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Tracato at Fantasy Book Review

2012-02-22T20:20:00.000+10:30

Today I went for a good bike ride, got back and read a good review. Nice.

"A Trial of Blood and Steel" Prequel Short Story

2012-02-17T22:49:00.001+10:30

Sometimes in the editing of novels, chapters that the author likes get cut out. This is one such chapter, that I had originally planned as a preface to Tracato, since that's the novel where the action finally moves to the Bacosh.   But timing and pacing issues led to it getting cut.

As a short story, however, I think it still works. This then is the tale of King Leyvaan of the Bacosh, two hundred years before the events of 'A Trial of Blood and Steel', and his great invasion of Saalshen. It's also the tale of Maldereld's rise, and why there are statues of her all over Rhodaan, Enora and Ilduur in the books.   It's not exactly a pleasant little tale, but then, it wasn't exactly a pleasant little war.

***

    Upon the eighth night of the harvest moon, King Seldon Leyvaan sat down upon the small stool in his tent, and prepared to write.   The quill tip quavered above the paper, a hesitation of numb, cold fingers.   Upon a neighbouring page, rows of neat, leaning Larosa script seemed to flicker and dance beneath the lamp light.   The King stared at those words, hunched and shivering within his damp clothes, and the weight of mail upon his shoulders seemed no less than the weight of the world.
   The words mocked him.   Those shimmering black letters, so certain in their perfect form.   The words of but a week previous, the last time he’d found for an entry.   Full of surety, and a familiar, cavalier swagger.   The words of a different man.   A stranger.   Leyvaan’s cold, trembling hand found his chin, and caressed the unfamiliar growth that now sought to make a beard, like some strange creature that had arrived upon the stealth of night.   He must shave, the King told himself.   It would look bad before the men, that the King did not upkeep his personal appearance.   Once, not so long ago, that had seemed to matter.   Not so long ago, perhaps... but it felt like an age.
   Ink dripped from the quill tip, a single, black blob that stained the page where a sentence should begin.   The King dipped the quill back into the inkpot upon the little table before the stool, the leather-bound journal braced upon his lap.   He must save the ink, he told himself.   The inkpot was nearly empty, and he had no other.   He was running low, in fact, on many things.
   King Leyvaan cast a bleary-eyed stare about the interior of his royal tent, its canvas walls brightened by the lamp’s amber glow, and alive with shadows cast from lamps and torches beyond.   There were familiar traveling chests missing.   Tall wooden stands, likewise absent, where weapons or wineskins would be placed for convenient access.   Boxes of papers, maps for strategy, books for reading during free time for pleasure or inspiration.   Verenthane luck charms.   Many changes of clothes, and good plates and silverware for mealtimes.   All had been traveling within the main baggage train, guarded by a contingent of the Royal Bacosh Guard, plus the entire regiment of Rakani, some of the finest mounted warriors in all Bacosh lands.   But the baggage train was now two days overdue.   Food was short.   Horses were increasingly scarce, and difficult to feed.   His servants, traveling with the baggage train, were likewise missing.   Not a word had accompanied the disappearance.   Not a whisper.   Nearly three thousand men, many hundreds of horses, and invaluable, incalculable supplies... all vanished.   As if the very, cursed land of Saalshen had opened up and swallowed them whole.
   A shout rent the darkness, and a rattle of armoured men running.   King Leyvaan leaped to his feet, placing the journal upon the small table, and ran for the entrance.   Flung the flap aside, and strode between the two Royal Guards standing watch, halberds at the ready.   Beside the several accompanying tents, men stood prepared, weapons drawn and glinting in the lamp and firelight.   Others roused themselves from where they had bedded down between the roots of trees, beneath the damp gloom of the overhanging branches.   The King peered through the surrounding trunks of the forest, toward where a knot of soldiers now gathered, headed up the slope toward him.   That knot grew larger as it gathered in number, armoured men clustering about in eager dread of further news.
   It all rose to a great, clattering mass before the King, exhausted and disheveled men, faces unshaven, streaked with the weeks of accumulated dirt and grime.   And from their centre came a gasping, sweating man, with the bearing of one who had run a long way in short time.   He fell to his knees before the King, hands on thighs, bent and gasping for breath.   His surcoat displayed the colours of Rhodaan, one of the wealthiest of the great Bacosh provinces, a land of sea cliffs and city ports, and the greatest trading fleet in Rhodia.   The King was himself raised in Ilduur, a place of mountains and lakes, and yet for a moment, he was grasped by a seizure of homesick longing so powerful it felt fit to squeeze his heart of every remaining drop of blood.   His Rhodaan.   His Rakani.   His Ilduur.   He was King of all the Bacosh, King as there had never been a single, ruling King before, in all the troubled, quarrelsome history of those lands.   Such power he wielded, such that no ruler of the Bacosh lands had ever seen before.   This adventure was to be the most glorious triumph, the defining, unifying moment for all the sprawling, diverse, hopeful Bacosh peoples.   How had the Gods allowed for it to come to this?
   “Your Highness,” gasped the man from Larosa, when he had breath in his lungs to speak.   “Your Highness, we... we held the further ridge as you commanded.   We held the heights, my Lord Alito Renine made several raids against the villages there... they were empty, and we set them to fire.   I was... I was part of a group of one hundred sent to scout the deep river beyond.   We encountered no resistance, and... and we felt perhaps the serrin had all fled, and the foothills now were ours.
   “We returned to the Larosa encampment, Your Highness, and...” the man swallowed hard, and drew a great breath, “... and they were gone, Your Highness.   All the remaining Rhodaani regiment, the whole encampment -- my Lord Alito too.   Only the dead remained, slaughtered like animals.   We counted perhaps two hundred, perhaps more... but of the rest, there was no sign.   Half our number remained to search, and the other half made off with all haste to inform you, Your Highness.”
   Above the smell of cursed damp earth and rotting leaves, and the unsavoury odour of many unwashed bodies, there came now a new smell, heavy upon the damp night air.   Fear.   Men’s eyes were wide in the flickering light.   Fists clenched tightly upon the hilts of swords, upon the shafts of halberds and spears.   Some glanced over their shoulders, as if expecting the very forest to come alive and devour them.
   “You said fifty men!” the King snapped.   “Where are your comrades?”
   “We...” and the man from Rhodaan took another deep breath.   His eyes were darting, in the manner of a horse badly startled, his face agleam with sweat.   “We were attacked, Your Highness.   The... the forest.   They were everywhere.   We could not see them, they moved like demons in the dark, and... and men were falling, Your Highness, struck with arrows, or slashed by blades that came at us from the very timber... I could not see, I could not see.”   The soldier stumbled over his words, his voice strained upon the edge of tears.   Of hysteria.   “I... I thought more might break through.   If there are none others here, then I suppose I might be the last.”
   There followed a silence that was no silence, but rather the soundless, gasping terror of exhausted men who wanted only to depart this Gods forsaken place, and go home to their farms and valleys, never to return.   It howled in Leyvaan’s ears as loud and piercing as any scream.   A gust of wind swayed and tossed at the branches, with creaking groans of wood that sounded nothing like the familiar, comforting hiss of poplar leaves in the gardens of Ilduur.   A spattering of water fell from the leaves above, cold and unwelcome, dripping down necks toward the further, chill damp that gathered beneath the chafing armour.
   From somewhere out upon the perimeter, there came the sudden, distant sound of screams, terrified and bloody.   A familiar sound, it had become these last, dreadful weeks, as the silent, murdering ghosts flittered through the nearby trees, and picked off sentries and sleeping soldiers several at a time.   Familiar, yet men jumped, and swore, eyes wide and darting like frightened animals.   One collapsed to his knees, gloved hands over his face, and weeping helplessly, for sheer terror.
   “Back to your positions!” yelled Captain Garethaal, striding forward with a wave of his chain-linked arm.   “Don’t crowd the King!   Back to your positions, on the honour of your families!”
   Men departed, clustering in groups, eyes starting at shadows.   Garethaal placed a firm hand upon the King’s back, and ushered him into the privacy of his sparse, empty tent.   Once inside, he turned and faced his liege, eyes hard with fury.
   “Your Highness,” he said, “for the last time, we must withdraw!”
   King Leyvaan’s blank, weary eyes rested upon his Captain.   Brave Captain Garethaal.   A fellow Ilduuri, Garethaal had been by his side from the beginning, through the campaigns of past years, toward the final, glorious victory upon the Yupin Plains that had seen him crowned King of all the Bacosh lands.   He and Garethaal, they had been invincible.   His old friend’s face was now weary and drawn, yet too full of rage, at this moment, to display an obvious fear.
   “Rethan,” murmured the King.   “Rethan we cannot withdraw.   The Rakani will come, and with them the supplies.   The reserves upon the plains will note our absence, and come with force.   We cannot abandon the honour of the Bacosh upon these hills.   The shame would be our doom.”
   “Your Highness, our doom is nearly upon us!”   Garethaal’s broad forehead, creased by the mark of his helm, now creased further, with a frown of rage.   “We are down to barely seven thousand men!   Every day they whittle us down, fading before our thrusts, then regrouping by night to focus their assaults -- the rumours are clearly true, My Lord, they do see better by night than we!   Our march across the plains was grand, and our successes there were worthy indeed!   But these hills are beyond us, and now we must withdraw while we still have men left to move!”
   Leyvaan blinked at his Captain, with utter incomprehension.   “I am King, old friend.   I shall protect our gains upon the plain, these hills are but a breeding nest for serrin assaults upon our future settlements, and thus upon the borders of the Bacosh...”
   “The Rakani will not come!”   Garethaal’s blue eyes blazed now with a fire that was not simply rage.   It was despair.   “The Rakani are dead, My King!   And now we learn the Rhodaani too!   Your settlements upon the plains of Saalshen shall be no more!   We have no army left to defend them!”
   “And what of the Bacosh?” whispered the King, with a dazed and gathering pain.   “What of our wonderful Kingdom?”
   “My Lord... My Lord, I do not know.”   Garethaal shook his head, teeth gritted, struggling to keep his emotions in check.   His broad frame, so upright and proud in Leyvaan’s memory, now seemed hunched, as if beneath a vast, invisible weight.   “I only know that if we do not leave these hills immediately, and seek safety on the plain, the Bacosh shall no longer have its single, unifying King.”
   Leyvaan just gazed at him, expressionless as a corpse.   A grand plan, it had been.   A grand sweep through the hills, scouring the land of its towns and villages, and thus the source of the raiding parties that threatened the new human gains upon the lowlands.   The baggage train, guarded by the mounted riders of Rakani, would follow on the few good roads that carved through the folded terrain.   Foraging off the land, the thrust would last a month or more, and sweep the godless devils from these parts, preparing the way for later thrusts into deepest Saalshen, and the greater towns and even cities that were reputed to exist there.   A grand plan indeed.
   Garethaal shook his head one last time, and placed the helm on his head.   Saluted, a forearm across the chest, and strode to the entrance, throwing the flap aside as he left.   Immediately, there followed the abrupt thud-whistle of arrowfire, and a horrified, gurgling cry.   Men yelled warning, the King himself running for the entrance, and thrusting aside the flap.
   Garethaal was kneeling in the mud, not four steps from the King.   Half turning, now, one hand on the ground for support, another clutching at the feathered shaft that protruded from his neck.   For a final moment, his wide, horrified eyes met those of his Lord.   And he fell forward in the mud, and breathed no more.
   Movement beyond caught the King’s eye, a dark, lithe shape that emerged from the shadow of tree trunks at a run, a bow in one hand, an arrow fitting with the other.   Royal Guards ran to intercept, blocking the figure’s path to the King... one fell, punched through the ribs, and then another, as the dark figure side-stepped the first attack without apparent concern, and shot the next guardsman through the eye... then pulled a gleaming blade from over one shoulder and slashed the man just side-stepped.
   He fell, and then the next guardsmen arrived, slashing and hacking at the small, dark shadow, yet hitting little.   The figure moved in the flickering light with a speed that deceived the eye, fading before each attack, deflecting the blades of taller attackers with an effortless grace that defied belief.   Time and again, defence slashed into offence, felling one man and then another, as the whistling, silvery blade cut deep, with little regard for helm or mail.   And finally, when six of the Kingdom’s best swordsmen had been felled, the figure paused amidst the fallen bodies, and stared directly at the King, as he stood before the mouth of his tent in frozen disbelief.   From even this range, he could see the figure’s green eyes blaze, a brilliant glow of inhuman colour within a sinister, pale shadow of a face.   There was hatred in every sinew, every catlike poise of its shape, and blood ran red along its gleaming, silver blade.
   The dark figure charged, straight for the King.   Leyvaan struggled to tear the blade from his hip scabbard, for what little good it could do against the swordwork of a demon who tore through the King’s best swordsmen as if swatting flies... and there came the hiss of a crossbow bolt, and the running figure staggered.   Still the legs kept pounding, but the balance faltered, the run now stumbling as one hand flailed desperately for balance, the other angling the sword for one final, suicidal thrust...
   The King’s own blade leapt free, and with a speed borne of pure terror, he side-stepped and thrust with a greatly superior reach.   With a horrid impact of slicing weight, the thrust caught the full impact of the attacker’s body upon the point of the blade.   The enemy’s sword fell, its final thrust misaimed, the fingers unclenched and pointed in a rictus of approaching death.   Leyvaan stared into the face, as the attacker’s hands clutched at his body, grasping for a final balance.   And found a yet further shock.
   The face, contorted with agony, was female.   Blonde hair, tied in a mass of many braids that cascaded about the woman’s pale face.   Still the eyes found his, and the horrid, inhuman blaze of green made his startled heart stand still for a second time.   But beautiful yet, in the manner of all these godless demons, through even the pain, and the fury.
   “You will wash in the spirits of your victims down the great usleen!” the woman hissed, blood mixing with spittle that ran from her lips.   The blade hand snatched a knife from her belt, and thrust for King’s neck... yet the pain had made her slow, and Leyvaan blocked it with his forearm.   Pain stabbed as the knife sliced through mail and flesh, and he twisted the sword in his right hand, and lifted.   The woman contorted, eyes widening.   Then falling, with a slow, sliding thud to the sodden, muddy earth.
   King Leyvaan stared down at the fallen serrin warrior.   She had come barely to his shoulder, when standing.   He could have lifted her one handed.   And his eyes raised then to the body of his old friend, Rethan Garethaal.   And beyond, to the bodies of eight Royal Guardsmen, two felled by arrow and six by swordstroke, and not one showing any sign of lingering life.   Father Dalraan had been right -- surely these creatures were the very demons of Loth incarnate, for only the animation of ungodly evil could bewitch so small a female toward such acts of martial carnage.   And from such a source of bottomless evil did come their hatred for the righteous light of Verenthane, as evidenced by the discovery of Father Dalraan in his tent two nights previous, gutted, dismembered and scattered about the canvas floor with evidence of pagan, demonic ritual.
   About him, Leyvaan could hear rather than see men arriving, clustering near, and staring now at the King, and the carnage that this attempt upon his life had wrought.   One serrin.   Barely more than a girl.   There were thousands more out there, whispering silently through the undergrowth, like wraiths in the night.   Who knew how many more had breached the perimeter, as this one had.   All about, he could hear the sounds of Verenthane prayer, as men made warding signs to their protecting Gods, and prayed for deliverance from the jaws of this race of devil spawn.   Right they had been to try and wipe them from the earth.   But so very, tragically wrong, it seemed, to leave the open safety of the plains, where the vast superiority of massed human armour and weapons held sway, and assault these wooded hills so directly.   Fury boiled in the King, long suppressed these last, dark weeks.   Fury that he, of all leaders, should meet this fate.
   “It’s not fair!” he yelled to the surrounding dark.   He stumbled forward several steps, spinning to face the unseen enemy.   “Fight like men!   Fight with honour, you motherless cowards!   We are men of the Bacosh!   You can never defeat us!   NEVER!”
   Men stared, to see such an outburst from the King.   And stared at the body of Captain Garethaal, a man who had surely seemed destined for a great, honourable warrior’s death, and martyrdom, and a place in Heaven amongst the Gods themselves.   Now, he lay face down in the mud, his sword firmly in its sheath.   And their King, previously listless and bewildered, now wild with rage, yelling at the very shadows as if he suspected them full of watching, listening, waiting enemies.   Somewhere distant, there came again a new screaming, and the clashing of steel.   Then silence.
   It was too much for some, who broke and ran, dashing madly off between bedraggled tents and posts.   Nobles drew weapons, yelling at them to stop, but their efforts were scattered.   Seeing this, others also turned and ran.   And suddenly the proud army of the Bacosh were dissolving in total rout.   Word spread, panicked cries and exclamations filled the air, footsteps thundering with a creak and clatter of armour.   The King stared wildly about as armoured bodies came dashing past, emerging from the trees as the forward lines came falling back, bedraggled and dirty, their eyes filled with fear.   Tents collapsed as legs tripped over guide ropes, men grabbing what they could of stores for the journey home, some pausing to gather water and food, while others simply sprinted west, in the general direction of home.
   Amongst the runners, there were very few wounded.    When the serrin found you, in the darkness and shadows, you died.   Some said that they sucked the very souls from their victims, devouring any chance of Heaven, and eternal rest.   The greatest king of all Bacosh history stood within the midst of his dissolving army, like a stone surrounded by a great, rushing river.   And like a river stone in flood, so he was also overwhelmed, and pulled along by the torrent.
   King Leyvaan knew not how long he ran.   It was a two day march through these accursed woods, descending through the broken foothills all the way, toward the Saalshen plains, and the river Ipshaal beyond.   Upon the Ipshaal’s far bank, lay the Bacosh.   His mind drifted to that far bank as he ran, stumbling upon tree roots and tripping through the overgrowth, gasping for the breath to keep his legs in motion.   Fair and green with water reeds upon a sunny spring day.   The river willows would be drooping their long fingers in the flowing water, and in the reflection, one could see only drifting white clouds, and sky.   Livestock would be moving upon the nearby fields, filling the air with the lowing of cattle, and the jangle of bells.   The trot of his own horse’s hooves upon the path that wound through the lush green grass of the riverbank, and a light gust of breeze from the north, tinged in his imagination with the smell of salt from the Sharaal Sea, perhaps four days’ ride to the north...
   His foot slipped upon mud as he ran, and shot out from under him before he slammed shoulder first onto the ground.   He gasped, struggling for breath, and clutched at his wrenched shoulder beneath the mail.   Nearby, there came the clash of weapons.   Shouts and screams, as men died.   Leyvaan stared about at the shadows, hearing footsteps thudding near and distant, undergrowth tearing, and the echoing cries of men.   A rush of footsteps behind, and he spun, frantically, hands clutching at the dirt.   The footsteps continued on, thudding blindly downslope.   Only a little light from the half moon penetrated the overcast, and much of that was shadowed beneath the forest canopy.   Terror lived on this night, breathing hoarsely in every shadow, lurking behind every looming tree.
   There came another sound, near, while others were far.   A soft rustle in the undergrowth.   The slide of a foot upon leaves.   A twig cracked.   Leyvaan burst to his feet, and ran stumbling and sliding downslope in the gloom, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he thought it might burst.   His foot caught a root, and he fell, crashing headfirst down an increasing incline, and sliding on armoured forearms, then rolling until he thudded heavily into a tree.
   Then he was running again, with no recollection of how he had risen, except that the undergrowth was clearing somewhat, and the land was leveling, and the trees here seemed taller, and more familiar.   Several times he passed fresh corpses of Bacosh men, slashed by swords or bearing invisible puncture wounds -- the serrin did retrieve their arrow shafts where possible, which were sturdy as steel, and survived frequent reuse.   Leyvaan knew better than to check for signs of life, and kept moving at a jog, walk or stumble until he was gasping and sick with a murderous exhaustion.   He lost track of time, moving in a blind delirium, until suddenly, it registered that the sky was growing lighter.
   And in that cold, grey light of a chill early morning, he stumbled into a clearing in the trees.   A small village lay before him, or what remained of one.   What had once been houses lay now in charred piles of timber and stone.   To his left, the ruins of an orchard, fruit trees planted along a small stream down the hillside, now hacked and broken on the ground having been first stripped of their harvest.   The skeletal remains of what had been a small waterwheel protruded from amidst the carpet of branches.   Intricate, and somewhat baffling, had been the serrin methods of irrigation.   Compost piles, derived from livestock, and apparently for fertilising orchards and crops.   And strange livestock pens, often crafted from trimmed hedge and climbing vine, and mingling with carefully tended gardens that in turn blended seamlessly into the forested surrounds.
   All now lay in ruins, where the great armies of the Bacosh had come.   Leyvaan staggered forward, limping from muscle strains and blisters, gazing about for any sign of remaining food.   An Enoran arrow remained stuck in one splintered door frame, in good condition, yet untouched by serrin scavengers.   But the bodies were gone.   As he reached the centre of the little village, Leyvaan found the remains of a great, central fire, where many charred timbers had been piled about a great, central sea of ash.   Wind gusted as he limped forward, whipping grey, swirling clouds of ash toward the surrounding treeline.   Within the remains of the fire lay many charred bones.   Not all were of adult size.   Thorough, his armies had been.   And yet it was not enough.
   He arrived at the little stream, where it trickled downslope of the devastated village, and knelt amidst the bushes to dip his hands, and drink thirstily from the cold, fresh water.   Birds called, awakening to this damp, grey morning.   Leyvaan rested a moment on his heels, and surveyed a vast expanse of gentle downslope from his vantage by the stream.   The trees here were tall, with high, crowning canopies like little else on the plains, or the fields of the Bacosh.   Tall trunks and straight, like the pillars of a grand temple, broken only by branches toward the furthest heights.   Low, green undergrowth covered the ground in patches, and often the graceful, waving fronds of ferns.
   When the sky was clear, came the first clear thought since the night’s outbreak of panic, this place would be fair indeed.   Even now, beneath this chill grey, it held a melancholy, majestic beauty.   From somewhere distant, he could now hear the rushing of what sounded like a waterfall -- there had been numerous, in his army’s ascent into the foothills, tall, beautiful and rushing with waters from the looming Tellesil Ranges beyond.   Falling into vast pools, filled with trout, redtail and eel.
   Leyvaan drank his fill, and splashed water on his face to keep the exhaustion at bay -- he held no water skin, having had little thought of one during that first, terrifying dash, but the Tellesil foothills were teeming with fresh streams like this one, and it mattered little.   Food was more pressing, but he had seen the local fruit trees the serrin grew in their orchards, and had seen some such growing wild.   Another day’s march, he thought, and a night, and then there would be the plains.   Open, but at least he would be free of this cursed forest, and the trees that gave such sanctuary to the enemy.
   He climbed heavily to his feet, careful of sore and stiffening limbs, and turned... to find that there was a woman standing before him, not ten strides distant, amidst the broken, scattered foliage that had once been a garden of sorts, before the soldiers came.   Leyvaan’s hand went to his sword hilt, his tired heart suddenly pounding once more, with a jolt through his limbs that stood his hair on end.
   The woman simply watched him, with unwavering calm.   She wore a dark, patterned cloak over a finely stitched jacket of some skin or leather... it was difficult to tell, with serrin, as so many of their crafts eluded human knowledge.   Her pants were simple, of a matching green to the surrounding undergrowth, and her soft boots were caked with less mud than they should, having stomped about these lands for the last few weeks.   There was no doubt what she was.   Not merely was it her attire, nor the hilt of the sword that protruded from over the shoulder where her cloak left it bare.   Rather, it was the penetrating serenity in her pale blue eyes, within a face that was every bit as beautiful as that of the girl who had attacked him earlier that night, and killed Garethaal.   The woman’s hair, bound thickly at the nape of her neck with a twining strip of leather, was a glorious, lustrous bronze, with waves and highlights that surely no simple, peasant’s life in these woods could gain.   Like the girl -- the assassin -- that night, with her braids.   Serrin ways.   Serrin styles.   So appealing, at first glance.   The temptation of evil.
   “King Leyvaan,” said the serrin.   Her voice was clear and high.   A belt held firm about her trim waist, and her legs were long and lean.   Two weeks ago, he had laughed at the notion that such people as this -- such girls -- could threaten any Bacosh warrior.   Two weeks ago, the world had been a different place.   “Such irony, that you should pause at this place.”
   “Who are you?” Leyvaan demanded.   His voice was hoarse and cracked, the voice of a stranger, to his own ears.   “What do you want?”
   “I am Maldereld,” said the serrin.   Leyvaan blinked in astonishment.   His hand remained upon the hilt of his sword, yet he dared not draw.   One serrin, alone and confident in the open, suggested others hiding nearby, where no human eye would spot them.   Typically serrin men, with powerful arms to draw their enormous bows, who could spit a human skull to a tree from a hundred paces, through thick woods in the dead of night.
   “Maldereld?” he said.   Despite all exhaustion and fear, he gained some small pleasure at the scorn to be heard in his tone.   “Maldereld the great serrin General?”
   “General is your word, Leyvaan,” said Maldereld.   Her voice held the faintest trace of an accent, despite the flawless Larosan pronunciation.   “We have our own.”
   “You are not Maldereld,” Leyvaan retorted.   “Maldereld is no...”   And he stopped, frozen before the word could leave his lips.   Maldereld’s eyes narrowed slightly, her head cocked to one side.   Like a predator considering its prey, and wondering how it might taste.
   “No girl?” she said, with dangerous cool.   “I assure you, Leyvaan, I am no girl.   Our ages confuse you, although we do not live so vastly longer than yourselves, truly.   I have experience enough to have earned my position.   Moreso than you.   Oathbreaker.   Thief.   Murderer.   Slaughterer of children.   I made you.   I supported your rise.   I assisted you to unite the Bacosh beneath a single crown.   And now, we all have seen what the promises and treaties of human kings are worth.”
   Leyvaan simply stared, his balance precarious upon weakening knees.   The surety of the serrin’s poise, and the cold, quiet fury in her tone, laid clear the truth behind her words.   It struck with the force of a final humiliation.
   “Maldereld?” Leyvaan exclaimed, in little more than a hoarse whisper.   “This is you?”
   The serrin’s stare was cold death, far worse than hot blooded fury.   “Never once did you think to meet with me,” she said, taking several calm steps forward, through the hacked and ruined debris of garden plants.   “Always my messages were borne by courier.   I had thought to present myself directly, but others advised against it.   You would never take a woman so seriously, it was said.
   “And so we watched, and waited, and communicated from afar.   We were so tired of your petty wars upon our borders, and we could not continue to care for your refugees that spilled across the Ipshaal in their growing hundreds.   Our care spawned desire and desperation among the others of your poor and downtrodden, whom you had so callously neglected, and soon, indeed, the trickle did become a flood.
   “’Help us reunify the Bacosh’ you said!”   The cold, blue eyes blazed.   Leyvaan’s retreating boot heel struck a patch of moss, and he stumbled.   “’A united Bacosh will cease all wars, bring peace and prosperity to our peoples, and will end your troubles with refugees forever’ you said!   I argued so hard to convince my people that this path was right and proper.   We do not like to meddle in human affairs.   We did not deem it polite.”   With bitter, biting sarcasm.   “And so finally, finally, they agree that we should assist, and just when you have unity, peace and prosperity within your grasp, you do this!”
   Maldereld stopped her advance, thrusting with one hand toward the charred and ruined debris of the village.   “We released the souls of children here.   Of old men and women.   I have done masalem for more of my people upon the pyres than I had hoped to perform in an entire lifetime.   I have seen entire families butchered.   Little boys and girls, hacked and bloodied, their heads presented as trophies on poles for the amusement of your soldiers and your priests...”
   Tears streamed down her cheeks.   Somehow grief only made those startling blue eyes more terrible, and more inhuman.   “You spoke to me of partnership!   A great venture between human and serrin!   We extended the hand of friendship to you, and this is how you repay us!”
   Leyvaan’s hand tightened upon the hilt of his sword, his heart pounding in anticipation of one great, final effort.   Surely the Gods had not all abandoned him.   Surely this could not be the great destiny that had awaited him upon the Yupin Plains.   He had made it this far.   Surely it would not all end here, at the hands of a grieving she-demon beside the ruins of this pathetic little camp.
   “The alliance between human and serrin is not dead,” Maldereld continued, and the wavering grief of her tone was laid upon a foundation of pure steel.   “But this alliance shall be the last between Saalshen and any human king, and the armies that serve under them.   We hunt the last of your men even now.   Few have lived to see this dawn.   None shall live to see the next.   We are merciful people at heart, but this, great King, you have driven us to.   Hundreds of years from now, the lands of humans shall speak of the great army of the Bacosh, numbering more than twenty thousand strong, that marched into the depths of Saalshen, and was never seen nor heard from again.
   “You, good King, shall be the foundation stone upon which we strike the new treaty with all humanity.   You, and the lesson of your defeat, shall resound in human history for all the ages to come.   If we cannot reach you entirely with compassion, then we shall build upon a bedrock of simple fear, since that is all so many of your people seem to understand.”
   With a cry, Leyvaan tore his blade from its sheath, and charged.   Maldereld’s hand whipped to her shoulder, and withdrew a gleaming blade of serrin steel.   Leyvaan struck with all the honed power of a fine Ilduuri swordsman, but the slimmer, weaker woman answered with an angled blade that shot his own straight past its intended target, and flowed smoothly into a counter-slash that split cloak and armour from the King’s back, and tore through mail and flesh like a razor.
   Leyvaan screamed and stumbled... and then, realising he was still alive, slashed again at the calm, poised figure now circling behind him.   Again his blow deflected, like water about a stone, and again the never-pausing counterstroke split the armour across his stomach.   He clutched at the wound, the sword falling, eyes bulging at the impossible, incredible pain.   King Leyvaan of the Bacosh fell to his knees beside the small, bubbling stream, a hand clutched to his belly, now quickly drenching red.   Royal blood dripped upon the green grass and moss in steady, trickling droplets.   A final despoiling of a beautiful land.
   Maldereld stood over him, lean and beautiful in the cold morning light, body and blade poised together with a singular, flowing style that no human had ever used, nor presently come to match.   The razored edge, sharp beyond all the metal working skills of humans, moved now to one side, ready to deliver the final, ending blow.
   “And you, my King,” the serrin said quietly, “shall not be known as Leyvaan the Brave, nor Leyvaan the Great.   Your name, through all the ages to come, shall be Leyvaan the Fool.”

