Lord of Chaos Revisited

Spoiler Check: I have completed the Wheel of Time series up to Towers of Midnight inclusive

 I am re-reading the Wheel of Time series in preparation for the release of the final instalment, A Memory of Light, next year and have just concluded the marathon book 6, Lord of Chaos, on Audible.

I enjoyed it more the second time around, maybe because I knew what was coming or, more to the point, not coming. Much is made of how Jordan’s epic sags in the middle, with the books tending to bloat, the pace slowing to a crawl and political scheming coming to the fore at the expense of action. All this is true, but if you already know all that from a first read you can enjoy the careful way Jordan drops in a series of seemingly minor plot points which are crucial to pay-offs later, sometimes several books later.  I missed a lot of detail first time around, or simply forgot events which turned out to be relevant.  There are so many character names to remember, so many incidents. Thank heavens I can get help from on-line resources like Encyclopaedia WoT which contain detailed chapter by chapter summaries and, more importantly, copious footnotes explaining how characters and events link together, sometimes spanning several books.

A case in point is Cabriana Mecandes, the Aes Sedai tortured and killed by Semirhage in Chapter 6. This short section helps paint a picture of Semirhage but the Cabriana torture incident is critical to the unmasking of Delana and Halima in Knife of Dreams, 5 whole books later. It really does take a superhuman memory, an on-line encyclopaedia or repeated re-reads to get a proper appreciation of how everything hangs together.

I also enjoyed the start of the Egwene on the path to glory arc. Jordan really does take his time to plot Egwene’s rise from Wisdom’s apprentice in backwater village all the way to becoming the best Amyrlin Seat in White Tower history on the eve of Tarmon G’aidon.

The low points were that we also embarked on the interminable search for the Bowl of Winds and that tedious spat between Perrin and Faile that just goes on forever.

Getting the new Sword & Laser YouTube show as a podcast … sort of

 I can well understand the attraction of publishing the new video edition of the Sword & Laser on Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry YouTube channel.  But it is streaming content only, not downloadable, and I far prefer to consume my episodic videos as podcasts using Doggcatcher, my preferred Android podcatcher.

I did sort of find a way to do it … close enough. Full details here on my tech blog, Hasta la vista, Vista!

Bitter Reads

As ever, I have two books on the go, one on Audible and the other on Kindle. Neither of them are thrilling me. You know when a book has gripped you; you can’t wait for another opportunity to read on. If your attitude is “oh well, I guess I’d better read a bit more of this” then you know the book has done enough to prevent you abandoning it outright but failed (at least so far) to get its hooks into you very deeply.  It’s not a good sign when you look at your Audible app and your heart sinks at the number of hours still to go.

The Kindle book is Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton.  It has improved a little as I approach one-third of the way through and some aspects have a certain charm.  But overall it is equal measures ham-fisted and cliched.  It seems to have been written to appeal to gung-ho teenage boys. A lot of “boys own”wish-fulfilment teenage sex, fancy weaponry, a military platoon camaraderie set-up, fancy hi-tech communications systems and copious references to the excitement of deep space exploration.  Mixed in with that we have some more mature sci-fi themes, such as Earth-bound and interplanetary politics, and quite a lot of well researched material on living in space and terra-forming planets. The notion of Earth being run by giant corporations is hardly new – it put me in mind of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, or even further back with Rollerball (Murder).  The “asset realization” idea is more noteworthy. The “realities” of space travel are mostly played up for yuck-factor and the science of manipulating planetary environments and eco-systems, which should have been fascinating, is mostly dull. This book may continue to improve so am ploughing on, but still a little nervous of the risk of concluding, after the equivalent of say 500 pages, that I have been investing time in a dud.

So what to make of Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis which I am consuming as an audiobook? It was the Sword & Laser podcast which drew this book to my attention but they reviewed it ages ago and I only remembered the basic premise: alternative WWII reality in which the Germans have developed use of super-powers to assist in the war effort and the Brits counter by using magic.

It sounds daft and mostly is. Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont, the Sword & Laser hosts, really went for this book in a big way.  I’m not really with them at this point. It may be that  it doesn’t work so well as an audiobook, at least not for me.  The narrator’s accents come out as mock British, mock Scottish and mock Nazi in a pretty annoying way.  But the book as a whole seems to be a parody of 1940s Britain.

