex's in a way that was absolutely innocent. Unless it wasn't, in which case it absolutely wasn't.

And later...

Maybe it was only that he knew how much the war might take from them all, and she was his chance to refill some cistern of his heart and body that there wasn't going to be time for later. A place of gentleness and affection and pleasure like a hurrican eye.

Now if only the ending hadn't been so Deus ex Machina, I probably would've really enjoyed it. Enough hints had been dropped, from the end of Nemesis Games right up through a certain investigation in this one, to know that the way it's going to end. Still, the resolution of this middle trilogy wasn't satisfying. But I guess it's ok because I still have three more books to go.

4 stars. Quite possibly lower for some people.

\_/
DED