Tamora Pierce on Sasha at Goodreads

2012-02-11T18:22:00.000+10:30

A little while back I discovered Tamora Pierce had written a short review of Sasha on goodreads.com. (Scroll down the page, it's about 11 spots down). Always nice to get a good review from a respected peer.

Real Female Action Heroes

2012-02-05T19:46:00.017+10:30

Since I’ve been on the topic of female action characters in my own writing -- I sometimes get comments to the effect that ‘women just aren’t like that’. Well, let’s leave aside for a moment that most men aren’t like that either (it’s called fiction, get it?) and instead make a list of a few women I've found inspiring, because they are kinda like that.

TEN; Major Caroline Jensen

She’s the current female member of the USAF Thunderbirds display team, the third female display pilot and fourth female pilot overall. Like a lot of the women on this list, the fact that she’s a woman shouldn’t be a big deal -- women are fifty percent of the population, they should be fifty percent of the fighter pilots (and probably more than that, given that G-forces tend to favour women, more because of size than gender).

But society being what it is, women are only several percent of fighter pilots in the USAF -- the number has gone up, but remains very low overall. I’ve been interested in military aviation since I was little, so I know that what the Thunderbirds do is hard. Any significant mistake in display or practice is very likely fatal. Each pilot flies two years with the squadron, so women have flown four years total in the T-birds, about to be six following Major Jensen’s tour. It wasn’t long ago lots of people would have said women just physically can’t do this. But society’s been frequently wrong in the past, and continues to be.

NINE; Justine Henin

Yes, I know she’s retired, but she’s still my favorite female tennis player ever.

Justine’s unique. Conventional wisdom says women have to be big to hit the ball hard. Justine showed this is rubbish, it’s about technique and racquet-head speed, at 5-5 she frequently blew much larger women off the court. Sadly, very few young female players today, or their coaches, seem to have learned her lesson.

Conventional wisdom also says that women have to hit the ball flat to hit with power, because topspin means the ball goes up and down too much, meaning it takes longer to get to the target, and is thus slower. This is why most women’s tennis is so incredibly ugly, with hard winners one moment, then awful errors the next -- with no topspin there’s no margin for error, so the slightest mistake, or attack of nerves, will end with an error, which is of course also the reason the women’s game seems far more beset by nerves and poor temperament than the men’s. Justine showed the flat-hitting is rubbish too, because the whippy action that she used to put topspin on the ball also created more racquet head speed which also made her shots faster.

But of course, no one today seems to have learned that lesson either. I’ve had personal experience writing about women’s sports (basketball), and compared to the men, the coaching sucked. You have to wonder in how many other sports the women get stuck with loser, retread coaches who couldn’t make it in the men’s game, and how badly it’s affecting performance everywhere.

EIGHT; Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester

I’m hesitant to put Sergeant Hester up here, not because she doesn’t deserve it, but because like a lot of soldiers she’s a very reluctant hero. A sergeant in the military police from the Kentucky National Guard, she was awarded a bronze star for valour under fire in Iraq, 2005.

It’s also awkward to talk of real people who’ve fought in real wars in the context of ‘action heroes’, a fictional concept pedaled by people who perform a far less noble task than soldiers. And I’m sure any soldier who’s awarded anything will tell that it’s all just circumstance, it could have been anyone, lots of others who deserve equal or superior recognition who don’t get it, etc. And I’m sure they’d be right. So if you want to know how Hester got a bronze star, read about it here, and draw your own conclusions.

The point is not to single out any individual, more to use that individual’s example to be aware of what everyone else is doing. And ‘everyone else’, in the US military’s MPs, means a lot of women. Women end up there because it’s technically not a combat role, even though a lot of what they do is basically infantry with handcuffs. Does this mean current restrictions on women in combat should be lifted? The actions of one soldier can’t have any significant impact on a policy that large, nor should they -- the women in combat debate has always been as much cultural as technical, and by culture I mean military culture. And that’s not to dismiss it, culture is important. The military should be left its own space to do its own figuring out on this one. Just don’t presume the ban should stay because women fall apart when the shooting starts. That part of the debate, Hester and others have ended.

SEVEN; Elena Myers

No, she hasn’t done much yet -- except become the first woman to win a motorcycle road race in AMA history, at age 16. A junior race, against fellow teenagers, but even so.

There’s immediately far too much pressure on someone like Elena to do well. This is because she’s the only woman, pretty much anywhere, with a serious chance of making it big -- other women race, but to hit the big time you have to be a teenager winning top junior races, and no other girl has ever done it. If you’re watching a men’s race, most of those men aren’t going to become the next superstar. There might be twenty competitors, and out of those twenty, two or three may emerge. But with Elena, there’s just Elena, and if she doesn’t do it, well, serious female contenders aren’t exactly growing on trees. Unfortunately, if she fails, some idiots will blame her gender, because in any given race at that level, she's almost always her gender's only representative. If a man fails, there’s always a lot more men.

But if she DID make it to the very top... There are still lots of people who doubt women’s driving on four wheels, and think they’ll never conquer Nascar, F1, etc. But motorcycles are so much more physical than cars, MotoGP riders are to four wheel drivers what triathletes are to ten pin bowlers. On a bike you literally have to put your whole body into it -- if you don’t, the bike doesn’t turn corners, which could be a problem. Thus the reason motorcycle races don’t go for hours like car races, the riders would fall off from exhaustion. So if a woman can make it on two wheels, four wheels suddenly doesn’t look so hard.

Plus, look at that face. On top of a winner’s podium at MotoGP level, can you imagine the endorsements? And speaking of endorsements...

SIX; Danica Patrick

Yes, I know a lot won’t think her a great role model because her popularity is at least in part a victory of looks and marketing over performance. But she’s still worth a mention.

Why? Because she’s the first. Successful, popular female driver in an otherwise exclusively macho sport, that is. First is not the same as best, but first still isn’t nothing. The barriers were enormous, and marketing has always been at least as important in motorsport as performance anyway, for men or women. Plenty of drivers do averagely for years and years, then suddenly have a great run and win lots of races. Did they suddenly become more talented? No, their equipment improved. That means money, and sponsorship, and everything else. All the sport’s most legendary drivers would be unknowns today without good money and equipment, talent alone doesn’t make you fast.

So Danica deserves credit for being a ruthless pragmatist, and using her looks, and her image, to lock down that part of her performance. And yes, I do believe that ruthless pragmatism, in pursuit of a good cause, is something worth celebrating. Who knows, maybe she’ll even start winning a few more races soon.

FIVE; Samantha Stosur

I know, another tennis player. I actually don’t like women’s tennis much at the moment, for the reasons I outlined above. It can be terrific, and has been, but the way it’s played today, usually isn’t. But that’s why it’s so nice to see players, in the highest profile female pro sport, who do it differently.

Sam’s unique because she plays like a man. This shouldn’t be a novelty, in most sports women should play like men. The idea that there’s a different ‘female’ way to do it has ruined women’s sports before. As if female runners should be taught to hop on one leg, because the more logical two-legged solution is too masculine or something.

Sam doesn’t hit flat like most women, she uses massive topspin, and slice, and uses the same high-spinning string that Rafael Nadal does. To accommodate the huge, whipping action this requires, she’s built like the proverbial brick shithouse. She’s only 5-7, but will put a flat serve down the middle at 190kph, as fast as a lot of taller men. And much of the men’s tour would kill for her high kicking second serve.

