On one panel, YA authors Tina Connolly and Fonda Lee surprised
me by both expressing their admiration for A
Wrinkle in Time. This was part of a theme of stories in which children and
teens did not rebel against their
parents—surprise! Parents or parent-substitutes are supportive in some stories.
Sometimes a child has to rescue a parent. A
Wrinkle in Time shows both.
Moderator Lish McBride, with Tiny Connolly and Fonda Lee
When news of the movie came out, I decided to read A Wrinkle in Time. I couldn’t get
through it. Yes, I realized it’s a children’s story. I read Peter Pan as an adult, and reread 101 Dalmatians as an adult. But A Wrinkle in Time didn’t work for me.
I didn’t see the movie, for the reasons the critics gave it
a thumbs down for. But there’s this wonderful 90-second version. The movie cost
one hundred millions dollars. I would be surprised if this version cost more than
ten bucks.
I was determined to see Carrie Vaughn. I had spoken to her
at the 2011 Worldcon in Reno, Nevada. My novel manuscript Dust after Slaying features a unique main character for an urban
fantasy—a married woman.
Just about all urban fantasies with a female protagonist highlight
her as very single, at least at the start of a series. That way she can fall in
love with a good guy, or more commonly some bad boy from the wrong side of the
tracks. Sometimes the good guy is the bad boy. And there was at least one urban
fantasy where the female protagonist had three different guys of three very
different ages interested in her.
So I had asked Carrie Vaughn if she knew of any urban
fantasies where the woman starts out married. She did not, and she said her own
character of Kitty only got married in the fifth book of the series. But she
encouraged me in my efforts, saying I should write something different in the field.
She did a reading at this year’s Norwescon, and I managed to
thank her at the end for her encouragement. She looked gratified—I didn’t
realize how much an established writer would enjoy seeing her effect on an
aspiring one.
I was going to ask her for an autograph on her young adult
novel Martians Abroad, but there
really wasn’t time.
The cover art is especially good. Polly was raised on Mars,
which has one-third the gravity of Earth. Notice how elongated her torso and limbs are.
This weekend I attended Norwescon, the largest science
fiction/fantasy convention in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll have a couple of
things to say about authors, but first let’s have some pictures:
The background is somewhat complicated, but I hope you can
see the bow in her right hand and the quiver behind her right shoulder. It was
the authenticity of the arrows that caught my eye. I didn’t think at the time
to ask if she was a female Green Arrow, so I don’t know.
Here are some volunteers waiting to learn the art of Norse
fighting. The woman at the left came in her own chain mail, which impressed the
instructor.
Harley Quinn. That’s a very large hammer.
At a glance, you can tell she’s from the mirror universe of
Star Trek. (My apologies to her dark-haired friend. Her picture didn’t come
out.)
This young guy has a mechanical right hand that is highly
articulated—think of certain scenes from the Terminator movies. he could actually close the fingers.
Power Girl wowed everyone with her barbells. But is there
something familiar about her?
Yes, I’m sure I’ve seen her before.
This is kind embarrassing. There’s this one person, Torrey
Stenmark, who teaches organic chemistry and who was Ms. Marvel a couple years ago.
They’re the SAME PERSON! I’ve been so fooled by wigs. [Permission granted to use any photo on this post, so long as it is labeled “Photo by Mark Murata”]
Stephen Hawking recently passed away. I’ll repeat below my
post from 2014, then add a comment.
__________________________
Stephen Hawking is one of the creators of black hole theory
using relativistic physics. (Actually, it would have been possible to come up
with a black hole theory using the old Newtonian physics, but nobody ever
bothered to.) Hawking has actually become quite the celebrity from his work,
and he even appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He’s one
of the most easily recognized scientists in the world.
photo by Doug Wheller
Now Hawking has rethought it and declared black holes do not
exist. A standard feature of science fiction has vanished, as if it had fallen
into . . . well, we’ll think of something. Easy for Hawking to say—sorry I was
wrong about what’s made me famous over the past few decades, next I’ll invent
some other impossible things for you yokels to believe in.
