Release Day!
It’s official. READING THE WIND is available today. Even better, at least at the moment, it’s paired with a book by Karl Shroeder as the special. That’s cool (I’m a fan of Karl’s work - I found him way back at Ventus, which I think was his first novel. Unfortunatley, I now have a pile on my “To read” list, but I’ve always been fascinated by his work).
Worldbuilding: We’re Doing It Now
This is the third installment in a set of blog posts about my current science fiction series. The first book, THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, is now available in paperback. The sequel, READING THE WIND, will be out on July 22nd. Each post explores one way the books address a problem we are also affected by, or probably will be affected by in the future. I hope you enjoy this one: Worldbuilding: We’re Doing it Now
In my last blog post about these books, A Wild World, I suggested we are significantly changing the world and ourselves. In other words, we are becoming the primary actors in the evolution of both the human race and of the planet we live on. In some cases, this is based on conscious decisions like “engineer a better wheat” and in other cases it is because technologies we choose have side effects (climate change). In this post, I’ll dive a little deeper into some world-scale engineering projects we are doing or discussing.
There are, of course, huge historic projects along these lines. The Panama Canal comes to mind.
One of the places you’ll visit if you pick up READING THE WIND is Pilo Island. It floats, and there are engines that move it one way or the other, keeping it free from the influence of tide and current. Off the coast of Dubai, there already exist two man-made island projects: The Palm Islands, and The World Islands. These are both significant engineering projects, designed primarily as playgrounds for the super-rich. Both are finished and being sold.
In the sequel to READING THE WIND, tentatively titled WINGS OF CREATION, our heroes explore Lopali, a planet where, among other things, the climate is completely controlled. This is another area where I’m closer to writing about us today than you might think. China has been working on climate control for many years, with the most storied efforts lately being about trying to keep it from raining on the opening ceremonies. Many ideas have surfaced about engineering away global warming. These range from making nearly every roof in the world white to dumping iron in the ocean. They include an Idea Larry Niven and I explored in my first published story, the collaboration “Ice and Mirrors, Asimov’s, 2001): using mirrors to cool a planet by reflecting away the sunlight. A good fiction read which explores some big-engineering ideas about climate change is a trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson that starts with FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN. In these books, the gulfstream must be stopped from changing.
As we engineer more and more of our world, replacing natural balance with man-made balance, it seems likely that we will have to take over most of the work nature has done in the past. It may become a constant process of tinkering to create new things, and then to mitigate the unforeseen consequences, which will cause us to create new things, which may cause yet more unforeseen consequences…
The planets I’m writing about are set so far in the future that much of this learning curve has already happened, but I suspect our current grapple with climate change may be only the beginning of a process that leaves us in far more in charge of the places we live, for better or worse. If we survive the process. While I think we will, I also don’t think it’s certain.
Here are some interesting sites to visit to explore these ideas more:
Celsias: Climate Change is Not a Spectator Sport
Wikipedia entry on Terraforming
Feel free to comment! And for those of you in the Seattle area, don’t forget I’ll be doing a reading with Jay Lake on July 24th. That should also be a good opportunity to pick up a copy of READING THE WIND, which comes out the 22nd.
Human Selection
This is the second installment in a set of blog posts about my current science fiction series. The first book, THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, is now available in paperback. The sequel, READING THE WIND, will be out on July 22nd. Each post explores one way the books address a problem we are also affected by, or probably will be in the future. I hope you enjoy this one: Human Selection.
We evolved through the forces of nature acting on us. Whether you believe evolution is about divine choice, the natural interplay of predator and prey, or maybe some combination, we have not been the primary actor own evolution. Perhaps we lost our full coat of hair when we learned to take shelter, but the decision we made was to take shelter and the loss of hair was an unintended consequence.
Now, we are poised at the edge of a cliff with the tools to become the force of our own evolution. I believe that some of us will fall off of that cliff, plummeting to our own deaths, and maybe taking others with us. And some will fly.
In THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, I pit two civilizations against each other. One wants to “stay human” and the other embraces both lasting and short-term change.