Yes, she’s a bit of a headcase, and is capable of losing to pretty much anyone when she plays badly, which is sadly often. But on her day, and especially on clay, her best game is untouchable, and she usually only loses when she beats herself (again, sadly often). Better yet, she’s a tennis player, not a clothes horse, not a glamour princess, not a column-inch grabber in the tabloids. Not that she can’t look glamorous, she’s a great looking girl, she just couldn’t give a rats ass about that kind of thing. Because she’s a tennis player. Go figure.

FOUR; Meg Lanning

Exact details of Meg’s early cricketing career aren’t widely published, but she did play for Carey Grammar, a fairly exclusive high school in Victoria. Apparently she was one of their very best batsmen, right up until she graduated. This wouldn’t be so remarkable, except that she did it in the boys’ team, in a competition that produces some of Australia’s very best male cricketers.

I’ve long been suspicious of cricket’s claims as an exclusively masculine sport up there with Australian football, or any of the world’s rough macho games that we all accept women can’t beat men at. Cricket is a judgement game, and what ball the batsman chooses to leave alone is as important as the one he chooses to hit. And faster bowling is actually easier to score off, all you need to do is lay bat on it and it goes to the fence. In the longer forms of cricket, all the best shots are style, not power. But until very recently, most high schools would never have dreamt of allowing a girl in the boys’ team, any more than an American school would let a girl quarterback their football team.

I don’t know what expectations Meg faced and faced down, but I can imagine the usual arguments -- she’ll be outsized by the time she turns seventeen, she might get hurt against big male bowlers, she won’t have the strength, or the speed between wickets, etc, etc. All nonsense, apparently. She’s now one of the Australian women’s team’s best players.

All of which raises a curious prospect. Most women’s sports are drastically under performing, because their participation rate isn’t very high. I still remember when Australian pioneer pole vaulter Emma George was setting world records at 4 meters 60. Everyone was amazed women could vault that high. Now Yelena Isinbayeva regularly jumps over 5 meters. More women started doing it, and the previous standard that had looked so good got blown away. Also not long ago, there couldn’t have been more than one female junior cricketer in Australia for every thirty or forty boys. So the standard today, the product of those juniors, is way below where it would be, if participation rates were equal. How far below?

Far enough to make you wonder if a female batsman couldn't keep facing men well beyond high school, at the highest level. Today's female players say male batsmen outdo them for arm and wrist strength, but that's the point -- women's cricket isn't attracting the highest quality athletes yet, though Meg and Ellyse Perry show that might be changing. And I'm quite certain the above mentioned Sam Stosur could beat the likes of Ricky Ponting or Michael Clarke in an arm wrestle (for non-cricketing Americans, two of Australia's best batsmen, neither particularly large or strong). I bet she could hit the cricket ball about as hard too... but she's playing tennis, where she makes millions. Female cricketers are lucky to break even.

Pity Meg didn’t keep playing coed for a few more years, it would have been interesting to see how well she did against men beyond high school -- her male highschool team mates probably did okay, and she was beating a lot of them, so why not her? But again, segregation is this society’s reflex, and potential is squashed by low expectations.

THREE; Gina Carano

Well obviously. And also obviously, the very first time the sport of mixed martial arts actually acquires a real female star, with looks, talent and personality in equal measure, she gets snapped up by Hollywood to become a movie star. So works society. And who can blame her, MMA stars don’t make that much money yet, let alone female ones. Get paid peanuts to be punched in the face, or paid lots to pretend to punch and be punched in the face on camera?

Either way, it’s cool she serves this purpose, of displaying the massive variability within each gender, not just between genders -- and to the more people the better. You sometimes read idiot males on the internet asserting that despite their lack of fighting skills, they could still take down Gina. If you’re driving a bulldozer, sure. With males who have proper fighting skills, and physique, they obviously get the advantage back, but unless they’re significantly better than the average part time scrapper, most men wouldn’t have a chance against her -- and that probably includes some of the lesser male MMA pros out there of her weight division or below.

Gina’s example is also curious in illustrating the gap between female expectations of male sexuality, and the reality. Lots of women presume men prefer skinny, delicate women, and do scary things like starving themselves to achieve that ideal. But Gina Carano has one of the lustiest, droolingest male fanboy followings of any woman anywhere. And this is a woman with arms like a construction worker.

TWO; Rear Admiral Norah Tyson

Okay, hands up if you knew that the US Navy had a carrier strike group commanded by a woman? No, I didn’t think so. Carrier Strike Group Two is led by USS George HW Bush, which operates Carrier Air Wing 8, a bunch of support vessels, and more firepower than a lot of mid-sized nations. It is commanded by Rear Admiral Norah Tyson. Now you know.

ONE; Who have I missed?

Death of the Female Movie Star?

2012-01-28T23:45:00.004+10:30

For two years now, I’ve had a window seat view of what happens when a non-A-List producer tries to pitch a movie project starring a female lead character in an action role, and the results make me wonder if we are approaching the worst ever period in American movie history for women on the screen, in business terms at least.

By window seat view I mean very high up and a long way from the action, because I am a novelist in Australia, and Los Angeles is half a planet away. But the producer was pitching the Cassandra Kresnov Series, which I wrote, and said producer liked because let’s face it, there aren’t many female action characters better if I do say so myself. The producer is far from an A-lister, but currently has a movie in development for Legendary Pictures, which is no small bananas. Just recently he admitted defeat and cut me loose, stating that while he’s had success packaging other projects, this one would require an A-Lister, and contacts that he just doesn’t have.

The problem with Cassandra Kresnov? She’s female, of course. ‘They’re just not interested,’ he said. ‘I mention she’s female and that’s the end of the conversation.‘ Or words to that effect. Now I’ve written about female action leads before and I’m not about to rehash that again. Instead, let’s accept that most of Hollywood think female action leads don’t work, and are disinterested in any IP requiring one. For me, the very naive writer, the truly troubling question is ‘why don’t A-List actresses do something about it?’

Because if there’s one group of people in Hollywood with a huge vested interest in attacking the industry’s ‘no female action leads’ policy at every opportunity, it’s A-List actresses. Financially speaking, Hollywood has never been more dependent upon these kinds of films as it is today, and nearly all of the leading roles in those films are given to men. Special effects get more advanced every day, we now have 3D which lends itself to action movies, and cinema chains are competing with direct TV and DVDs for revenue, pushing distributors toward the one kind of movie that really ought to be seen on the big screen -- action films, with big budgets and huge CGI.

But women are getting shut out of these, Hollywood’s most lucrative movies, which means most new actresses can never acquire the reputation of being a bankable star, someone whose presence will pull in big crowds and justify enormous salaries. More traditional ‘female’ movies just don’t pull in the same revenue, thus leading to today’s situation where nearly all of the industry’s heavy hitting actors are men. The only woman in the club, Angelina Jolie, got there due to some very successful action movies, which I submit pretty much proves the point.

I’d naively presumed that my producer might be able to float Cassandra Kresnov past some of these A-List actresses whose careers might benefit from a title role in a big action movie, and get some enthusiasm, which he could then take to the studios. But no, because even a producer with a movie in development for Legendary Pictures can’t so much as talk to an A-list actress. The gates of those ivory towers are guarded by the Agencies, and no one may talk to an actress who does not first go through her agent. What terrible fate befalls those poor fools who try, I shudder to think.

So the only way an actress is going to land a significant role in a tentpole action film is if her existing circle of agents and their A-List contacts propose one for her. It does happen occasionally, but it’s rare, and women cast in such films are typically outnumbered three to one or more, and very, very rarely land the lead. And the one potential circuit breaker -- the non-A-List producer with a cool original project from left field -- is blocked by an agency system where A-List agents won’t return calls from anyone beneath them, and non-A-Listers won’t waste their time on projects where the chances of success are perceived to be small.

In Political Science, my other expertise, there’s a field of theory known as Organisational Theory, which studies how large and complex organisations get locked into patterns of behavior by their own internal processes, leading to outcomes that are more systemic than rational. I think we can see that these systemic issues in Hollywood may be leading to the decline, and possibly even the extinction, of the superstar actress as we know her. In an industry where star power is determined by the size of your last movie’s profit, if women are never given the opportunity to pull in the big profits, they’ll never be big stars. And if all the big stars are men, then logically all the movies the studios will be scurrying to make for them, action or otherwise, will also be about men, and presumably female audiences will at some point grow sick of it, and curl up with the latest episode of True Blood or Castle, or maybe even a good book instead.

Somewhere, somehow, actresses who’d like to follow Angelina’s career trajectory are going to have to chase down projects on their own, defy all who try to discourage them, and try to get them made. Because playing it safe, and only taking the roles that the industry tosses their way, will only lead to the continuing diminution of women from within the Hollywood star system, to the point that one day there’ll be barely a single heavy hitting female star left, and every big budget movie the industry produces will be by men, about men, for men.

Fantasy Book Review

2012-01-14T11:41:00.003+10:30

Now here's a pretty cool review of Petrodor.

How to Make Female Action Movie Leads Work

2011-07-01T02:13:00.001+09:30

Guest post on SF Signal.

Sasha's Up Again

2011-06-25T11:24:00.000+09:30

Right here.

Sasha on Kindle

2011-06-23T16:59:00.002+09:30

So my publisher does a big promotional deal for 'A Trial of Blood and Steel' by releasing the first novel, Sasha, for free on Kindle for North American readers... and then the Amazon download site for Sasha crashes, just as Sasha hit the 30th most downloaded free thing on all of Amazon. They'll get it back up and running soon I imagine, but that's a hell of a way to kill some good momentum. If you want a free Kindle copy of Sasha, just visit the link below at some point in the near future and it should be working again... or if there's a new link, I'll post that here.

It occurs to me that in all this conversation about how ebooks are empowering individuals, on Kindle at least, Amazon remains the giant elephant in the room, and right now that elephant is sitting on me.

Sasha Free on Kindle!

2011-06-16T00:34:00.003+09:30

Like the title says.

Haven Review

2011-05-08T17:08:00.001+09:30

And another review by Stefan.

Continuum 7

2011-05-08T17:05:00.003+09:30

I'll be at the Continuum 7 Convention in Melbourne from June 10th to 13th. Come along and say hi, or bring a book to be signed, or both!

Tor Review

2011-04-30T13:26:00.001+09:30

Nice review of A TRIAL OF BLOOD AND STEEL on the Tor.com website.

Alexander Downer

2011-04-29T01:28:00.002+09:30

Met Alexander Downer today (former Australian Foreign Minister, for all you non-Aussies). Nice guy, had a long chat about the PhD.

Cycling Trevails

2011-03-26T23:03:00.004+10:30

Went on an interesting cycle ride two days ago. Firstly, cycling up Crossroad toward the Mt Barker Freeway, I was passed by a P-plater within a few inches of my right arm. The car stopped at a red light at the freeway traffic lights, and I caught up, stopped alongside, and rapped on the window. The girl inside looked up, startled, from her mobile phone -- texting. No wonder she nearly hit me. I informed her of my displeasure.

Nearing the top of the freeway cycle path climb (at Eagle on the Hill), much more happily, I was passed for the first time in my entire life while climbing something high, by a girl (she was nice enough to say 'hi' as she zoomed by). I say girl because I think she was fairly young, probably a local institute of sport rider, there's quite a few of them in Adelaide. I caught up briefly on the flatter bit, then it got steep again, and she left me for dead. I was actually quite pleased -- more women should cycle, and it's about time I got out-climbed by one, cause I'm a steady climber, but I'm not really built to be a good one. The scary thing was, this girl was doing repeats, she passed me earlier heading down while I was going up, then chased back after me to pass me on the way up, then came zipping down again as I approached the top -- she might have been on her third or fourth climb of the day.

Then, on the way back down Sheoak Road (which is a long, winding, high speed descent along a forested hill ridge beside Belair National Park) another idiot P-plater (young guy this time) came up on the road furniture where there road narrows to one lane, even though I was already in that lane going the other way, and he's supposed to stop and wait. I had to wave like crazy for him to even see me, then told him loudly what I thought of his driving as I passed. Cycling's great like that, I get to yell obscenities in public at least several times a week. It's healing.

Tick, tick, tick...

2011-03-22T00:16:00.003+10:30

Note to the leaders of the shrinking number of all the world's remaining non-democracies. Non-democratic systems of governance are fundamentally unstable. Should you persist with maintaining non-democratic systems, your government WILL collapse at some point, and probably sooner than you think.

Yes, I know it all looks very fine and stable now. It did in the Soviet Union too, and Egypt, and Libya, and Yemen. And Indonesia, and Serbia, etc, etc. It always looks stable, right up until it doesn't. And then down they come, predictable as clockwork, one after another. Autocratic governments are non-responsive systems. Modern societies change fast. Governments must change with them if they wish to survive. Democracies can do this, being responsive systems. Non-democracies can't, and collapse. These laws are not some Western conspiracy. They're just laws any other natural law. You can defy them for a time, but at some point they're going to win.

China, are you watching? Tick, tick, tick...

Sarah Palin's India Speech

2011-03-21T02:14:00.003+10:30

So of course Sarah Palin's speech in India managed to echo just about every point I made in my previous post, plus quite a few more. The nutty thing about internet blogs on this stuff is that everyone's talking about how they hate/love Palin, and not listening to what she's saying and what it means, given how huge the Tea Party's influence on American politics looks to be for the next ten years. I get so tired of the partisan crap I can't begin to say, I'll listen to any politician of any stripe who has something interesting to say (and yes, despite what you've heard, Palin does).

I don't think even most foreign policy types realise how important it is, if a big chunk of American conservatism increasingly adopts India as their poster child. As moderator Arun Shourie says in the Q&A, Republican Presidents tend to be better for India than Democrats. The danger for Democrats is that when India and China are number two and three in the world behind America, they'll find themselves without any real foreign friends -- China is no one's friend but China's, while Indians will all be wishing the other guy (or gal) got elected, not the Democrat. It's not a good look.

India is a Tea Party Nation

2011-02-28T19:37:00.002+10:30

On February 24th, it was announced that Sarah Palin would be attending the “India Today Conclave” in New Delhi, to give a keynote speech on March 19. In Politico, Andy Barr called the conference’s decision to invite Palin ‘odd’. I think the only odd thing about it is why it didn’t happen sooner.

There’s an interesting convergence between the values that are today transforming India into a great power, and the values of America’s ‘Tea Party’. To be sure, there’s backwardness and corruption aplenty in India, but here’s the point -- all those failings have given rise to a new way of thinking among India’s emerging revolutionaries, a ‘new India’ which is responding to the ‘old India’ in much the same way as the American Tea Party sees themselves as fighting the old politics as usual in Washington DC.

At its inaugural convention in February 2010, Palin articulated the Tea Party’s core values as being, ‘...lower taxes, smaller government, transparency, energy independence and strong national security.‘ She could have been reading from the wish list of demands from India’s new guard.

Let’s take the first three together -- lower taxes, smaller government and transparency. India’s economic revolution did not begin by government decree, it began because some Indian entrepreneurs in the IT industry figured they could make good money writing code cheaply. Software was the one area of the Indian economy not taxed and regulated to within an inch of its life, largely because India’s legions of backward babus (civil service bureaucrats) hadn’t heard of IT, and still used typewriters. The government helped things along by going completely broke in 1991, which effectively forced them to liberalise with a gun to their head. Other entrepreneurs followed the IT sector’s lead in the liberalising climate, and the rest is (ongoing) history.

India’s economic success is completely unlike most of East Asia in that their businesses generally do not receive nor desire direct government assistance. In the Indian experience, government assistance only makes matters worse. Analysts of India’s private sector are fond of saying that the best way for the government to help is to get out of the way, and that India’s economic success has occurred in spite of the government, and not because of it.

Sound familiar? Ronald Reagan would have probably called it a vindication of every economic theory he believed in. A lot of Tea Partiers would no doubt say the same. Of course, it’s not the only way to grow a developing economy, as China and South East Asia demonstrate. But as a lot of people are recently remarking, it has its advantages.

India has a long way to go, but there’s a strong argument to be made that most of what’s wrong with India today can be traced to too much or poorly implemented taxation, regulation, bureaucracy and government-in-general, and not enough transparency. Thus, Palin’s first three points remain the primary goals of most private-sector-friendly reformers in India.

Then we have energy independence and national security. Both are related, of course, as recent events in the Middle East make only too clear. India has big energy requirements, and getting bigger. Indians worry just as much about the price of imported oil as Americans, and would like to develop their domestic sources more so they can import less. Drill baby drill? And in defence, India is modernising as fast as it can, spending enormous sums of money in doing so, and is slowly abandoning its old ideals of non-alignment in favor of muscular deterrence by any and all means necessary. Don’t tread on me?

The fact is, these days there are a lot of Indians who though they may have more natural political sympathies with America’s Democrats, would prefer for India’s sake a Republican American President. Democrats are more likely to talk of banning outsourcing to Indian IT firms. Democrats are less likely to support India’s nuclear deal with America. And Democrats are more likely to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, when most Indians would rather that they stayed.

It’s no surprise that Indian convention organisers are interested enough in the Tea Party that they’d want to have its most prominent member over for a chat. The most surprising thing is that there’s anyone in Washington surprised that Indians and Sarah Palin might have something to talk about. But then, knowing how little the political media know about India, maybe not that surprising.

Transmetropolitan Review

2011-02-04T00:24:00.003+10:30

Posted a review of Warren Ellis's 'Transmetropolitan' over at the Pyr blog.

More Cassandra Kresnov

2011-01-29T02:48:00.004+10:30

Yes, I've decided to write a new series. Or actually, they kind of decided to write themselves, they've been brewing in my mind for quite a while now. Sandy has a lot of unfinished business with the people who made her, and I've had lots of time to think about how that might play out. How many books? No idea, we'll have to see how the series goes.

Iron Man Suits

2010-11-12T14:36:00.003+10:30

I've been waiting for someone to make progress on these things for ages. Unlike a lot of crazy cool SF stuff, they're just ridiculously useful in real life.

All the comparisons are to Iron Man, but these really look closer to the loader suits in 'Aliens', and thus a lot more practical. What they need now is a real world market, because once they find that, they'll establish a revenue stream which leads to reinvestment and further development.

The main limitation is of course the power supply -- it only works when permanently plugged in. That shouldn't restrict them too much in any fixed location with built in power, like a military base. Rig them up to a generator and you could use them with any vehicles that come into a loading zone, maybe have some kind of overhead suspension system for the power cable so no one trips on it. Should free up a lot of manpower and lead to more rapid turnarounds, which the army ought to like. Also I'd guess the navy, especially aircraft carriers, where there's a lot of heavy lifting of sensitive objects in enclosed spaces.

Then there's a bunch of civilian roles, like on construction sites, or in emergency services. Fire fighters could use them to haul heavy equipment up stairs, or to shift rubble from collapsed buildings, they'd just have to run them off the generators on their trucks. I'm sure someone would find uses for them in mining operations or on oil drilling platforms, maybe even on some big factory floors, shifting heavy parts.