__________________________
Telling some people who are really into black hole cosmology that black holes do not exist is like telling a child that Santa Claus does not exist. Or like having the
projector fail during a Star Wars premier before an audience full of geeks.
First, Elon Musk came up with easy-to-use flamethrowers.
photo by Nike Scream
Okay, she doesn’t work for Elon Musk, but just look up “Mary Elizabeth Winstead,” “flamethrower,” and “images” and have a blast.
Then Costco came up with food kits for emergencies or
natural disasters that can feed a family of four for a whole year right here,
that will have a shelf life of twenty-five years. Delivery time varies.
photo by Nandaro
And now it turns out that certain towns in Georgia require
gun ownership. That’s right—they don’t ban gun ownership, they require it.
I don’t normally make it all the way though a YA novel. Partly
it’s because of the lack of detail in the scene descriptions compared to a
novel for adults. But mainly it’s because I never felt the same angst when I
was a teen that the main characters feel all the time. It’s portrayed as normal,
and it just reads as foreign to me. But I did read three all the way through.
Alive by Scott
Sigler was fascinating. A teenager is horrified to wake up
and find herself in what seems to be a coffin. She has no idea how she ended up
there. She struggles free of the bonds keeping her in place, pushes open the
lid, and climbs out. She’s dressed nicely, including a tie, which doesn’t make
sense.
Then she sees she’s in a room filled with similar coffins,
which are actually metal containers. She helps other teens get out of theirs.
Learning that her first initial is M., she goes by the name Em for much of the
story. A number of these teenagers band together and try to find their parents.
But the long corridor they walk in keeps going up and up for what seems to be
an impossible length. Are they underground? What is this place?
The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey features an unusual attack
sequence by aliens. Instead of destroying humanity all at once, they use wave
attacks composed of an electromagnetic pulse, an earthquake, and a plague. Perhaps they
don’t want to damage the Earth too much before taking it over? Cassie, a teenage
girl who is one of the survivors, doesn’t know.
Cassie is on the run from beings who look human, but who are
picking off the last survivors. Wounded, she meets a young man who helps her
recover, but can she trust him?
When the movie came out, I was surprised that the critics
panned it, because the trailer looked so great. I recently saw it on TV, and I was
shocked at how closely it followed the book. I think I know why the critics
didn’t like it: The young people in it become comfortable using guns, which
gave the critics an eek reaction.
If you don’t want to see Cassie with an AR-15, don’t watch
this trailer. But realistically, what else is she supposed to do?
I also read all the way through The Maze Runner by James Dashner.
I already reviewed the movie version here. Both are interesting,
with the movie making the actions scenes much bigger.
Yesterday, I submitted a mashed-up fairy tale short story that
I first wrote in 2006 to an online magazine. Today, I submitted a science fiction
short story that mainly involves two characters that I first wrote in 2011 to
another magazine. I had previously submitted them all over the place years ago.
This year I looked them over, making some parts more terse or more detailed,
but no real changes to the plot or characters.
Why did I think of them? In the TV show The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John Connor said a good piece of code
is like a song—you can’t get it out of your head. That’s what writing a good
story is like. Of course, my writing won’t bring about the end civilization. Or
will it?
On a related concept, I can highly recommend the short story
“The Rescue of the Renegat” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch in the January/February
issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. In
the short form, she can really deliver a punch to the gut.
On my way to church and back, I saw four cars pulled over by
the police. They were obviously out in force, looking for anyone who started to
get tanked before the Super Bowl started. One of the officers stepped out of
his car right as I passed them, his head very close to my car.
photo by Something Original
On the other hand, they could have been in a bad mood
because they had to work during the Super Bowl.
Here’s my latest book purge: three hardcovers and nine paperbacks.
These just didn’t turn out to be as interesting as I thought they would. They
are both fiction and non-fiction, and I’ll sell them to a used books store.
In addition, I plan on giving a book on writing to a friend,
and I’ll donate four non-fiction books to a library.