It is not all bad, though.  The Gretel character is intriguing. Much of the writing is of good quality, in particular the opening sequence with its raven metaphor was very well crafted. Against that, a lot of the “action” sequences could be taken from the Biggles books I read when I was at school. The book is also fast-paced, skipping past a lot of detail that other authors would have indulged themselves in, using short flashbacks or references to fill in the gaps in the narrative. In any event, I am well over half way through and shall stick with Bitter Seeds to the bitter end.

Steve Gibson’s SF Special on Security Now!

Yesterday I expressed my misgivings about Steve Gibson being allowed a vehicle to hold forth on his favourite SF books, particularly given his past record. I have now listened to Episode 333 of Security Now!, entitled “Our Science Fiction Special”, and it wasn’t as bad as I feared.

Leo and Steve started with a review of the all time SF classics and between them did a pretty good job. Steve picked the Asimov robot series; The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, etc. Of the four in the series I have only read The Naked Sun and it is a favourite of mine. I first came across it as an Out of the Unknown TV adaptation by the BBC but only later realised it was based on an Asimov book (upon happening to read the book and recognising the story). As mentioned in the Wikipedia article on The Naked Sun, both that book and its predecessor, The Caves of Steel, draw inspiration from E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” which was also adapted for the BBC’s Out of the Unknown TV series.

So far so good, then, and Leo threw in the Foundation series for good measure.

Steve’s next pick was another of my favourites, Protector by Larry Niven. Who could forget Phssthpok the Pak? Leo picked Niven’s best known work, Ringworld, which I have read several times along with the various sequels and is set in the same universe as Protector. Both Leo and Steve mentioned The Mote in God’s Eye, by Niven and Jerry Pournelle, which I agree deserves its place among the classics even though it comes across as a bit dated now, as Leo went to pains to point out.

Philip K Dick won a mention for the various stories which have inspired films, such as Minority Report and Blade Runner. Again, no argument from me. Leo’s pick of Dick’s work was The Man in the High Castle (shame on me, I have not yet read it) but acknowledged it might not be Steve’s cup of tea being set in a parallel universe.

Much was made of Steve’s insistence on hard sci-fi, eschewing more speculative ouevres and in particular fantasy. Leo could not allow Frank Herbert’s Dune to go unmentioned but excused Steve’s evident lack of enthusiasm for it by describing it as fantasy, not SF. I can see some echoes of the fantasy genre in Dune; fantastical creatures (sandworms), a feudal society, witches (Bene Gesserit), absence of typical SF hi-tech, immortality (or extreme longevity) and the power of prophecy. However it is definitely a denizen of the SF realm, set as it is in the imagined far distant future of our universe, not an invented universe or a distortion of ours.

Along the way a few classic SF films were drooled over, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet. Surprisingly, 2001 A Space Odyssey was glossed over but Arthur C Clarke was not forgotten; Leo mentioned his iconic SF book Childhood’s End. I read and enjoyed it but it may have been too speculative for Steve, even though I tend to think of Clarke as an archetypal hard sci-fi writer.

Steve then went on to extoll once more some of his recent favourites such as Michael McCollum’s Gibraltar series which I commented on in my previous post. Steve still swears by Peter F Hamilton’s Fallen Dragon but now seems less enthusiastic about the Void Trilogy – he might have mentioned that before I wasted an Audible credit on The Dreaming Void. From the discussion, I might have done better to start with Pandora’s Star and may yet give that a whirl if I survive Fallen Dragon.

Steve is also starting to tire of David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, but only by book 10. I was sick of it by page 10.

Taking the episode as a whole, Steve did make some amends for the worst of his past SF tips. Having said that, Leo has by far the more sophisticated and rounded taste in SF.

Gibson’s SF Special – Dare I listen?

This year’s festive episode of the “Security Now!” podcast with Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson will represent a departure from the usual fare of IT security. And not for the first time. In the past we have had “specials” providing platforms for Steve’s various hobby horses, ranging from “the miraculous benefits of having enough Vitamin D in your body” to “how to build a device to infuriate dogs with” to “the future of super-capacitor batteries”.

This year, Steve’s self-indulgence will feature his favourite Science Fiction books. Steve has been peppering past episodes with his SF recommendations and now he is getting to devote a whole episode to them. Leo likes his SF so has been a good foil for Steve in the past. The irony is that Tom Merritt, who occasionally fills in for Leo as co-host on the show, is far more into SF even than Leo and even hosts the popular Sword & Laser podcast with Veronica Belmont. Leo keeps pointing this out to Steve but the latter would not dream of talking SF with anyone else.