I'm skeptical of the claims that they'll be free of their power cables any time soon, even if battery technology improves a lot, all those batteries will still be heavy and take up a lot of space. If you're using it for hauling gear over distances, that's space you can't use to carry something else. Plus, like the guy says, batteries can explode when damaged. But there should be enough markets in its present form for them to start getting mass produced, and once that happens, who knows how cheap they'll get, or what new technologies will be invented specifically for them.

Sure as hell if you could free them from their power cables, plus give them armourplate, they'd be murder in urban combat -- imagine something with the mobility to fit through doorways and climb stairs, armoured enough to be small-arm proof, and equipped with weapons and ammo so heavy it'd usually have to be mounted on vehicles. Maybe two of these per platoon as roaming fire support, like a cross between an infantryman and a tank, warfare starts to look very SF.

I do think civilian models would have to come with operators licenses, though. They look like they'd be a lot more dangerous than cars.

So What Happens to Ahsoka Tano?

2010-11-11T22:23:00.003+10:30

I'm not a big fan of the Star Wars prequel movies, but the Clone Wars animated series is a fun distraction... crappy dialogue but that's so much a part of the Star Wars series I reckon if they made something with good dialogue, people would complain. Lovely visuals though. And now the keepers of the canon have a problem -- they introduced a new prominent character, Ahsoka, who is nowhere to be seen in the live action Star Wars 3 (the animated series is set between 2 and 3). Which creates a fun guessing game trying to work out how the writers will dig their way out of their continuity conundrum.

Here's what I'd do -- Ahsoka is on a mission, doing something heroic, and gets herself infected with some incurable disease or toxin, kind of like taking a bullet (or a blaster) to save someone else. Rather than let her die, Anakin has her frozen (carbonite, naturally) in the hope that someone in the future will create a cure. That explains why she's missing in Episode 3, why Anakin won't talk about her (he insists on treating her as though she's just visiting family and will be back soon (grief avoidance strategy) and everyone else plays along), and avoids the nastiness of what is basically a kid's show killing a major character who is herself just a kid. It also allows her to survive the Jedi purges, because when Anakin becomes Vader he can't track her down to eliminate the last of the Jedi, because those entrusted with her protection hide her, and being frozen, she gives off no signal in the force. Then when Lucas gets around to making some Star Wars series set after the original movies, she can be found, unfrozen, cured, and reintroduced as an adult character.

Let's see if the writers do better than that.

Enge, Kenyon and me on Bibilobuffet

2010-11-08T19:59:00.002+10:30

Here's a nice long interview with me, James Enge and Kay Kenyon. Here's Gillian's intro;

My next interview is of three Pyr authors.

Why three authors from the same imprint? In the bookshop, we pick up a book and decide to buy it (or not). So much goes into the making of the books we take off the shelf. The single biggest thing that makes an imprint work is how it’s perceived by readers. We look at that cover or at that name and, if the imprint has been particularly clever, we have a bit of an understanding of the work that we’re likely to find in there. I’ll be exploring more imprints later on, I think, but Pyr is an outstanding one to start the ball rolling. It’s one of a very few publishers I know who have no bad books to their name (if they have one, I haven’t read it). Additionally, it not only has a very clear image of what it does, but it communicates that image to the world. If I were a sensible person, I would be asking the editor and management how they do what they do, but today I’m asking writers. Without the writers, an imprint is just a logo, after all, and it’s the nature of the authors and the selection of the authors that makes everything possible.

Read the whole thing.

Hollywood

2010-10-24T02:40:00.002+10:30

It's true. There is an ongoing serious interest from a feature film producer in LA, in Cassandra Kresnov. I don't want to talk about it too much because at my distance from Australia, discussing the inner workings of that mysterious industry is a bit like speculating about what happens in the core of a red dwarf star. But he's real (the producer), he's got one or two potentially big things coming up, and he's obviously got very good taste!

Emails and Apologies

2010-10-24T02:37:00.003+10:30

No, I haven't been updating much this year. I've had a few killer deadlines and just haven't felt up to blogging much. Also, I changed computers at the beginning of the year, and only just realised that I screwed up the webpage email from my old computer... so I haven't been receiving much of that email. Apologies if you've tried to contact me and haven't had a reply! I'll get around to replying in a few more weeks, but first there's a nasty deadline I have to get past.

Tor.com Interview

2009-12-08T16:50:00.003+10:30

Big new interview by Lou Anders on Tor.com about Sasha, female characters and how Lian Hearn helped get Sasha published in Australia.

A Brief History of Tanusha

2009-11-16T18:04:00.003+10:30

Following on from my world-building piece about ‘Sasha’, I thought I’d do something similar for the ‘Cassandra Kresnov Series’.

Obviously there’s a fair few scientific improbabilities in Cassandra’s world, starting with Earthlike planets of roughly similar gravity, atmosphere, etc. My technical excuse is that the primary scientific improbability (faster than light travel) gives humanity such a wide range that even if such worlds are a million to one, humanity now has access to tens of millions of stars, so logically there are quite a few million-to-one shots inside that range. But the real point of a story like Cassandra’s is not to ponder scientific accuracy, it’s to tell a good story. So long as it’s vaguely plausible, science shouldn’t get in the way. Besides which, no one has any real idea how many Earthlike planets there are... maybe there’s plenty, just waiting for us to figure a way to reach and colonise.

Tanusha is one such planet. We never really see the planet because we’re concentrated where most of the people are, in the city of Tanusha. Tanusha has 57 million people at the time of ‘Crossover’, though even by ‘Killswitch’ it’s gone up a million or so. It’s a boomtown, and was planned that way from inception. For one thing, environmentalists have it wrong when they oppose large cities, putting people into big cities keeps them out of the countryside, so all environmentalists should be fans of skyscrapers -- cities that aren’t allowed to grow upward will grow outward instead, eating natural land as they go. Dense cities are also more economically productive, which is not to say farmers are unnecessary (though with futuristic hydroponics, synthetic food replication etc, who knows?) only to say that the more we move into the future, the less significant farming becomes as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product in any economy. That still leaves us with mining, but again with nano-tech and replication technologies, who knows where minerals will be coming from?

There’s no doubt Tanusha is inspired by my experience with certain emerging Asian megalopolises, though it is completely unlike any single one of them. For a start, most of the Asian cities I’ve been to are relatively poor, save for Tokyo and Singapore. Tanusha is phenomenally wealthy, it would be hard to survive there on a budget. It’s also a fairly utopian vision of the future in that it’s the end product of huge advances in urban planning and associated technologies, and functions like digital clockwork. There are no slums, no garbage in the streets, no ‘bad neighbourhoods’. Even the rich/poor divide, a feature of all cities today, is mitigated by planning that mixes all income levels together and gives everyone access to services, transport, etc.

Is any of this possible? There are urban planners today who believe that it probably is, and given how much better our cities have become in the past few hundred years, it would be silly to dismiss them. On the other hand, this kind of planning does smell suspiciously like socialism, and will be opposed by all those who dislike the association. My personal dislike of socialism stems from the fact that it usually doesn’t work. Those bits that do work, I tend to support. In Tanusha, we have a functioning form of socialism in urban planning, that works amazingly well. And of course, as a new settlement that literally descended from the heavens onto virgin land, its planners had the option of telling anyone who didn’t like it that they didn’t have to come. Plenty of other settlements in the galaxy, go find something else that suits you better.

Tanusha is built across a huge river delta as it sprawls through thick forest on its way to the ocean. I’m assuming they have hugely effective water management systems in place for when the river floods. As a result, Tanusha is very green, somewhat sticky and humid in summer, and has water everywhere in the form of river tributaries, and rain. This is definitely a South East Asian influence, my best memories of Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bandar Seri Begawan are of thick greenery, city waterfronts, and amazing thunderstorms. Tanusha has waterfront property everywhere thanks to all the tributaries -- live high enough and you’ll have a water view.

Structurally though, Tanusha is possibly more like Tokyo than anywhere else I’ve been. It doesn’t LOOK at all like Tokyo, Tanusha residents visiting Tokyo would sniff and stick their noses up at that lowrise concrete slum (in the daytime at least, nights in Shibuya’s neon glare would be far more familiar). But Tokyo is organised around a series of decentralised neighbourhoods, each one like a little highrise center in its own right. At the center of each is a transport node, an intersection of subway lines, suburban trains and bus routes, bringing a flood of people through every day. In between these centers, however, things are more lowrise, sedate and suburban.

Tanusha takes this decentralisation to a new level. If it had one central hub, at fifty seven million strong, the city would be unmanagable. Imagine one central CBD for that many people, it would be ten times the size of Manhattan, and the sprawl beyond would be immense. Such a sprawl would have endless blindspots that urban planning couldn’t fix, bad neighbourhoods, bad transport because it’s simply a long way from anywhere productive.

So Tanusha has no center. Rather it has about fifty or sixty centers, roughly one for every million people. Each one is a transport intersection, as in Tokyo, and is zoned for highrise. In between are the suburbs, leafy green and sedate, with stand alone houses and low rise apartment blocks, parks, amenities, etc. You can live in there and barely realise the scale of the city, your view blocked by trees. But get up higher and you’ll see clusters of towers, each one a city in its own right, stretching away across the horizon in all directions, the furthest ones all dim and hazy in the humid air (that’s not pollution with Tanusha’s zero-emission technology, but I do like that Asian-haze effect in the sunsets. I just don’t like breathing it).

For transport Tanusha has everything. For long trips across the city, there are big above-ground maglev trains that only stop at each major transport hub. Connecting them for middle distance trips are subway lines like we know today, stopping more frequently and connecting up each seperate district. Linking those, light rail, like trams, for that last-meter connectivity. Cars drive themselves on the central grid, they form up in large peletons on the big highways like nascar races, automated systems meaning they can be a few centimeters apart with no danger, no wind resistance and very high speeds, so you can get across town pretty easily that way too.... but as everywhere, parking can be a hassle, so public transport’s easier. Or if you’re wealthy and important, there are cruisers -- flying cars to you and me, which I just had to include because they’re so damn cool, and allowed characters the personal mobility I really wanted. They aren’t cheap, maybe five percent of the population can afford them... though knowing Tanusha, a lot of that might be the government just inflating the cost of parking and liscencing to keep the numbers managable.

If Sandy’s adventures in Tanusha were more serialised, here are some questions I’d get into the SF nitty gritty of if I had the chance.

How does a city have no poor people? Good question. And here’s where Tanusha gets really interesting -- it may be utopian on the surface, but if you dig a little, things get more messy. A planned city like Tanusha has a vested interest in not having any poverty, because it’s simply not an affordable city on a low income, and no ‘bad neighbourhoods’ means no ‘cheap neighbourhoods’. Is there social security? Another good question, connected to other answers.

Tanusha tries to solve all its issues with technology. Education has now evolved to the point where knowledge can be directly fed into a person’s brain. Lack of skills is no longer an excuse not to have a job, and there’s no such thing as low skill labour any longer because robotics/automation takes care of that. High level education is thus 100 percent. But economics, in my opinion, can never be planned to the kind of precision that can guarentee all of them jobs, there’s always unemployed because the only economies that have 100 percent employment are planned economies, and planned economies always fail. Tanusha is a planned CITY. That’s different, that’s about where you put buildings and roads and swimming pools and why. In economics, Tanusha is an advanced capitalist economy, the exact mechanisms I’d be nuts to try and invent because economic systems have changed enormously just in the past few years (or the past few months if you’ve been paying attention) and will be unrecognisable again in another fifty, let alone five hundred plus. But suffice to say it has flexibility and slack built into it, and there’s always going to be unemployed, though hopefully not long term.

The great thing about tape teach education (directly into the brain) is that you can retrain real fast. Imagine today, getting laid off from your job as an accountant. Some analyst at the unemployment center looks at some figures, and says ‘well, we seem to have a surplus of accountants right now, but a shortage mid-level business managers. How’d you like to do an MBA?’ Which I imagine would cost you, but could be completed in six months or less (none of this Matrix-style ‘lean the entire encyclopedia in three seconds, let’s be a little more realistic).

The exact psychology of overlaying complex skill sets like this could lead to complications, however. And that’s the kind of thing that becomes entertaining in SF stories -- Philip K Dick loved this stuff, complications from technological solutions to social problems, things so obscure they’re five or six degrees separated from the source and no one else would think of.

So Tanusha’s a nice place to live. It’s spectacular on the grand scale, pretty on the small scale, aesthetically pleasing to most people from most angles, you just have to look and you’ll find something that suits your tastes somewhere. But, as often comes out in the novels, it’s something of a bubble, because when every whim is catered to, and life is so comfortable, its easy to forget about less pleasant stuff that goes on elsewhere. Which is what makes life so interesting for the Callayan Security Agency when the shit hits the fan, because they’re looked down upon as the rough and uncivilised agency in a city that no longer believes in such things as violence to maintain peace, and is painfully forced to change its mind, at least a little bit.

And of course there’s plenty of crime in Tanusha, some quite nasty, just very well hidden under 57 million people. There’s a lot of network freedom, meaning a whole class of folks very good at manipulation of that network inevitably begin to form their own counter culture, and feel they can cheat a living from it. Which in turn provides cover for the really nasty minority within that minority, the organised criminal rackets, which trade largely in technologies deemed illegal by the Federation or Tanushan nanny-state, and are prepared to play dirty to maintain their cashflow. There’s lots of those, and always lots of demand for their services, as the current war-on-drugs illustrates. So a small, elite paramilitary unit like CSA SWAT gets plenty of work... and from the rest of the Tanushan public, general disdain.

Especially when the galaxy’s most ass kicking manifestation of all this peaceful utopia’s worst fears suddenly joins their ranks.

Common Theme

2009-11-08T15:43:00.002+10:30

Pyr publisher Lou Anders has identified a common theme through many of the reviews for Sasha.

A Brief History of Lenayin

2009-10-31T15:47:00.004+10:30

Regular readers of fantasy may notice that the land of Lenayin is a little more complicated than many fantasy lands. This is because the real world is complicated, and I think a lot of fantasy novels don’t make much effort to do this justice. This is the age of monocultures. In the past, in most nations, things were more fractured.

Lenayin has eleven provinces, divided mostly along linguistic lines. It’s a rugged place, entirely mountainous but not like the Alps, with its neat divides between ranges and valleys. It’s probably more like Afghanistan, though with a kinder climate -- some areas are just very inaccessible, and it makes traveling around difficult. As a result, regional differences have become quite large, though the people all retain enough similarities to identify themselves as Lenay.

There’s some geographical inspiration for that -- Papua New Guinea for example, has hundreds of valleys and hundreds of languages, remote tribes in the jungle who have been isolated from each other for so long even though they’re quite close together, that their languages have split in all kinds of directions. Lenayin’s also had quite a few invasions over the centuries, new groups moving in, making lots of diversity.

Structurally, my ideas for Lenayin’s demographics were probably most inspired by India. The people themselves are nothing like Indians, of course, but the idea of a land divided between many language groups, a lot of whom don’t even speak the so-called primary tongue, appealed to me. Also like India, Lenayin is a nation of animist and ‘pagan’ beliefs whose ruling classes were dominated by a foreign religion. Of course, the Verenthanes would be considered by Muslims ‘pagans’ too, as they’re polytheists, but they’re both very structured and disciplined religions, well suited for the purposes of ruling classes.

But like I said, as a people, Lenays are completely different from Indians. Indians have always tended to be basically peaceful and hierarchical -- India has tended toward a worldview that some people are placed above other people, who are placed above other people, and so on up the line. That plus the sheer fertility of the land makes for a stable and long lasting civilisation. But Lenays are militant individualists, inspired I think by some mix of American or Australian liberalism. Or maybe the Scots, certainly William Wallace would have been right at home in Lenayin. Probably the militant bit comes from their origins from before any of them can remember, of invading hordes who won these lands by force. But also, the fertile lands in Lenayin are limited, resources sometimes scarce, and regions got into the habit of fighting to get what they needed.

Some might claim they’ve taken it a bit too far, with the result that Lenayin is basically a warrior society. Most of the population live in small towns as the landscape doesn’t really lend itself to big cities, and small towns don’t lend themselves easily to hierarchical society, there just isn’t the scale of population. Also, Lenays are individualists because it can be a rough place to live, and people need to be tough and resourceful (think Alaska, with similar landscape, though not quite so cold in winter). Combined with frequent fighting and in their earlier years no real central governance, this can lead to anarchy real fast, and in various periods of their history has done so.

So to stop the place falling apart completely, there are codes. Societies with very little functioning governance need codes of behaviour, especially when everyone is armed and potentially violent. And so Lenayin has evolved over many hundreds of years an honour code of warriors. They worship violence, but only in certain forms. Honourable killings, where two opponents or two sides are equally matched, are respected. Dishonourable killings, where one person or side never had a realistic chance of victory, are not. Of course, if a weaker person insults a stronger person, the stronger person is not bound to limitless patience, so weaker people learn to tread carefully, and strong people tend to swagger, as in all societies. People who violate the code are dealt with harshly.

This puts the brakes on the violence and makes a lot of Lenays (though by no means all) quite decent and respectable even by real world standards -- these basic tenets of morality are central to every Lenay’s life, especially the men (and all men are warriors, at least in theory). Insulting a Lenay is very risky business, but on the other hand a Lenay will run into a burning building to save a total stranger. No Lenay man can live with being called a coward, and they love the idea of heroism so much, they’d probably be fighting each other to be first in the door. Kind of like the ancient Greeks, I suppose.

Of course, these are the ideals of the code. In reality, children are killed in wars, men are murdered in cold blood, and the victors turn a blind eye and pretend not to notice. Some Lenays are cowards (and live in terror of discovery), and surely some cheat, steal and rape too. But not many, and not often, because these ideals are powerful, and are perhaps the single most important unifying concept that binds all the disparate people of the nation together, and makes them identify themselves as Lenays -- more important than ethnicity (which is all over the place), and language (ditto) or even religion (which is split in two, if you can even consider the Goeren-yai paganism a ‘religion’). They are a people bound together by common ideas... which I’ve always contended are far stronger than any of those other possible bonds. However, it is important to recall, much of that binding is done with blood, mostly each others’, and its constant spilling.

All of this also makes for an interesting dynamic with my main character, Sasha, in that she is a woman in a very patriarchal society, who comes to be respected as a warrior. It works in Lenayin where it would not in many other patriarchal societies, because of the Lenay value structure. Firstly, they value warriors, and skill at war. Sasha is trained by the best, Kessligh Cronenverdt, a legend in Lenayin and rightly known as the greatest swordman in the land. Now for a Lenay, that’s no guarantee of respect -- people have to earn their own respect, not just have it conferred upon them by a relationship with others, and they have bad names for people who assume a sense of entitlement by family, marriage or the like. But with Kessligh, they figure correctly that he wouldn’t waste his time if she weren’t good, and enough people have actually seen her fight that they can confirm it.