In today’s society, we are having the same argument, only with ourselves. For example, look at the stem cell battle. Yes, its relevance for genetic engineering is tainted by the right to life issues that surround work on embryos. But beyond both sides of that argument, stem cell research is about using genetic tools to fix disease. We already test in utero for certain diseases, and often abort damaged fetuses. While we aren’t yet publicly tinkering with creating humans that have different traits (smarter, stronger, faster, prettier, healthier), we are making glow in the dark fish for pets. We are cloning cows and modifying corn and lawn grass.
Active political groups in many countries argue against all forms of genetically modified organisms, and influential people have written about the dangers of playing with the genome.
There is an entire movement of people that associate themselves with the words transhuman and posthuman. Transhumanism is the point where we have seriously changed ourselves, but remain recognizable. It assumes we’ve altered our species through a combination of genetic engineering, machine augmentation, nanotechnology, and other sciences. To be post-human is to be unrecognizable, perhaps uploaded and bodiless. While Larry Niven and I have written together about uploaded beings, in this series, I’m only addressing changed humans, or transhumans.
In the SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, I explore the ways that a world containing both classic and augmented humans breeds new opportunities for fear and prejudice. If we had trouble with different colors of skin (and in some ways, still do), how much more trouble will completely different subspecies of humans cause us? In READING THE WIND, out July 22nd, I also begin to look at what a world full of changed humans might be like.
Below are some interesting links if you want to explore this further. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
Website marketing glow in the dark fish: http://www.glofish.com
Campaign against GMO’s: http://www.foei.org/en/campaigns/gmo
Reference material on the word posthuman: http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Post%20human
Excellent article at Ray Kurzweil’s KurzweilAI site that explores posthumanism: http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0611.html?printable=1
Some design ideas: http://www.natasha.cc/primo.htm
Where I’m Interviewed for ItBusinessEdge
I’m the star of an interview for ItBusinessEdge. While I’ve been interviewed for a lot of technology articles, and periodically for our local paper, and even been in an interactive futurist blog session for the Washington Post, I’ve never seen a taped interview dumped so literally onto a page. It reads like I talk in a casual conversation at six in the morning (which is actually when this happened). I’m used to having a small part of what I say taken out of context rather than having everything I say hit print. This is the lesser of two evils, although it reads a little weird. But hey - for your enjoyment - my take on Vista and on Microsoft and Apple and misc. stuff.
Cory Doctorow reads, a juggler talks, and I sign
I’m a fan and supporter of the Clarion West writer’s workshop, and have been attending the reading series when I can. I made it to Cory Doctorow’s reading, and he was, of course, fabulous and interesting. He read part of a story that will be coming out as free fiction and as a podcast on Tor.com, probably this summer. My bet would be in August, around the World Science Fiction Convention. I recommend going to Tor.com right now and signing up for the associated e-newsletter, if just so you get this story. Tor.com looks like it’s going to good.
Other bits Cory said in Q & A that resonated for me:
That there is a myth about young adults only wanting to read about young adults. Since I’m writing a series that is doing well in the YA market even though it’s sold as adult fiction (and I think it is both), that was a nice reminder. When I was a kid, I read about Valentine Michael Smith and Jubal Harshaw, about Gil the Arm, about Merlin (everything from Mary Stewart to Mallory, from T.H. White to Marion Zimmer Bradley). Almost everything I read was about adults. In fact, by the time I was ten or so, I though Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were dorks. A nice reminder, since for some reason I was worrying about it.
Cory also mentioned (I think quoting someone else) that obscurity is the enemy of the writer. So support for blogging!
I took the bus over, and this time there was no handy eastsider to hitchhike back with. At the bus stop, a long-haired young main with a red ponytail was juggling a red ball. Juggling might not even be the right word - it ran up and down his arm and flitted through his fingers and paused on the back of his palms. It turns out he’s just moved here from New Orleans, he likes Seattle, and he has been practicing the red ball thing for a year, and has high ambitions of doing more with it. I’m not sure what - but who cares? I almost never have random conversations with strangers any more. It was a nice five minute interlude.