It may be just as well. Tom’s reaction might not have been to Steve’s liking. Not that I know what Steve is recommending. His sci-fi special has now been downloaded onto my phone but I have yet to listen to it. I will do, I’m sure, but with some trepidation. To date his recommendations have ranged from lacklustre to downright abominable, whereas Leo’s own choices (mostly incorporated in Audible.com adverts on other shows) have been excellent.

Steve’s record to date:

Gibraltar Earth by Michael McCollum.

Brilliant idea. Awful execution. The writing is very amateurish, to the extent of being cringe-making. Sorry but there it is.

Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton

I did start this and the writing is of far better quality than McCollum’s but it is very cliched stuff. I did try some other Hamilton and have so far found little that is original or gripping. It seems like pretty routine stuff. I’ve not totally given up on Hamilton but the indications to date are not encouraging.

On Basilisk Station by David Weber

This is the first book in the Honor Harrington series, an SF homage to the (Midshipman) Horatio Hornblower books by C.S. Forester. Unreadably bad. Painfully so.

Maybe Steve will surprise me this time. Let’s hope so.

Brandon Sanderson finished writing A Memory of Light today

And very odd it was too.  He live-tweeted his progress through the last 20 “scenes” he needed to write. He then had only to bolt on the finale Robert Jordan had already written many years ago to complete the book and with it the Wheel of Time series.

We had a count-down on Twitter as Brandon completed each scene and he found time to keep up the banter with his fans as he sprinted for the line, seemingly buoyed by euphoria and drawing strength from his Twitter-followers.

Sanderson: First scene out of twenty finished. (Note that I’m using ‘scene’ here liberally to mean a point on the plot outline.)

That was 12 hours ago. Later …

Sanderson: Scene #13 was a short one. Finished. Seven more to go.

Kevsational: great how many words is an average scene? Your word rate is depressing me!

Sanderson: It really depends. Some scenes are five or six thousand words. Often, at the end of books, I’m jumping viewpoints quickly.

Sanderson: Brace yourselves. I just finished the last Mat Cauthon scene that, in all likelihood, will ever be written.

Sanderson: The fourteenth scene was Mat’s, and now I’ve finished the fifteenth scene. Five more to go, and #AMoL is done.

He finished 2 hours ago with:

Sanderson: And now, yes, I will go to sleep. 7am here. That’s 10 hours of solid writing after a full day of solid writing, so I’m beat. Thank you all for the good wishes. May you find water and shade.

Presumably he is now in the Three-Fold Land of Nod, snoring happily away.

Of course, the fact that he’s finished writing the book doesn’t mean he’s actually finished writing it.  Among today’s tweets we had:

Sanderson: As for when the book will come out, Tor should do an announcement soon. Revisions will take a good six months. So fall, I expect. Another common question: How many revisions will I do? The last two took about a dozen. (On no-wot books, I do about seven or eight.)

Comfortingly we had:

keebler980: General writing question: after The editor edits, is it typical for an author to add/rewrite, or only the editor?

Sanderson: Only the author rewrites or adds. Never the editor. (in most cases.)

Roll on autumn.

Too late Roy

All I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t wait for the Roy Dotrice recording of A Feast for Crows to come out on Audible. Random House are releasing it on 15 December and it will presumably be available via Audible on or around the same date.  I finished Feast on Kindle a month ago and am now more than half way through A Dance with Dragons.

Did I miss much? Probably not. I do enjoy Roy Dotrice’s facility with voices and characterisations.  He does bring the stories to life, but I don’t love all his characterisations equally and I was less fussed about the Feast characters (Brienne, Jaime, Cersei, Arya, Sansa) than I am about Tyrion, Davos, Danaerys, Theon who inhabit Dance.

I did miss his rendition of Samwell in Feast, which is a shame, but I could more or less hear that voice in my head as I was reading his chapters on Kindle, so familiar has it become. And at least I still have Roy voicing Dolorous Edd Tollett in Dance.  Edd is only a bit player but he gets more funny lines than Tyrion these days and Roy has created a wonderful comically deadpan “brummie” voice for him.

The biggest let down voice-wise is Danaerys in Dance who seems to have been converted into a Dublin barmaid.  And we are back to Tragaryens instead of Targaryens.