Kessligh’s skills are Nasi-Keth, which is a foreign importation from the serrin peoples of Saalshen, but Lenays don’t mind that either because foreign things don’t scare them (Lenayin is so diverse that everything seems foreign), and it’s hard to argue with results in something like sword fighting. The fact that Sasha is former royalty is cause for as much suspicion as anything else, but Lenays have great affection for crazy individualists, and it’s pretty obvious that a Lenay princess would have to be completely crazy to give up that life to become a Nasi-Keth trainee in the wilds, so she gains big bonus points right there. In most such patriarchal societies, people would just say she’s crazy, and condemn her. In Lenayin they agree that she’s crazy, but love her for it. That’s what makes Lenayin different.

This brings us to the last and perhaps most significant point about Lenayin -- unlike so many peoples in so many fantasy novels, Lenays couldn’t give a pile of horse manure about nobility, rank, status, or any of the sort. Lenays achieve status amongst their peers by being upstanding individuals. Which for Lenays, means that you have to be a respected warrior, but you also have to be a ‘good guy’, the kind of person people don’t mind taking advice from. Never ‘orders’, though. Lenays don’t do ‘orders’, except in crisies or wars, where village headmen and respected elders may be empowered to give them. But even there, any Lenay man who feels his personal honour violated by an order, is under no obligation to follow them.

Leading people of Lenayin, as the new class of rulers has discovered, is no easy thing. In fact, it can be rather like herding cats -- again, Afghanistan comes to mind. But then, a lot of lands possess a diversity of viewpoints, and a dislike of central authority, that has made them difficult to govern. The French, the British and the Americans to name just three.

I was interested as I wrote ‘Sasha’ that there weren’t many fantasy novels I could think of featuring a people who embraced what we political science types would call liberalism, roughly meaning the preeminence of the individual in society. I guess a lot of that is because there wasn’t all that much liberalism in the ancient societies that seem to inspire most fantasy novels. But there have been some -- Athens most notably, though with limits. The Romans too, amongst whom liberalism always existed as an idea, just never particularly well practised.

In ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Rohan and Gondor were fighting for freedom, yet lived within fairly rigid hierarchies and derived all honour from service to their respective kings or leaders. Better that, obviously, than Sauron. But if the King of Rhohan had ruled Lenayin instead, and Lenayin had been located next to Mordor, and the King was telling his people not to worry about all these armies of orcs pouring forth, the Lenays would have told him to shove it and gone off to war without him.

I can’t think of many fantasy novels where the people live beneath the rule of a king, but are ambivalent toward him and his authority. Because fantasy novels tend to be in love with the power of kings, and in love with the feudal system that sustains it... and sure, there is a lot of romance surrounding a position of such extreme authority. But the reality of such systems, of course, is that much of what we perceive as romance from that period of European history (picture glamorous king in crimson cloak on prancing white steed), was in fact propaganda by those kings who wanted to make themselves look good, and semi-divine, for obvious reasons.

Though power itself can be glamorous, much of the romance surrounding that power was in reality bullshit, and much of the manner in which kings actually ruled was cruel, arbitrary and unenlightened, to put it mildly. A good king could certainly be better than a bad king, but the system itself doesn’t allow much of what we would consider today ‘liberal open mindedness’ -- you’re either loyal, or you’re dead, and that applies to those living beneath good kings and bad kings alike. George RR Martin is one fantasy author who grasps this extremely well in ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’. But a lot of fantasy, sadly I think, tends to swallow the propaganda whole, because the propaganda is pretty. Perhaps this just goes to illustrate that there is a statue of limitations on the offense caused by nasty political systems. Fantasy writers glorifying Nazism would get into trouble. Feudalism, not so much.

And yes, I am just stirring.

I wanted the land of my primary characters to be unique in this way, in that they regard authority with suspicion, and will only accept leadership from people whose merits have been proven -- and even then, that leader has to tread lightly. If a king wants a war in Lenayin, he just needs to raise taxes. Though mind you, that’s been true in most lands through much of human history.

Whether this would make Lenayin a better place to live in than a traditional feudal European society, is a matter individuals can debate. On the one hand, in Lenayin you’d be relatively free. You could say what you wanted, and insult whom you chose, so long as you were prepared to fight to the death if they were sufficiently offended by it. (Most Lenays actually prefer to be polite, most of the time). You could work your own land, control your own business, and improve your own life however you chose. If you’re a woman, Lenayin would certainly be FAR better, because you’d have a lot of the freedoms without any of the violence (unless you were Isfayen, but that’s another story). It’s patriarchal, but not oppressively so, and Lenay men tell all the familiar jokes about how their women boss them around at home.

On the other hand, you could be a feudal peasant, working hard labour on land you don’t own, donating most of your crop to your local lord, and scraping by on whatever’s left. Periodically you’d be recruited into an army, have something big and sharp shoved into your hands and be told to kill people with it, for reasons that your lord deems suitable. If you protest... well, better that you don’t. On the upside, wars don’t come all that often, and most peasants (and most people in such lands ARE peasants) die in bed. At the age of about forty.

You can see which I’d prefer. But for Lenayin, the price of freedom is elevated levels of violence. So does that mean that Lenayin’s state of affairs is in some ways an argument for America’s Second Amendment and NRA membership? I’m slightly astonished at that myself, but I can’t deny the possibility. On the other hand, we’re in a more evolved age today, and comparisons with pre-technological ages can be very misleading. What do you think?

Cassandra Kresnov in Mass Market

2008-11-11T15:04:00.002+10:30

The Cassandra Kresnov Trilogy is now being released by Pyr in a mass market format. (that's a 'regular' paperback for all you non-publishing lingo types). This is Pyr's first foray into mass market, which is very cool for them, because it shows it's possible for a smaller publisher to enter the market, and grow larger. Where they'll be in another few years, who can tell?

Buncha Stuff

2008-01-06T14:28:00.000+10:30

Here's some reviews I haven't got around to posting up yet.

Firstly, at SF Signal, a nice review continuing theme that Cassandra Kresnov should be a movie. Been hearing that a bit lately. Incidently (or maybe not) I'm currently working on the screenplay.

Bookgasm ties Breakaway and Killswitch in the top five books of 2007.

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist also lists Killswitch in the 'year's best'.

There's also two interviews, firstly with Scifi Wire, and secondly with The World's Biggest Bookstore

There's also the BookSwede, who reviews Crossover... always nice to see people going back to the first book.

Life

2007-11-23T01:15:00.001+10:30

In the interest of supporting the cool TV shows that deserve the support, I'll put in my vote for Life as the best new TV show I've seen this year, easily. Anyone who likes NCIS should like it because the emphasis on likeable, quirky characters is similar... but Life craps all over NCIS (though I'll always have a soft spot for it, just for the characters).

'Life' has my kind of characters -- outsiders who've been through hard times and see the world from another perspective. It doesn't hit the mark all the time, but when it does, the writing manages to be funny, poignant and philosophically intriguing, all without ever once overstepping the line and showing off. It's got the brains and style of the great literary novel, but it's still proud to show the world that at heart, it's a fun paperback thriller. That's not an easy combination to pull off.

It's not Law and Order, which is good -- 'Law and Order' was always too procedural for me, pays scant attention to its characters, and dramatically is all tip and no iceberg. 'Life', if it doesn't sound too much like the cliche, is all about the journey (and I'm sure that line made it into the show's pitch to the network execs). Charlie Crews is quite possibly the oddest major character I've seen on a prime time show. Newly out of prison, he gazes at the world with childlike wonder, plays games with things that most people don't find funny, and asks rhetorical questions no one else can answer. I love that he got a huge multi-million dollar compensation payout, and still wants to be a cop, and not just because he's searching for whoever framed him. I love that he finds mundane things so fascinating. And I love Damian Lewis's slightly amazed deadpan delivery. I think Charlie Crews might just be the least boring man on TV.

The other characters are cool too, especially his partner Dani... watch it, and see.

Killswitch on Monsters and Critics

2007-11-16T16:39:00.000+10:30

Here's a review of Killswitch on Monsters and Critics.

'Definitely a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy with enough wiggle room for more to come from this series that serves up social commentary with military action in equal doses.'

Fantasy Book Critic Interview

2007-11-14T20:02:00.000+10:30

Robert Thompson at Fantasy Book Critic asks me a bunch of questions about a bunch of stuff. I reckon this is probably the best bunch of questions I've been asked before, and I had fun answering, so check it out.

Cassandra Kresnov Giveaway

2007-11-04T12:47:00.000+10:30

Rob at Fantasy Book Critic is giving away the wonderful prize of the full set of Cassandra Kresnov novels. And all you need to do is pledge the soul of your first newborn.

Killswitch on SciFi.com

2007-11-04T12:40:00.000+10:30

The SciFi Channel's website has a review of Killswitch up. I shouldn't complain when a review gives me a B- on a highly trafficked website, but I do occasionally wonder if the reviewer read the same book I wrote. Oh well, vive la diversite...

Killswitch Chapters

2007-11-01T14:49:00.000+10:30

Pyr has put the first couple of chapters of Killswitch up on their website.

Killswitch on SF Crowsnest

2007-11-01T14:43:00.000+10:30

Here's a review of Killswitch on SF Crowsnest by Tomas L Martin. Curiously enough, he seems to think it's the weakest of the trilogy, which would make him probably the first person I've heard who thinks so. Not to dump on his opinions at all -- I'm just happy that he liked Crossover and Breakaway so much.

Killswitch on the Fantasy Hotlist

2007-10-23T18:10:00.000+09:30

Here's Pat's review of Killswitch on the Fantasy Hotlist, where he says;

'The characterization is probably my favorite aspect of this trilogy. Cassandra's moral awakening has been a fascinating facet to follow thus far, and I like how the author raises a number of philosophical issues through her character. Those moments are interwoven almost seamlessly into the plotlines, which is no small feat'

Killswitch on Don D'Ammassa

2007-10-09T13:24:00.001+09:30

And here's a review on Don D'Ammassa's website, where he says in part, 'Easily the best of the three. I hope there’s more on their way. Most novels with this general background get caught up in the military content and forget about the characters. Shepherd manages to keep everything in balance.'

Well I don't know about 'easily', but most people seem to think Killswitch is the best.

Killswitch on Publishers Weekly

2007-10-09T13:16:00.000+09:30

Hey all, well Killswitch is out in a month, so I guess I'll have to start blogging again. Why did I stop? Got a little boring, truth be told. But I'll try and keep up with reviews and other work related stuff.

Firstly, here's Publishers Weekly's Review, which I'll link to here, but I'll also post below in full, so you don't have to scroll down the page.

'The tense third Cassandra Kresnov novel (after Breakaway) further develops the series' intriguing far-future setting. Cdr. Cassandra “Sandy” Kresnov, a “GI” genetically engineered to be a crack soldier and spy, is now second-in-command of the Callayan Defense Force: a tough job, especially now that President Neiland has nearly succeeded in making Callay's capital city, Tanusha, into the new Federation capital. Earth doesn't look kindly on this upstart world taking away its last claim to fame, and loyalists from the Federation Fleet have occupied Callay's space stations. With dock workers refusing to service Fleet ships and civil war threatening to break out, the last thing Sandy needs is to be targeted for death. She suspects someone has infiltrated Callay's security forces, but even as she struggles to uncover the spy, a rogue GI similar enough to be her sister appears, testing Sandy to the limit. Robert Ludlum meets Elizabeth Moon in this classic military SF adventure, buoyed by Shepherd's knack for balancing crisp action with characters you can really root for.'

Sasha on Specusphere

2007-07-11T20:02:00.002+09:30

Here's a review of Sasha, by my buddy Donna Marie Hanson, on the internet speculative fiction magazine Specusphere.

I like this bit;

'Shepherd has deftly tackled the conquest of ideas that comes with religious fervour and conversion. He does not make judgements about the religious beliefs within the story; rather he looks at the right and wrong of destroying a culture and a way of life that is unique.'

Because nothing kills any religious plotline faster than a didactic author shoving personal beliefs down your throat...

Sasha Reviews at Infinitas Bookshop

2007-07-07T03:00:00.000+09:30

Here are a couple of nice short reviews of Sasha at the Infinitas Bookshop website.

Breakaway on SFFWorld

2007-07-07T02:52:00.001+09:30

Rob H Bedford writes:

Joel Shepherd’s electric heroine, Cassandra “Sandy” Kresnov, continues her thrill-ride of a life in the author’s second novel, Breakaway. Shepherd picks up her story shortly after the events of Crossover, and the story doesn’t miss a beat. If anything the beat gets turned up a few notches.

Check it out.

Andromeda Spaceways Review

2007-06-24T12:42:00.000+09:30

Here's a review of Sasha from Andromeda Spaceways.

Sasha

2007-06-19T17:35:00.001+09:30

Introducing Sasha. Here she is, out in Australia from July with Hachette Livre, hopefully to follow elsewhere at a later date.

The most immediate question I get asked is 'why switch from SF to fantasy?'

The answer is that I'm not really 'switching' anything. I write primarily about aspects of human civilisation that interest me. If this happens in the future, it'll be SF. If it happens in the past, it'll be fantasy. I've nearly finished the third book in the series, there's one more to go, then I'll be back to SF for a while, as I have some more future ideas I'd like to write. Where after that, I don't know, but the quality of character and story always interested me far more than the tropes of genre.

I think anyone who liked Cassandra Kresnov will like Sasha. Both heroic characters, for sure, but very different personalities. Sandy's very cool, but Sasha's a troublemaker. One day I'll have an argument with myself about who was more fun to write. Right now I can't decide.

Breakaway at Fantasy Hotlist

2007-04-22T17:46:00.000+09:30

Pat's only issue in his review of Breakaway is the lack of closure. Seriously Pat? When is there closure in the second book of a trilogy? But it's a cool review!

Don Imus

2007-04-22T17:45:00.000+09:30

Until very recently I'd never heard of Don Imus. Clearly he said something stupid. But the recent controversy has led to articles like this one that annoy me.

Everyone in this article makes a great song and dance about sexism, when it seems clear to me the issue is racism. Sure, there's sexism IN the racism, like one of those Russian doll thingys, but it's secondary.

Secondly, there's a lot of complaining about how the male patricarchy of sports coverage is oppressing women's sports. Everyone who has followed women's sports, and is honest, knows that while there's some truth to this, it's also largely irrelevant. Women's sports don't struggle because men don't support it, women's sports struggle because women don't support it. Most female highschool basketballers can't name more than one or two WNBA players, if that. The coverage is available, they just don't care. This is politically unpalatable for many, but blaming something else doesn't help the problem.

Thirdly, you get quotes like this,

"It used to be that female athletes were portrayed as wholesome, All-American girls," Kane says. "Now you get female athletes in GQ, Playboy and the Swimsuit issue. The result of it is coverage that is very damaging - that trivializes and marginalizes women athletes because it does not give them the respect they deserve as competent athletes."

What a crock. It presupposes that old feminist myth that there's something inherantly degrading about female sexuality. Which actually does female athletes a huge disservice, because male athletes don't have to deal with this nonsense. How much does a top footballer get paid for doing a deodorant commercial with his shirt off? Does his obvious sex appeal demean him as an athlete? Of couse not. And here's the real double standard -- people who make this argument are actually engaging in sexism, the sexism that supposes that male sexuality is uplifting and empowering for men, while female sexuality is a ball and chain about every woman's neck. His sexuality is natural, hers is perverse. Who are these people, the Taliban?

It's about function. The things that make a man athletic are also what pop culture considers sexy -- shoulders, chest, biceps, etc. Women haven't been so lucky, and that means that while for men being athletic and sexy go naturally together, for women, they don't. This is the single biggest problem in getting girls to play sports -- the fear that it'll make them unsexy, by making them unfeminine. Function is masculine. Female sexuality is supposed to be ornamental, not functional. Women too, in some cultures... and occassionally this one.

To change this, you have to get more people, especially young people, to associate female sex appeal with function. Thus, having female athletes displaying their sexuality, and proving to all that function and sex appeal do go together in women (and does it ever!), actually helps. Imagine if the dominant pop-culture association was that female sexuality meant actually being good at stuff. Instead of looking like a half-starved stick insect on smack, and about as useful, like most of the world's models. But you can't change body image by hiding bodies. It's crazy to think you can. What is gender about, if not bodies and sex? And how useful is it for young women to be frightened or ashamed of either or both? It's like trying to seperate the waves from the sea.

Breakaway at Monsters and Critics

2007-04-18T23:19:00.000+09:30

A review of Breakaway at Monsters and Critics, where the reviewer (appropriately named Sandy) concludes,

"The seat-of-the-pants climax is satisfying while setting up the next installment. Full of political intrigue, personal revelations and rapid-fire action, this is sci-fi at its best. The plot is complex, yet it is the personal issues that rise to the forefront and force readers to examine what makes one truly human."

Breakaway at Bookgasm

2007-04-14T01:03:00.000+09:30

Today's best phrase from Ryun Patterson's review of Breakaway at Bookgasm -- 'delicately brutal'. I like that.

Update: And on second thought, I should point out that despite Ryun's guess, Ari Ruben doesn't look much like me! (I'm reminded of the early drawings of Luke Skywalker before the release of Star Wars, where he was a bearded guy with a striking resemblance to George Lucas). If anyone really wants to know who Ari Ruben looks like in my mind, it's the actor Adam Goldberg. Whose photo I won't post here for people who want to keep their own mental image of Ari, but if you want to know, Google him.

300

2007-04-12T22:28:00.000+09:30

I just saw 300. It's pretty good I guess, for what it is. Although it really is just one glorified battle sequence with character only thrown in for colour. So it's not really my kind of film, but I couldn't say it was a bad film by any means, and some of it was downright cool.

I don't have a problem with the makers glorifying Sparta... the movie is just pure propoganda, but I think that's the point. It's the tale of the 300 as the Spartans would have told it, were the Spartans still around today, and mastering special effects and rock soundtracks. It's like a fishing story of the one that got away, where the fish multiplies in size many times in the telling. If you just accept that it's a campfire tale in that spirit, the propogandistic feel isn't a problem.

Besides which, I'm glad the Spartans inspired the Greeks to eventually win. The Spartans weren't 'good guys', necessarily, but for the purposes of that historical clash, I think they were definately 'the good guys'. What they did is worth a song, drink and a movie or two.

C+ on Scifi.com

2007-04-12T21:24:00.000+09:30

Here’s a review of Breakaway on scifi.com by Cynthia Ward. It’s not a great review, but then I’ve been spoiled by good reviews, so some criticism was always coming. I’m not going to argue with any reviewer -- they’re all entitled to their opinion, and I honestly don’t mind the criticism... but I am interested in what I feel reviewers miss. And if reviews can’t be used as starting points for calm discussion, there’s not much point in having them. There’s no actual spoilers, I think, but if you’d rather discover some of these details by reading the book first, then that might be a good idea!