I got to sign my first mass-market copy of THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, which came out July 1, and which I finally actually saw and held in my hands yesterday, where I paid full price for a copy at my local Borders. Tor did a nice job - it’s got shiny letters, the cover is a nicely muted version of the hardcopy cover, and the book design is nice. The print is too small for my old eyes, which means I put too many words in the book. 
I will be reading at the University Bookstore with Jay Lake on July 24th.
A Wild World
This is the first installment in a series of blog posts about my current science fiction series. The first book, THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, is now available in paperback. The sequel, READING THE WIND, will be out on July 22nd. Each post in the series explores one way the books address a problem we are also affected buy, or probably will be in the future. I hope you enjoy this one: A Wild World.
We were born wild. Our environment helped to shape us. And now, in large part, we are shaping it. Much of the world is now cultivated land. Some is literally cultivated: farms and fields. Some is protected and preserved: refuges and national parks. Very little of our land simply “is.” It was big news a few months ago that a civilization without much outside contact was sighted in the Amazon jungle.
There is a blue heron rookery in Kenmore, just north of us. It is completely fenced in, apparently the only way to keep the bird’s nests safe, even though they are clustered high and huge in three tall trees. Last fall, I participated in the bizarre exercise of weeding a local park. Yes, it makes sense to remove invasive plants so native plants can thrive. Yes, in fact, we have to do it, or lose the park trees to English Ivy. But really, think about it. We have progressed to the point that we have to weed our wild places.
I live in a city. I’m pretty sure all of the land is owned by homeowners, business, or the government. It all needs some level or another of human attention to thrive. Yes, if we all died off, nature would find a way to prevail, but that’s not my point here. We’ve taken on the job of caring for the almost all of the garden.
In THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, and even more so in READING THE WIND, two human cultures clash. One lives on a wild world, and refuses to change itself. It doesn’t attempt to control much of the world, either. In fact, for the original settlers, it is a struggle even to survive. They are beset by chaos and wildness which they have little control over. Trip vine and thorn; paw and jaw and sharp claw.
And then, a competing claim is made by the altered, people happy to change themselves, and intent on changing the world of Fremont. These same people come from Silver’s Home, where all things are controlled and designed. Where humans and data interact almost seamlessly and kitchen gardens can have different ecosystems than the back yard down to humidity and temperature.
We are somewhere on the pendulum between these two societies. I believe we have changed Earth so it is more like Silver’s Home than like Fremont. We have intervened so much, we will have to continue to intervene to manage the climate and the flora and the fauna and to keep Earth someplace we can call home. What do you think?
Please feel free to comment, and also to leave your ideas for future blog post topics.
Science, Social Questions, and Science Fiction
I’m starting a series of blog posts related to THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, which comes out in paperback July 1st, and FREMONT’S CHILDREN which has it’s hardcover release July 22nd.
Sometimes science fiction is just a good story. And all of the best science fiction is a good story, even if it’s also more. Since I’m a futurist, the things I talk about and think about end up in my books, some on purpose, and some by accident. For example, as I was writing THE SILVER SHIP AND THE SEA, the Iraq war was just being contemplated, and eventually beginning. The book acquired a much stronger message about the evils of war than it probably would have if it weren’t being written next to real-world war.
I hope these blog posts will be conversational and that readers and friends will comment on them. I plan to put out a post every Sunday starting on July 6th. Topics will be things like living on a wild world versus a world that is largely created and managed by people, and how taking charge of our own evolution through genetic engineering might change us.
I’m also interested in writing about topics that interest readers. Please feel free to email me (use the contact button on this blog) or post ideas here in the comments. While I may also choose to answer plot or character questions, I’m really looking for questions about the science or, more exactly, the social implications of the science in this book. I use nanotechnology and genetic engineering and other tools in the books. Since these stories happen far in our future, the science doesn’t match our real science today, although I tried to keep it plausibly linked. I’m fascinated by how the science we are experimenting with today could change us as humans in the future, and that’s what I tried to write about. As well about the fate of six genetically engineered kids.
I hope you enjoy this series of posts, and the books.