A few nitpicks -- Sandy is not the ‘only’ self aware GI (what does ‘self aware’ mean anyway?), she’s not ‘new’ to friendships with humans, nor is she ‘new’ to fear and hatred. America is not a ‘nonentity’ back on Earth (Killswitch mentions this briefly), it’s just another large powerful nation among many. It just happens that Callay is predominantly settled by ‘Indian Ocean Rim’ nations... which is neither a good nor a bad thing, just an interesting thing. Furthermore, the Federation isn’t ‘dominated by Asian colonists’, it’s more that the human race is dominated by Asians. A bit more than half, at last count. Of course, it’s the future, so it could change again... but let’s just say I’ve always found the Star Trek universe odd in that it claims to represent a human future where there’s no discrimination and everyone is equal, yet where are the Asians? And no, Sulu and Harry Kim don’t count, they’re both American. I keep hoping for a Chinese or Indian Star Trek one day, made for local audiences, just to see how they treat the token ‘white’ crewmember.

I can always tell when I’m about to get an average-or-worse review when a reviewer talks about ‘too much political detail’. Some people like this stuff, and others don’t. I think the CK series is actually fairly pared-down, politically speaking. It’s not particularly realistic for humanity to have split, but only in two directions. But it’s a simplicity I introduced to more clearly illustrate the ideological divide between Federation and League, over advanced biotech, artificial people, and thus the future of the human race. It’s also not particularly realistic, politically speaking, for one single issue to dominate the future political environment to that extent, but again, it serves the purpose of storytelling.

It could have been enormously more complex, had I wanted it to. Just pick up a paper (if you’re the kind of person who does that) and count the issues. I’m studying a Bachelor of International Relations at the moment, including a course on American Politics... and for dramatic example, the West Wing has been running for God knows how many seasons now, screening over a hundred densely-packed hours of drama, and has still barely scratched the surface of American political complexity.

I write about ‘soft’ sciences more than hard. I think I’m pretty good at it, I’ve always understood politics pretty instinctively. I realise the mechanics aren’t very interesting to any but politics nerds, any more than the mechanics of physics aren’t that interesting to anyone except physicists. It’s what those mechanics do that makes for exciting drama. Physics leads to stars exploding, asteroids colliding with earth, the potential for wormholes to alternate dimensions, etc. And politics can lead to wars, assassinations, intrigues, Machiavellian plotting... all exciting stuff to write about. So that’s what I do. If it’s complex, that’s because politics always is, and being somewhat good at this stuff, I have to represent it with some degree of credibility. Some people no doubt complain that Benford, Bear etc are too complex with their physics, but that’s the nature of the beast. Some readers find it entertaining, and others don’t, and writers can’t really help that, save to write what they know as best they can.

And the cool thing about SF (or the thing I always loved about it, at least) is that the good stuff is more than just pure entertainment, it’s actually about something important. ‘Soft’ science, meaning politics, sociology, economics, etc, is the science of understanding human civilisation. But if you don’t pay the details some respect, it’s not really about anything, and it loses its main SF appeal.

Cynthia also speculates that I might be packing lots of visual detail into my sentences because I’m trying to emulate William Gibson. Well, if I was striving to emulate any cyberpunk novelists, I guess it probably would be him, because he’s the only one I’ve read! Which just tells you I’m not that influenced by the cyberpunk literary genre... and of Gibson, I’ve only read Neuromancer, and didn’t particularly like it.

The CK series has lots of sensory detail because it’s largely from Sandy’s perspective, and Sandy’s brain processes ten times the information load of a normal human. That’s what I’ve tried to capture, other people can judge whether successfully or not, but it’s certainly not to try and imitate another style. Sandy could spend ages watching an insect crawl on a leaf. She has a vast attention span, and finds sensory details fascinating. I guess we all would, if we could hear the insect’s footsteps, and count a thousand shades of refracted colour off its shell. The same skills that make Sandy so lethal in combat also give her a love of sunsets and classical music. It’s just one of those ironies.

Cynthia then mentions that I don’t explore the ‘are androids human?’ theme, as though that were a bad thing. I got tired of that theme long before I tried watching ten minutes of ‘Bicentennial Man’ the movie on TV, and had to change channels (I can imagine Sandy discovering that movie late one night, and making retching noises all through it). Sandy has no doubt that she’s human. And that, for her, is that. And who’s to argue with her? The idea being conveyed here is that humanity is a philosophical notion, or a state of mind. You’re human if you think you are, and to the extent that we take humanity to mean something good, we should judge those who wish to claim the mantle of humanity by their deeds, not their appearance, or the nature of their physical composition. The whole question of 'are androids human?' is the kind of question that presupposes the questioner is not an android. If you were an android, you might find the question silly, because even if your answer was 'no', what difference would it make if you determine to judge people by their actions and nothing more? A good person, making a positive contribution to society, is a good thing, surely, which renders the entire question of classification irrelevant. Sandy doesn't understand why more people don't get it.

Cynthia finds Sandy’s ‘ass kicking’ to be a drama killer, because those of lesser abilities don’t stand a chance against her. Again, that’s intentional, because the drama of the story lies as much on the moral plane as the physical. We know Sandy can kick anyone’s butt (anyone who’s not a high-designation GI themself)... the drama then becomes ‘should she?’ And for what reasons? I’ve always found that drama much more gripping, because that’s the drama of moral choices. The other drama is the drama of a Rambo movie, where we know the bad guys deserve it, and Rambo has no moral crisis about blowing them away -- the only drama lies in whether he has enough ammunition, and can be quick enough on the trigger. Sandy’s trying to figure out what her role is, not just in Callayan society, but in the universe. She was created to be a killing machine, but she’d like to be something more. It’s an existential issue for her, and she’s struggling to figure it all out. She could kill pretty much anyone she liked... but the question is ‘what would it cost her? And could she live with herself afterwards?’ So again, for the reader, the question is really whether you find these moral crises gripping or not.

Lastly, there’s Sandy and Vanessa’s relationship, sexually speaking. I don’t want to go into too much detail for fear of spoilers with Killswitch coming up. But I had a conversation with a female friend (who may recognise herself if she’s reading this!) after she’d read Crossover, who said the only thing she didn’t buy about Sandy as a character was why she wasn’t bisexual too. Because, in my friend’s opinion, all women were that far away (extends forefinger and thumb to narrow margin) from hot girl-girl action, and if Sandy was raised outside of today’s societal norms and restrictions, she’d probably be ‘bi’ as well. Let’s just say there’s a range of female opinion here on what constitutes a 'lesbian cliche'.

Vanessa flirts with Sandy because Vanessa would. Vanessa’s very comfortable being bisexual, and it’s a joke between friends (women certainly seem to be less hung up about this than men, though what culture would be like in five hundred years I couldn’t say). It’s not Vanessa’s way to pretend something doesn’t exist, because that becomes a strained ‘issue’, which can hurt a friendship, and Vanessa’s personal skills are (usually) too good for that. And even less so for Sandy, because Sandy hasn’t been culturalised to know what’s supposed to be embarrassing and what isn’t, so she’s got no idea of dos and don’ts... which is one thing Vanessa loves about having her for a friend, because it makes her very honest.

Sandy’s fascination with lesbian sexuality isn’t like that of your average heterosexual man at all, because she doesn’t get off on it. Sandy’s just fascinated by everything, sexuality in particular, because this is life, and Sandy’s determined to explore life to the full. As she says in the book, she’d happily have sex with Vanessa just for the experience (and to do Vanessa a favour) except that she’s emotionally astute enough (barely) to understand that could be very damaging for Vanessa. Because Sandy, (whatever my esteemed friend says!) is straight as an arrow. Wishes she wasn’t, but she is, and just doesn’t dig girls like that. But she's intrigued that her best friend does, and wants to explore that intrigue as far as a platonic friendship can take it.

Don D'Ammassa reviews Breakaway

2007-04-10T17:29:00.000+09:30

Here. Scroll to the bottom. Or otherwise, I'll just post it here.

Breakaway by Joel Shepherd, Pyr, 4/07, $15, ISBN 1-59102-540-5

The second adventure of Cassandra Kresnov, android, takes place on the planet Callay, where she has found a place for herself after defending the current government from its enemies. Although the planetary ruler values her advice, there are some who distrust her, at least in part because of what she is. The planetary population is also divided on a major political issue, is considering withdrawing from an interstellar confederation, and the uncertainty is intensified by terrorist attacks, political intrigues, and espionage. That also provides cover for Cassandra’s enemies, who look upon her as a dangerous outsider. A well constructed planetary adventure story with plausible political maneuvering. This was previously published in Australia in 2003.

Talking to Tyrants

2007-04-07T17:32:00.000+09:30

So Nancy Pelosi was in Syria recently, and the White House is upset about it. Well, leaving aside that they're right to be for political reasons (the executive runs foreign policy, not the legislature) it raises the other, broader question -- should democratic powers talk to undemocratic ones?

I think it depends on what you want, and what you expect to come from it. The problem with undemocratic or tyrannical regimes is that they tend to view power as a zero-sum game. In other words, power to them means 'I win, you lose', or 'you win, I lose'. It does not mean, and never will mean 'let's put our differences aside and work for the greater good', or even the much-loved 'win win scenario'. Because this is the nature of such regimes. Hitler did not share power. Stalin did not. Saddam did not, and Bashar al-Asad of Syria will not. Why not?

Because within a rigid, authoritarian power structure, there is no mechanism for power sharing.

In this sense, tyrants like Asad are actually correct in their judgement. If you're going to run an authoritarian system, you have to run it properly, and that means stamping out dissent. There's a long list of authoritarian political models that collapsed as soon as they began to tolerate dissent -- the USSR after Gorbachev, Iran after the Shah began loosening his grip at America's behest, most recently the Ukraine, before that Serbia, etc. Once you let political pluralism get its foot in the door, that's it, and the collapse is on. This no-tolerance attitude to alternative power structures naturally extends to foreign policy too, and while Nancy Pelosi might not know this, Bashar al-Asad certainly does. For him, there is no happy, peaceful accomodation to be made with America, Israel, democratic Lebanon or least of all democratic Iraq, just as there is no peaceful accomodation to be made toward his regime's critics within Syria. Either he wins and they lose, or vice-versa. He knows very well that successful democracy in Lebanon and Iraq will eventually destroy his regime, just as democracy in Damascus would.

Just as the mullahs in Iran know that political pluralism in Iran will surely destroy their's. The Iranian mullahs aren't scared of American force, they're scared of MTV, blue jeans and Playboy. They know that liberal culture is constantly attacking their rigid system, as surely as smart bombs can attack their military installations -- except that where bombs may only serve to unite the population behind the mullahs, liberal culture will pull them apart. In this era of globalisation, autocratic regimes everywhere are under constant assault from liberal ideas. The leaders of these regimes understand that these attacks can destroy them, and fight back accordingly. Autocracy and liberalism may have coexisted in previous eras, but with globalisation that's changing, with one system automatically seeking to destroy the other, either from without or within. The two systems just don't mix any longer, and that's a big part of the current turmoil in the mid-east today.

And that's the problem of negotiating with a guy like Asad. Sure, he may grant short-term concessions to buy time for his next attack, but in the long term, he'll always be the west's enemy because he knows very well that any success for the west in his region will spell destruction for his regime. North Korea's another great example -- I think the Bush Administration was probably right to sign their most recent deal, since it's a good thing to take North Korea out of the nuclear loop to isolate Iran even further, but I can't imagine anyone in the White House believes there's any chance that the North Koreans will stick to it out of simple good faith. American liberalism is like a toxic disease to the North Korean regime, one sniff could be fatal. They don't make peace with America because they can't, not if they want their regime to survive in its present, ideologically pure form.

Sadly, Pelosi and co don't seem to realise the brutal realities of power half as well as the tyrants do. So again, should western nations talk to Syria? Sure, but only if we're aware of all of the above, and aren't kidding ourselves. Threats are 'talking'... but threats can be made by back channels, where most 'talks' between the west and nations like Syria go on. In that sense, we already are talking, just out of sight, and not very politely. What Pelosi is suggesting is 'Let's be friends!' And 'Let's put all this behind us!'

The worst bit is, she doesn't seem to understand why the proposition is so ludicrous. A regime like Syria, by its very nature, is in a perpetual state of low-level war against America. It's not that it chose that state of war, and can subsequently be talked out of it -- it's that being what it is, IT HAD NO OTHER CHOICE. You can't talk a hyena into being more like a lion. Yes, the Syrian people are very friendly, it's a fascinating civilisation, I'd personally love to visit one day. But that has absolutely nothing to do with Syria's political position vis-a-vis America, and it's alarming that Pelosi should seem to imply otherwise, with her photo-ops with friendly locals in the streets of Damascus. The differences that matter are political, not cultural. And until Syria begins to transform itself politically, I can't see that there's much the White House can talk about with them beyond the current threats and warnings.

SF Crows Nest Reviews Breakaway

2007-04-03T15:53:00.000+09:30

Tomas L Martin of SF Crows Nest has reviewed Breakaway, in which he concludes,

''Breakaway' is a definite improvement on 'Crossover', which while great didn't make the political divisions nearly as clearly. The adding of complexity to the non-military side of things compliments the fantastic characterisation and action to create what is an extremely well rounded novel. Recommended.'

But of course he says a whole bunch of stuff before that, so go read it!

Breakaway on Amazon

2007-04-01T16:54:00.000+09:30

Amazon's website informs me that Breakaway is now in stock. My author copies haven't arrived yet though. Curse that Pacific Ocean!

Killswitch Cover

2007-03-25T02:39:00.000+09:30

Here is the new cover for Killswitch, the third of the Cassandra Kresnov series. I've also added it on my main webpage, for the drooling pleasure of being able to see all three of them lined up together on the same page. Much credit again goes to Stephan Martiniere, who as you can see, rocks.

Breakaway Review

2007-03-23T14:52:00.000+10:30

Here's a very nice review of Breakaway by Harrier Klausner, where she says in part:

Readers who have read CROSSOVER, the first CASSANDRA Kresnov novel will find BREAKAWAY is just as good. The tale contains great characterizations especially the heroine, a cultural look at an advanced civilization, and plenty of political intrigue. All this contributes to make Breakaway a one sitting reading experience.

It Flies!

2007-03-21T14:49:00.000+10:30

So Elon Musk's Falcon 1 rocket from his company Space X actually flies!. Well, the second stage had a problem that prevented it from achieving the desired orbit, but Elon reckons it's a fixable problem. Given that he's fixed costs for Falcon 1 flights at $7 million, there will be a lot of big rocket companies getting very nervous, as his cheapest competitors in that size range don't do anything for less than $20 mil. And that $7 mil, apparently, is before even taking into account the intent to reuse the vehicle's first stage (no report on whether they've recovered the first stage on this one yet, or if it'll still be working when they do).

Bigger vehicles will follow, based on the same design, including the human-rated Falcon 9. This technology is still nowhere near what's required to make a full-scale commerical boom in space, but it's a start. Today, a flight on a Russian Soyuz costs about $20 mil for a tourist. I'd guess Falcon 9 could get that down to $5 mil or less. And a guy named Bigelow is working on private space stations for tourists to stay at when they get there.

The first transistor radios were pretty simple too, compared to today's ipods and other gadgets, but they did something very important -- they demonstrated a demand for a product. Once recognised, money poured in, companies competed with each other to develop superior products, and technology was invented with all that investment that made the original transistor radios look obselete. Falcon 1, and Falcon 9, are the transistor radios of what's to come. Imagine what the ipod will look like.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-03-13T16:51:00.000+10:30

This is the name of a documentary that was screened on England's Channel Four a few days ago, and is now available on You Tube. I watched it, it takes an hour and fifteen minutes, and I thought it very good. Better yet, thanks to the wonder of the internet, it's spreading unbelievably fast -- when I watched it yesterday, it had been viewed about 25 thousand times. Looking today, I see it's been watched about 125 thousand times. The word is out.

Most likely all the same criticism that was levelled at 'An Inconvenient Truth' can be levelled at this documentary too -- it's one sided, it makes no attempt to explore both sides of the issue, etc. But it does do one thing extremely well, it destroys the notion supported by global warming believers that the debate is over. I think it's pretty hard to watch this documentary and still conclude that there is no point in continuing the debate, even if you're not entirely won over by the arguments.

UPDATE: The original link was taken down on You Tube, but thankfully others are just breaking out all over, so I switched to a new one.

Interview Found!

2007-03-10T15:27:00.000+10:30

Here's an interview I did with Tobias Buckell a fair while ago, that he's only recently found and posted.

Guilty Pleasures

2007-03-08T16:34:00.000+10:30

I think most of us have guilty pleasures in various entertainment genres. You know, that TV show, or those books, that you really shouldn't like, because they're pretty silly, but you can't help liking anyway?

My primary guilty pleasure right now would be the TV series NCIS. As an actual representation of anything vaguely serious, it's preposterous -- a naval crime investigation unit that of course sees more action in a week than most such units would see in a career, and is populated by a crew of very attractive, or very weird (or both) people who spend more time behaving like teenagers on camp than as professionals of any description.

But it's the very weirdness of the characters that is the show's greatest strength, because the characterisation, while unrealistic, is lots of fun. In particular, the female characters are terrific. American TV has gone through phases where I found many new shows almost impossible to watch simply because I could barely tell the female characters apart. I mean, any heterosexual male will tell you that there's no single, exclusive 'type' of attractive female, thus this great fraud perpetuated on teenage girls in magazines to try and convince them if they don't fit the 'type' no guy will want them. I'd have thought the male response to Gillian Anderson in the X-Files pretty much disproved that idea, when the producers reportedly wanted someone blonder and taller, but the lesson didn't seem to be learned... although I think it's getting better now.

NCIS's female characters also do not exist merely to be someone else's sidekick, or to fill a role as 'the female' -- they pretty much fill their own unique space, and do their own unique thing, which I find rare in these kinds of shows. 'Abby the Goth' is a scene stealer, Ziva the Mossad agent is a nice twist away from the usual 'struggling to cope' portrayal of a hard bitten agent, because she enjoys her work a little too much, and Director Shepard doesn't have much to do, but hey, I've liked Lauren Holly since 'Picket Fences'. The men are also fun, Gibbs is a study in blunt practicality, Dinozo a study in political incorrectness, and Ducky a good old fashioned English gentleman cliche, but an entertaining one.

I think one of the things that makes it work is that being what could be described as more to the right, politically speaking, it manages to escape the orbit of leftist political correctness that occassionally strangles some of the others, like your various 'Law and Order's. The 'Law and Order' shows are more serious, and arguably more realistic, because they're imbued with that very left wing, 'we care so much', 'my gosh look how serious this is' kind of ethic, where all the characters become screwed up psychologically because they empathise with the victims, and it all gets very dark and brooding after a while.

NCIS is light relief by comparison because the characters all mostly love their jobs, but that enables it to have more straight out, 'guilty pleasure' fun. And the characters get to do things you won't see on your 'Law and Order's -- like where a female cop will always be expected to interview a traumatised female crime victim, because of the feminine sensitivities involved. In NCIS, Ziva's the last person to talk to grieving women, because she usually upsets them, makes them cry, and gets along much better with men. In a Law and Order show, this would be considered a deep character flaw, and would inevitably be linked back to some traumatic experience of childhood. In NCIS, it's just funny. Perhaps NCIS is not so much a 'right wing' show as a libertarian one. How else to explain how a girl with tatoos, black mascara and a dog collar works in the forensics lab of a naval investigation agency? The characters get away with stuff that would get most people fired, and Gibbs and Director Shepard's attitude is 'we don't care, so long as it works'. Maybe that's why I like it.

India Photo Threads

2007-03-01T22:58:00.000+10:30

Check out these two threads of Indian photos, here and here.

The second one I think is a new ad campaign, and just unbelievable. The first one's not bad either.

UPDATE: In comments below, Lou Anders suggests this collection of China photos via the blog of Pyr author Chris Roberson. Also pretty amazing.

Gored to Death

2007-02-27T15:48:00.000+10:30

I'm over Al Gore, and I'm over climate change.

I've been over it all for a while, but watching the first half of the Academy Awards last night (because who aside from filmmakers could possibly sit through the whole thing!), I've decided I'm really over it, in a huge way. There's nothing quite like Hollywood sycophancy to create that sick feeling in the stomach, so here's to Leonardo DiCaprio for making (I hope) millions of sick-feeling sceptics across the world with his fawning butt kissing (I wasn't aware one could fawn and butt kiss at the same time, but now I've seen it, I know it is). And there's nothing that convinces me more of the need for scepticism than a movement that insists that scepticism is dangerous. Thus, when a movement creates a term like 'climate change deniers', with all the evil subtext implied, they immediately create a new enemy -- me.

The difference between a denier and a sceptic is very important, and it's a classic propagandist tactic to blur the line between the two. A 'sceptic' implies someone who has not yet been convinced either way, because he's keeping an open mind, and refuses to jump to conclusions simply because the surrounding mass hysteria insists that he should. A 'denier' implies someone who has a closed mind, because he denies an obvious truth. The problem, of course, is that in very few complex global issues, particularly in something as mind boggling complex and evolving as the science of planetary weather systems, does there exist anything that could be called 'obvious truth'. There is plenty of scientific scepticism out there still, if you care to look (and despite the efforts of many to insist it doesn't exist), just don't expect to see it publicised in the current hysterical mood. In previous eras, 'obvious truths' have included the earth being flat, the earth being the center of the solar system, and the earth having been made in seven days. Just because everyone believed these truths in their day didn't make them any more true. Thus, to try and crush open minded scepticism with the rhetorical tactic of branding all questioners as 'deniers' is pathetic, and should be opposed by free thinking people everywhere -- and by climate change believers most of all. I'm equally sceptical of claims of big corporate polluters that all that carbon released into the air doesn't do any harm. But just because I'm sceptical about that, doesn't mean I have to abandon scepticism of the opposing extreme.

In the pursuit of knowledge, scepticism shall always be more important than belief. Too many well intentioned climate change believers have forgotten that.

UPDATE: Janet Albrechtsen puts it more buntly here.

UPDATE 2: My pal and fellow Pyr author David Louis Edelman seems to agree.

UPDATE 3: On Dave's blog, a commenter casts doubt on my suggestion in comments that scientists in the '70s were warning of a coming ice age. This article from The Guardian in 2001, from Dr Alison George of the British Antarctic Survey makes interesting reading on that subject.

Library Journal Review of Breakaway

2007-02-27T15:28:00.000+10:30

Here's my first American review of Breakaway, this one in the Library Journal:

In this action-packed sequel to Crossover (2006), Australian author Shepherd revisits the far-future multiracial capital city Tanusha, where two factions, the League and the Federation, war over the future of the planet Callay, and the enigmatic android heroine, Sandy, gets caught in between.

The personal complicates the political as the League sends a delegation, and Sandy, as ex-League, worries that they want her back even as the Tanushans fear that she'll suddenly switch sides. As the Federation and the League struggle for ascendancy, Sandy must learn to trust Ari and Ayako, a covert ops team looking for the Tanushan underground. Lurching from crisis to crisis, Sandy, for all her abilities, must learn to depend on others, even as she finds that her struggle is more than just a job-she now has something worth fighting for.

Beneath the glitz of snazzy weaponry, unstoppable heroes and byzantine political machinations is a very real struggle about the nature of humanity and trust. (Apr.)

George RR Martin on HBO

2007-02-09T16:41:00.000+10:30

I'm pretty excited about the news that George RR Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire" is being made into an HBO series along the lines of one of my favorite TV series, Rome.

The best thing is that I'd already imagined something like this might happen, because as Martin says on his website, any attempt to make the series into a movie would have forced them to cut out eighty percent of the characters and plotlines. In some ways the books have been written like a TV series (which makes sense, given Martin's previous experience with TV), with one big world created, which contains numerous seperate plotlines, revolving around various characters who frequently never meet. You can't do that in films -- aside from the simple fact that there's not enough screen time in movies to portray all this stuff, all the characters must revolve around a central plotline for the film to make sense (unless you're making avant guard stuff, which this clearly isn't). So I'd already had the thought 'wouldn't it be cool if they made it into a TV series instead?' And the best TV series are at HBO.

A few things will be interesting to observe in development... like what the budget is. There are some scenes that will need to be cut back, of course -- Rome gets around the big battle scenes by largely skipping them, but I'm not sure you can do that in 'Ice and Fire'. Certainly they'll have to cut back a bit though. Seeing what they do for casting is always fun. Also, filming in Europe, or New Zealand? I'd guess NZ has better landscapes, and is cheaper... but you really need castles for 'Ice and Fire', so much of it takes place in castles. And that means Europe, probably France. The series is really based on feudal French culture anyway.

The really interesting thing will be to see if it's possible to bring fantasy, on TV, to a large audience. Rome isn't fantasy, but it tends to appeal to a similar audience, and it's apparently being cancelled after two seasons. Very expensive seasons, it's true, but I'm not sure 'Ice and Fire' will be much cheaper.

Weaponising Space

2007-02-03T00:24:00.000+10:30

Here’s an interesting article by Rand Simberg on China’s anti-satelite missile test.

The first thing to notice about this whole affair is that any notion of keeping space demilitarised is silly. It’s a bit like someone in 1906, in the dawn of aviation, declaring that the skies should be kept free of military activity. In hindsight, it doesn’t seem that it was ever possible, and in the future, hindsight will inform us of pretty much the same thing in space.

Calls to demilitarise space are also a bit like calling to demilitarise Antarctica, in that they’re each based on the assumption that both places are extreme, inaccessible, and largely unnecessary to human civilisation. Because obviously, everywhere that has proven to be accessible and necessary (the skies, the oceans, most of the land) has been completely militarised, or at least potentially so. The thing that many people haven’t realised about space yet is that it’s only difficult to access today. Tomorrow is a different story.

Like Rand Simberg, I’m a believer in Newspace, the private space developments that will one day lower the cost of access to space enough that large portions of this planet’s population could afford to go. Now obviously, if individual citizens can afford it, the world’s various militaries will also be able to afford it. Space is already the ultimate high ground, invaluable for modern warfare of the kind currently practised by the USA, and increasingly elsewhere too. So what happens when the private space boom begins, and costs of access plummet for private and military sectors alike?

Okay just off the top of my head:

We’re already about to see an arms race in anti-satelite warfare, thanks to China’s test. Manoeuvring satellites will be countered by manoeuvring warheads, as each seeks to find a way to out-dodge the other. As Rand says, rapid replacement capability for satellites will be a must. Of course, it’s possible that someone could use a nuclear weapon in orbit to fry the circuitry of all kinds of satellites, but it would be unlikely a major power would do that, because a) they’d have their own satellites up there, and b) using nuclear weapons in a war, even in orbit, is a very serious escalation, and not very wise. But I guess it’s conceivable that a not-very-wise regime (North Korea, Iran, etc) with few of their own assets might try it. Or perhaps there will be EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapons that could do the same thing, without the political ramifications of nukes. So what’s the defence against that?

Well, there’s the Star Wars missile anti-ballistic missile programs, which have now evolved into 'missile defence'. Today, they’re based on land, but conceivably you could base them in orbit, defending satellites. But then, it might just be cheaper to replace them once destroyed... no one’s really war-gamed these scenarios, and the technology’s not developed yet, so we really don’t know.

Then there’s the other applications. Popular Science has a story on the US Marines developing a sub-orbital vehicle that could insert a team of marines anywhere in the world within a couple of hours, thus avoiding overflight restrictions from uncooperative countries. Cool idea, but I don’t know that a spaceplane concept like the one illustrated would be practical -- how do you get them out again? A vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicle like the one Jeff Bezos is making would seem far smarter, because it doesn’t need a runway, and can double as the extraction plan also. If the private space boom happens, this technology won’t remain the sole possession of America for long -- I’d put China, Russia and India on the shortlist to acquire similar technology pretty quickly.

If scramjets are fully developed, one day larger versions could transport whole infantry or armoured units to any location with an airstrip, saving half-a-day’s flight time if rapid reinforcement is required. As part of a transport fleet, such vehicles could reduce the amount of time required for a major build up like before Iraq Wars I and II. Other nations will likely wish to acquire the hypersonic missiles to shoot such vehicles down, and so it goes.

Then there’s the fun stuff. Imagine in the mid-future we have large space stations and moon colonies with quite a few people on them. They’d be ideal targets for terrorists, very visible, and quite vulnerable. You’d need teams of specially trained special forces troops who could retake such facilities, and rescue hostages. Yes, space commandos. I'm sure they'd be teased ragged by their ground pounder comrades, but there you go.

Lastly, there’s the longer-term future concept of nuclear powered interplanetary spacetravel. The thing with space is there's no drag, so acceleration is continuous, and velocity cumulative. The thing with nuclear powered spacecraft is that, like the nuclear powered warships of today, they'd only need to refuel every ten years or so (I think). So theoretically, if you burned its engines for a long time, you could make it go really, really fast. Maybe fast enough for a moderately-sized spacecraft to make a hole in the ground several kilometers wide, and bring on a nuclear-style winter. Something to think about, when figuring out the various control/navigation failsafes, and who has access to them.

I'm certain there will be plenty more. I just hope they all belong to the human species... at least in this solar system.

Blue Origin

2007-01-14T17:48:00.000+10:30

I've been meaning to post for a while, but it's still holidays and all, and everyone's got better things to do than write and read blogs, right?

Anyhow, here's the new space race hotting up, with Jeff Bezos's startup Blue Origin dropping the veil of secrecy for long enough to show what they've been working on. It's called the Goddard, the first development vehicle of the New Shepard program.

As John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace posted in one his his updates, this thing is HUGE. I'd thought they'd be working on something barely a quarter of the size, a technology demonstrator of some kind. Perhaps the engineers don't want to go through the problems that come with upscaling a small vehicle to a big one, and thought they'd just start big and leave it there.

I've often thought with Bezos, though, that what makes his program different from the others, is that he's primarily interested in going to orbit, using suborbit as a stepping stone. Of course, all the others say they're doing that too, but in the mean time, they're most interested in making suborbit profitable. I've read elsewhere that Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing is the simplest way to build a reusable, orbital vehicle, rather than a spaceplane, because a spaceplane's wings create drag and weight, as well as making stability during reentry more challenging. A simple capsule like Goddard is relatively easy to reenter, and has minimal drag.

Of course, wings have other uses. But it looks like this is going to be a big future battle between the VTVL craft, and the spaceplanes.

Interview with Stephan Martiniere

2006-12-29T12:39:00.000+10:30

Here's an interview with Stephan Martiniere, who's doing all the wonderful Cassandra Kresnov Series covers. In fact, I'm now looking forward to seeing what he does for Killswitch.

End of Year Lists

2006-12-29T12:31:00.000+10:30

Crossover has made Bookgasm's top five SF books of 2006, while also making Pat's Fantasy Hotlist's top ten as well. Thanks Ryun and Pat!

We Build Cities...

2006-12-17T15:44:00.000+10:30

Let me introduce you to one of the world's most amazing companies. They're a construction company, called Emaar, and they don't merely build individual projects, buildings, bridges etc. They build entire cities from scratch.

As a science fiction writer, this appeals to me immensely. More interestingly still, they build these cities in places in the world that could most use the development. Like in Saudi Arabia. Or Pakistan.

So where do Emaar get the money? Well, they're part owned by the government of the United Arab Emirites, particularly by people in Dubai, which is probably the world's fastest growing city, and is doing for construction this decade what Shanghai did in the last. The Emirites have a small population, and a huge amount of oil. Rather than doing as the Saudis, Iranians and others did, and spending that oil in establishing a socialist nanny state that ensures no one has to work, they instead established a giant tax haven for global companies to come and do business. All the money that usually comes from taxes, to pay for infrastructure, schools, bureaucracy etc, is instead paid for by the oil. The result is that Dubai, a sleepy little fishing village on the Persian Gulf, has been completely transformed, and has a lot of growth to go.

The King Abdullah Economic City project is just fascinating. Not only does it look great, it could do amazing things for Saudi, because it demonstrates an effort by the Saudi rulers to move away from the Socialist nanny state, to something closer to what Dubai has next door. How this will be received by the Saudi religious leaders (a different thing to the national leadership, and with frequent tension between them) is another matter. Dubai is famously liberal, women can sunbathe on tourist beaches, and you can get a drink at a hotel if you want. Looking at the KAEC project, I'd bet neither sunbathing nor drinks will be in... but there is a resort section, tourism is part of the business model, and foreigners will be mixing with locals quite intimately. I can't see the religious types liking that at all.

Also interesting is the history of the project. The rulers were obviously a bit concerned as to how it would be received, but when they put it on the stockmarket for Saudi investors only, about half the Saudi population (ten million people) invested. Saudi's no democracy, but that's as close to a landslide vote of approval as they'll get. The leadership responded to this vote of faith by more than tripling the size of the city. I don't think it's that surprising -- despite all its oil wealth, the Saudi economy is stagnant, poverty is surprisingly high, and unemployment rampant. People have no political outlet, they can't aspire to anything new in cultural or political terms, so this is really the only 'new vision' of their nation available -- that of wealth, power and economic development. They're being offered a 'new Saudi Arabia', and they like what they see.

Details are sketchy, but I'd guess the KAEC aims to operate as a tax haven, like the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone in Dubai. That'll make manufacturing really cheap, and they're just south of the Suez Canal, on probably the world's busiest shipping route. Services will follow, and I can't see how it can fail, in purely economic terms. What it means for Saudi in social and political terms is another matter.

Then there's this Diamond Bar City project Emaar are building on a couple of islands in a river delta beside Karachi in Pakistan -- if you get on Google Earth, you can find the island easily enough. It's a $43 billion project over thirteen years. I mean, fucking hell. Lots of complaints follow in Pakistan -- they didn't follow consultative procedure in approving it (funny complaint, in a military dictatorship), could be better spent on combating poverty, etc. How they expect to alieviate poverty without massive economic growth like this, I've no idea. And as for the environmental objections, I've been to quite a few poor nations, and it seems pretty clear that the worst environmental damage comes not from fancy new development, but its lack. You've never seen a river system destroyed until you've seen it colonised by a few hundred thousand shanty dwellers and cheap industrial zones pumping effluent 24/7. High rolling investors in their expensive riverside bungalows, on the other hand, don't like sailing or swimming in raw sewage, so the likelihood exists that they'll exert some pressure to clean the place up. Yes poor people will be displaced -- it always happens -- but if someone bothered to run the development properly, they might try to get them jobs in the construction industry... but running things well is difficult enough in India, and apparently unthinkable in Pakistan.

Which raises another point. Yes, Pakistan's economy is looking good lately, and yes, sitting next to the future superpower of India is a good spot to be. But instability in Pakistan, and its inability to make democracy work, would seem to make $43 billion a pretty risky investment. I get the feeling, with Emaar, it's about more than that. Listening to the occassional interview I've heard with Dubai business and political leaders (pretty much the same thing) and I get the impression they're about more than just making money. Firstly, it's only oil dollars, and there's plenty more where that came from. But mostly, it's about remaking the Arab and muslim world, and giving them an entirely different conception of what their civilisation could be. Modern, moderate and confident. I'm all for that.

Stand Alone Complex

2006-12-08T20:40:00.000+10:30

I've just received my dvds of season one, Ghost in the Shell:Stand Alone Complex.

If you've followed my work at all, you'll know I love GITS, but I've only caught bits and peices of the Stand Alone Complex TV series up until now. These are the prequels to the movies Ghost in the Shell, and Innocence, and are much more faithful to the orignial manga than either of those.

What I've watched so far is excellent. The plots are complex, the dialogue convincing, and the entire feel is intensely intelligent, understated, and adult -- all of which are pleasantly surprising, considering the depths of poor dialogue and silly cliche a lot of anime can fall to. I'd rate this as the anime equivalent of an HBO TV series, alongside Rome, Deadwood, the Sopranos, etc. It doesn't care if you don't quite get everything that's going on -- if you miss some details, too bad. Which is great, because it's the kind of thing that can be watched several times. And the animation is very good, though not spectacular... but it's a TV series, not a movie, they can't animate to movie standards on a 26 episode season.

Yes, Major Kusanage wears a silly outfit, but she's sexy, and I guess even quality anime can't be expected to dump all their silly impulses entirely.

Economics by Cow

2006-12-07T01:14:00.000+10:30

Not much to blog about lately, until I received a very funny email from my brother via his wife via someone at Macquarie Bank who should probably have been working far harder at plundering the world's poor and needy than sending funny emails. Thought I'd share. Love the bit about the Italians.

Economic Models explained with cows

SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

THE ANDERSEN MODEL: You have two cows. You shred them.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads - because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad.

IRAQI CORPORATION: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the hell out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy....

WELSH CORPORATION: You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.

AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION: If you have two cows business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

The Boom

2006-11-23T01:29:00.000+10:30

SF writers are supposed to have some skill in predicting the future... well, maybe. Here's one of the most fascinating little periods I see coming in about fifteen years.

My old home town of Perth is changing rather fast, it seems. Construction is booming, property prices went up over thirty percent just last year, it's nearly the most expensive city in Australia (huge change from the sleepy little place on the far side of nowhere when I grew up there). The reason is China. Western Australia is one of the richest mineral regions in the world, has lots of natural gas too, and Perth is its capital. WA growth is going at about %14 per year, which anyone knows, for a developed economy, is insane. China's growth needs lots of minerals and gas, which causes a boom in WA.

So where will this lead? Let's do some simple calculations. China's real GDP is about (roughly, because Chinese figures are notoriously fuzzy) $2 trillion a year. It's growing at between %9 and %10, which mean its economy doubles roughly every seven years. Say it was $2 trillion in 2005... that means it's heading to $4 trillion in 2012. If it keeps it up, it'll be $8 trillion in 2019, and $16 trillion in 2026. The USA, for comparison, is about $12.5 trillion today.