Reading Recommendation: In The Moon of Red Ponies, by James Lee Burke
I’m still on setting. Burke is one of my favorite authors for setting, and I’ve read many of his books that deal with the deep south. He also lives in, and writes about, Montana. In the Moon of Red Ponies is one of the Montana books. It has the same magical quality to it as In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead, and I actually recommend them both. I can’t quote from it easily since I listened to it on CD rather than reading it. But the landscape is often describe memorably, and sets the moos. This landscape also often had creatures in it, which made me feel a bit like I was in Montana.
By the way - he’s pretty good at titles, too. I tend to remember his titles word for word.
William Gibson Interview
I’ve never understood why most lectures aren’t better attended. There were a hundred or so of us at the U last night listening to Nancy Pearl interview William Gibson, but in a city the size of Seattle, every seat should have been taken. The best news, is many that were taken were taken by my friends.
So the room is half full. We’re sitting in theatre-style seats, and on the stage - lit for video - are the diminutive and energetic super-librarian Nancy Pearl and the tall slender writer. Mr Gibson speaks in a slow drawl, with what is either an accent or a ghost of a lisp, and his words are carefully chosen. You can see he’s thinking.
A few of the high points (summarized, so my apologies if I don’t get it right):
As he’s talking about history, he mentions that sf did so well because at one time it was beneath contempt. “Eugene McCarthy didn’t know what sci fi was saying about him.”
Nancy asked if he wrote to make sense of the world, and he said he writes to find the questions, not the answers.
In line with a comment we often make over at Futurist.com, Nancy asked “Does the present change the past?” and Mr. Gibson answered that it does - that as we learn more about history, as we dig further, we learn more about the past. Our view of it changes, which changes us.
Two other concepts of interest: A novel where the novelist is in complete control of his or her characters is probably boring, and the most interesting contemporary science fiction is science fiction that could not have been written a decade ago.
You should be able to stream this for yourself on the Seattle Channel.
Studies in Setting
A few posts ago, I promised to discuss the outcome of reading three books and studying setting. As a reminder, this is associated with a group of writers I gather with to discuss bestsellers, so we pick bestselling work for a variety of genres and look at different characteristics, often following Zuckerman’s book, but sometimes using other criteria.
In this case, we read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Throne’s, Molly Gloss’s Hearts of Horses, and Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth. First off, I liked all of these. So what did I learn?
In the context I’m using, setting is description of place, and also the details of the world - so it’s what one traditionally thinks of as setting as well as information. That works with these three books since two of them are historical and one is fantasy: none of them is set in a place we recognize from our day to day life. If I presume most of you are science fiction writers and readers, you’ll recognize that situation. Science fiction is seldom set in a place and time we’re comfortable with.
Oddly, the best use of setting and world building for me was Molly’s work on Hearts of Horses. It’s set in historical Oregon, sort at the end of the Wild West and during the world war. She gets extra kudos for her world-building because it was so sure, so invisible, and yet so always present. Here is a small quote from her work that I loved. “Snow began to fall out of the darkness that night and fell straight down all the early hours of the morning, and by daybreak it stood about a half a foot deep everywhere in the lower valley, though the sky then cleared off and a pale sun lit up the newborn world.” I’m there. Are you? The whole book is infused that much deftness. Small details, confident prose that shows off the setting and not itself.
George R.R. Martin’s work is as good. It’s much showier — almost overwritten, but a good fit for his series. I’ve already posted on this one in detail. A simple setting comment like the Gloss above (and from the book I’m currently on having had to keep going with the series once I started it and even though I’ve read it before - if I was discussing hooks we’d have a book on them from this series). Anyway, “The walls were equal parts stone and soil, with huge white roots twisting through them like a thousand slow pale snakes.” Now, that does the job, right? And that’s a single sentence buried in a paragraph. Read it out loud and hear the sound of the line.
Follet’s work is about cathedrals, and the people who built them long ago, in the days when masons were learning to make more advanced arches. I expected a lot of setting. Especially since the book is almost a thousand pages long. Yet this was the sparsest on setting of the three. What’s there is done well, but Follet’s strengths as a storyteller are more in character and situation in this book.