Now of course it's doubtful that China can maintain that pace, because it's easier to grow an immature economy fast than a mature one. The more mature the economy gets, the harder it is to grow fast... which is why western economies are delighted at any growth above %3 per year. Also, China's growth is more dependant on foreign investment, currently running at a ridiculous $60 billion a year. To a $2 trillion economy, $60 billion has a lot of impact. For an $8 trillion dollar economy, less so. There won't be as much money to go around, relatively speaking.

But it's still not unreasonable to assume that that growth could be maintained between 2012 and 2019, and if so, those years will see China add $4 trillion to its economy. Beyond that, even if it slows a little, maybe $6 or $7 trillion. This is going to gobble up a ridiculous quantity of global resources. Mining stocks will soar, metals prices will do crazy things, anyone anywhere in the world living in a resource-rich region, and owning real estate, is going to become wealthy. There's no reason it can't go on a lot longer than that, too. China has 1.3 billion people. If every one of them made as much money as every American, China would be a $50 trillion economy. Instead, today, it's just $2 trillion. This thing has a long way to go yet.

Just China, major hiccups aside, would have a profound impact on the world. But then there's India, which I (and increasingly many others) believe will grow faster and more strongly than China, despite having given up a ten year headstart. India's population will overtake China's at some point before levelling off, so basically, you're looking at China's impact on the global economy, and doubling it. I foresee the years 2020 and beyond seeing China and India between them adding more than $2 trillion (in today's terms) to the global economy each year. For the rest of us who trade with them, it'll be a white knuckle roller coaster ride, with the very real prospect of a great crash, or a series of smaller ones, along the way.

Better yet (or worse, depending on your outlook) that kind of growth is mutually reinforcing. SE Asia is already benefitting from China's rise, and amazingly, India is already a greater net outward investor than inward investor -- it invests more money overseas than overseas invests on it. As they both grow richer, they'll buy global companies, properties, entertainment, and their tourists will flood destinations in their hundreds of millions. SE Asia is best poised to prosper, so that's another 600 million people transitioning from third to first world within a generation (although to be fair, Malaysia and Thailand are already partway there, and Singapore entirely so).

Lots of other developing nations could also benefit. The shift in global economic and political power will be immense, and for some, traumatising. But in particular, that period of 2020-to-2030, should be a crazy ride.

Waterstones

2006-11-23T01:25:00.000+10:30

It seems I may have jumped the gun on Crossover's release with Waterstones in the UK -- it's only just now hitting the shelves, I'm informed. Well, I'm pleased that it's happening before Christmas, and I'm informed that at the one or two stores they've been stocked early, they've been doing very well.

Winning the War

2006-11-18T10:59:00.000+10:30

Michael Leeden, at the National Review Online, gets it right.

In invading Iraq, it seems that America has had to fight not one war, but three overlapping ones. The first was against Saddam's regime, which was won comfortably. The second was against al-Qaeda and co, the Sunni fundamentalist terrorists, who joined with the more secular Sunni resistance, but always had a separate agenda. From what I read, that war has been pretty much won also, al-Qaeda is vastly unpopular in Iraq, the tribes in al-Anbar have turned on them, Zarqawi is dead, most of their senior leadership have been killed or captured, etc. They retain the capability to blow people up fairly frequently, but that's a miserly definition of victory for them.

It's the third war that's the killer, and that's the one that's hotting up now -- the war between Shia and Sunni not just in Iraq, but across the entire Middle East. They don't like each other, and haven't for over a thousand years. Sunnis fear Iran's hegemonic ambition, and have long seen Iraq as a buffer between Iran and the broader, Sunni Middle East. Which is why they've loved Saddam for so long, because he was the tough guy keeping the Shia Iranians from their doorstep, and keeping Iraq on the side of the Sunnis (by killing and torturing the Iraqi Shia (and Sunni Kurds) in their hundreds of thousands).

Democracy in Iraq effectively hands Iraq to the Shia, as the Shia make%60 of the population, which is why so many Sunnis not just in Iraq, but in the broader Middle East, think opposing it is so vital. Most Iraqi Shia don't seem to be interested in becoming a branch of Iranian power, but most Arab Sunnis don't appear to see the distinction. So what is effectively happening now is Iraq has become a proxy war between Sunni and Shia across the region for control of Iraq, and thus the balance of power in the Middle East.

So you can't stabilise the country until the neighbours stop interfering. Winning in Iraq, as the present environment stands, is therefore probably impossible, because neither side seems motivated to stop until the question is decided in finality -- either Iraq back in Sunni control, (meaning another dictatorship), or in Shia control. Iran wants that Shia control to be in the form of their lackeys, like Moqtadr al-Sadr, and probably reckons that the longer the fighting goes on, the more popular he and his kind of Shia extremists will be. The Shia will never allow another Sunni dictator, so the Sunnis are basically kidding themselves, and should really stop while they still have some Sunni influence left in a multi-faith democracy. Otherwise the civil war will be one sided ethnic cleansing, because most of the new Iraqi Army and police are Shia, they form the death squads that account for all the bodies in the street every morning, and if they're truly let of the leash, the Sunnis are finished. They're already leaving the country by one or two thousand a day, by one report I read. An Iraq civil war, if it happens, will basically be the systematic cleansing of Sunnis from Iraq, until there aren't enough of them left to resist. But the Sunnis, by habit, arrogance or desperation, refuse to see it that way, and seem to think they can still win.

So how do you stop the neighbours from interfering? Most Iraqis have demonstrated they'd rather live in peace, but the violent minorities can never be silenced if the weapons, money and fighters keep pouring across the borders. Well the only thing that scares Iran is its own people. Ditto most of the Sunni regimes to the west (Syria is a strange case, a majority-Sunni nation run by a Shia sect that currently takes the side of Iran). As Michael Leeden points out in his article, most Iranians, and especially the ones that count (the young ones) don't like their Mullahs. But the USA has been pretty pitiful in promoting democracy there. Iran's leaders obviously consider themselves protected because the West desperately needs their oil and gas... otherwise America could just blockade them and watch the regime crumble. But right now they've got the West, and America in particular, over a barrel, because they can destabilise Iraq whenever they feel like it, and the West can't do anything similar to them.

That has to change. I personally think that Iran will probably have a civil war of their own if the government collapses, because there are that many fanatics who'd rather die than see their Islamic Republic become a secular democracy. Which would be very sad for the Iranian people, but would be very good news for Iraq, because strife in Iran would suck all the trouble away from its neighbours, and into itself, just as strife in Iraq has done. A lot of the Shia fanatics would head to Iran, and take their money and weapons with them, and leave Iraq alone. The moderates fighting in Iran would also make good allies for moderate Iraqi Shia, and create a common front of Shia opposed to terrorism in all forms. That front would account for the majority of Iraqi and Iranian Shia -- nearly a hundred million people -- and could over time comfortably resist anything the Sunnis threw at them, and be a great ally to freedom loving people everywhere.

Iran was always the key. Even Saddam himself only rose to power because lots of people found him useful to oppose Iranian expansion, whether under the Shah or the Mullahs. If the Iranian equation were altered, Iraq would stand a chance. If the James Baker-led study group doesn't have a plan to actively destabilise the Iranian regime, I don't think Iraq is going anywhere pleasant.

Waterstones Top Ten

2006-11-17T15:23:00.000+10:30

Michael Rowley, head SF acquisitions dude for Waterstones in the UK, has put Crossover on his Top Ten SF reads for the year. Also included are Neal Asher, Elizabeth Moon, Gardner Dozois, Alastair Reynolds, Kim Newman, M. John Harrison, Geoff Ryman, and fellow Pyr author Chris Roberson.

Crossover at the Science Fiction Book Club

2006-11-10T17:28:00.000+10:30

Crossover is now the first of Pyr's books to be released with the Science Fiction Book Club. I'm pretty excited about it, especially when I look at the November releases, and find myself in the company of Jack McDevitt, David Farland, John Scalzi, Nora Roberts, Lian Hearn, CJ Cherryh, Andre Norton and Jean Rabe. Especially when Lian Hearn is a friend of mine, and CJ Cherryh a major inspiration.

SFRevu Interview and Review

2006-11-09T17:08:00.000+10:30

SFRevu have an interview with yours truly, and a review of Crossover, up here.

Good Crossover Review

2006-11-02T11:59:00.000+10:30

Another good review at SFF World. I like this kind of review as the reviewer spends a lot of time making observations rather than just recounting what happens.

Interestingly, he suggests that the book can be read as anti the current American political regime. I'm very pleased that he and some others have read it that way, but not because it's what I intended, because it's not. For one thing, the initial draft of what became Crossover was written before President Bush's election. Politically I'm a genuine neutral, I find aspects appealing and detestable in equal measure on both sides of politics, both in Australia and America.

No, the reason I'm pleased is that whatever my own political views, I make an effort to keep them out of my writing. Individual characters may pop up who have views one way or another, but as a reader, nothing annoys me more than heavy-handed authorial narrative twisting events, characters, plot etc all to serve as a diatribe in favour or against a particular political viewpoint. That kind of thing is called propaganda. I hate propaganda in any form, partly because it's the antithesis of entertainment and intelligence both, but also because it's impossible to make any kind of political argument unless you first acknowledge that every political viewpoint comes from somewhere valid. Even the worst aspects of something detestable like racism come from a basic aspect of human tribalism that causes us to demarcate the world into 'us and them'... in this case, by race or skin colour. The end result is horrible, but it comes from something that all of us have, to varying degrees. Anyone who's a sports fan knows a little about instinctive tribalism. Propogandists are incapable of understanding that even bad politics can come from good places, and if you can't understand that, you can't tell an interesting story about it, to my mind. So I'm pleased that anti-Bush folks can read my work as anti-Bush, and I equally hope some pro-Bush folks will read it as pro-Bush. Either could be right. Or wrong.

There's also a comment already fastened onto the review from someone who likes the series (though not as much as the reviewer) but complains that Sandy takes her clothes off too often. Gratuitously.

Well first... what is good sex, if not gratuitous? Secondly, I think there's a huge difference between a narrator perving at a good looking female character, and a viewpoint from the character's own perspective. I've tried to do the latter. Believe it or not, I didn't just chuck the sex in because I wanted to be more commercial and write something with lots of sex (and come to think of it, there's very little sex in the second book, and just a moderate amount in the third). With Sandy, it just seemed to work. We're talking about someone from a very different, self-contained society, bound by none of this society's morals, and made up of individuals who are nowhere near as emotionally developed and complex as we. Sandy's the exception to the latter bit, but I wanted her to be quite naive about human social morals, to feel like an outsider, but not necessarily in a bad way. As a person, she's endlessly curious, and having a brain capable of processing enormous inputs of sensory information (enhanced vision, enhanced hearing, super high-powered neural uplinks) it just seemed to me that sensory stimulation would be something she loves... and has never learned any moral qualms about. And so she loves food, loves music, loves art, and naturally, loves sex. It's meant to represent her humanity, and to some degree, a certain good humoured vulnerability to baser human instincts. I thought it a good antidote to the super-duper high intelligence AI cliche of the android who only likes playing chess and reading science manuals. Sandy's much more into sex, drugs and rock and roll... only without the drugs, they don't really work on her. And if you have enough sex and rock and roll, who needs the drugs anyway?

Crossover Review at SF Crowsnest

2006-11-02T00:15:00.000+10:30

Tomas L. Martin reviews Crossover at the SF Crowsnest.

He notes that he likes how Cassandra doesn't succumb to the android cliche of desperately yearning to be human. I've always thought this was a silly cliche for several reasons. For one thing, it's arrogant. Why would anyone necessarily want to be human? It assumes that being anything else would suck.

Two, it assumes that an artificial person (to use the politically correct term, which when dealing with civilised space's most lethal soldier is no dumb thing) would not be human to begin with. Well, that depends on the technology envisaged. Cassandra is the product of technology that mimics human intelligence, and indeed basic human biology. But even if you were a good old fashioned tinpot android (say Commander Data from Star Trek TNG) who's to say that technology mitigates against emotion? What is emotion if not a higher intellectual function? And even if he did feel no emotion, why would someone with no emotion desperately yearn to be human? Isn't yearning an emotion? Wouldn't yearning constitute an irrational and wasteful impulse, if one had no emotion? The whole construct doesn't make sense, except to create a dramatic narrative about humanity that, while sometimes entertaining, is essentially pretty shallow. I mean, doesn't this requirement that friendly AIs should always look up to us, or always want to be like us, constitute a shallow insecurity on our part? Or are we scared that if they don't worship us, they'll want to wipe us out instead?

Which leads to the last point, that someone who desperately wants to be something else is basically insecure. Cassandra just isn't that kind of insecure person. Whatever her various personal issues, she doesn't go in for self-loathing, she's fairly well adjusted, has high self-esteem, etc. She's not a neurotic, self-mutilating mess... and if she were, Crossover might have become a horror novel, because you just don't want someone of her capabilities to be that screwed up. She doesn't think she's superior in any moral sense, but she kind of likes having all these way cool abilities. I mean, who wouldn't?

Useful Idiots

2006-11-01T01:44:00.000+10:30

This kind of thing becomes annoying after a while.

I normally don't criticize fellow novelists, but this new book Underground is making for an exasperating trend. Why does the left suppose that totalitarianism comes only from the right? Well, there was Hitler. Good example, save that bit about National Socialism (that socialism thing, wasn't that a leftist concept?) so even that becomes problematic, given that much of the thought behind National Socialism is actually Marxist. Um... Pinochet? Nasty guy, hope he burns in hell, but seriously, on the pecking order of twentieth century dictators, he wouldn't make the top thirty. Military coups tend to be associated with right wing-ism, and probably true, but unless you're talking about Saddam, they usually weren't THAT bad... and the likes of Saddam didn't really have political affiliations anyhow. Saddam wasn't rightist or leftist, he was Saddamist. Or Ba'athist, actually, which... wouldn't you know it, leftist again. And I don't know where you put a guy like Idi Amin... right winger, or just an asshole?

No, for the really, truly appalling dictatorships of the twentieth century (save the dubious Hitler example), you turn left. In the USSR, Stalin killed a quarter of Russia's population all on his own (and was loved for it). Mao did even worse with raw numbers, but China's got more people, so no one seemed to notice. Everyone forgets the million or so Vietnamese who disappeared after Saigon fell. Next door, the Khmer Rouge were appalling on a truly breathtaking scale, I think even Stalin might have refused Pol Pot's phone calls. I shudder to think of how many people have died and continue to die and will continue to die in North Korea... millions and millions, I have no doubt, considering they've been in power fifty years now.

But to certain lefty writers, all this pales in comparison to George Bush and John Howard's vicious regimes. I mean, low taxes and capitalism. How will we survive?

Seriously, I used to be a lefty, and now consider myself a centrist. I dislike much of what I see on the right, but I'm truly appalled by this kind of smell from the left. The reason I was a lefty was that I care for human liberty, and I disliked the right's tendency to beat up on minorities, weirdos, freaks and other strange non-conformists with whom I tend to identify. Yet I'm often left gagging in horror at today's left's incredible moral equivalence, equating Bush with Hitler, Howard with Stalin, and assuming that totalitarianism is primarily a right-wing phenomenon. You don't have to like Bush, Howard and their like, and God knows they do plenty of things I disagree with, but if you can't tell the difference between Bush and Hitler, you're lost, and there is no hope for you.

Yet novels like 'Underground' continue to assume right wing governments will lead to autocracy, and films like V-for-Vendetta assume the same, and BBC mockumentaries like Death of a President portray worlds of authoritarian jackboots just around the corner, and I'm sure if you think hard you can think of other distopian futures invented on the premise that right-wingism leads to dictatorship.

In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. The right, many leftists have noticed, tend to be anti-government (in every respect except gay peoples' bedrooms... but that's another matter). In America, they own guns and treat bureaucrats with contempt. When the jackboots come, these are the people who'll greet them with a hail of bullets. Not that I like the American gun culture (again, another matter)... I'm just sayin'.

Neither does being anti-military and pacifist mean you're less likely to welcome jackboot totalitarianism -- again, quite the opposite. George Orwell put it best in his essay 'Notes on Nationalism' (from a compilation called 'essays', and if you've any interest in Orwell, and consider yourself a centrist like me, buy this book, even if just for 'Notes on Nationalism') where he writes in May 1945 of Pacifism;

"The majority of Pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects, or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred for western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism."

He goes on to say that, "Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis...'

This shouldn't have surprised anyone then, and shouldn't surprise anyone now (and there's a LOT of them about, mostly on the left), because pacifism is ultimately a totalitarian ideology. It has one truth. Any solution with one truth can only be imposed upon the rest of humanity, because humanity will never collectively arrive at this one truth by any other means. The best way to impose the 'one truth' upon fractious, silly humans is through the barrel of a gun.

You can hear echoes of this if you listen to what novels, films or TV like those mentioned here are saying. Right wing governments are bad. Democracy is therefore bad, because people elect these governments. In V-for-Vendetta, the hero delivers a televised speech to we, the ordinary citizens, berating us for having put these jerks in power. Yes you! Why did you vote for these people? You don't know what's good for you. I know better. Wouldn't it just be better for everyone if you just voted how I wanted you to? I can look after you better than you can. Like those English lefties who wrote letters to random American voters during the last election campaign urging them to see the light and vote for Kerry... again with the patronising undertone, 'you don't know what's good for you, see things my way, I'm much wiser than you, poor stupid American...'.

This is how it starts, you see. All that's required for freedom to die is for someone in power to find a sensible reason to suspend it. Right wingers, according to a not-insignificant portion of the left, are killing the planet, waging war left and right, stealing elections and creating an unjust and unequal society. Marx, and then Lenin, had similar problems, and their solution was a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Dictatorship is reasonable, you see, if your opponents don't know what's best, and the ordinary folk can't be trusted to see reason... leftist revolutions, after all, were always elitist, top-down revolutions, never bottom up as Marx expected. The ordinary people were never wise enough to see the true glory of Marx's theories, they had to be guided. The ordinary people will never be wise enough to see the true glory of intellectual 'one truth-isms' at any time. They need to be guided. Or persuaded. Or threatened. Or have electrodes attached to their testicles and...

THIS is why society never sees the totalitarian takeover coming, because it's never the people everyone expects. It's the anti-totalitarians, the ones screaming for freedom, who become the tyrants, in the 'best interests of society'. It's the Robespierres, the champions of social justice against the cruelty of French royalty, who become the madmen with the bloody guillotines. Lenin was liberating Russia from capitalism, Stalin was liberating Russia from Leninism and Trotskyism, Pol Pot was liberating Cambodia from everything bourgeois, Robespierre was liberating France from feudalism, etc. And of course, it's all our fault, we poor, ignorant peasants who couldn't be trusted with the grand vision required to know what's best for society.

To protect us from this totalitarian bullshit, democracy was invented. Democracy is a state of mind, in which all must accept that there IS no one truth, but an approximation of many truths. In a democracy, you must love your enemy. If you have no enemy, you're not IN a democracy. Revolutions are about annihilating your enemy entirely. That's why they usually end up in such a mess. Today's right, whatever you think of them, seem to enjoy the fight. The left seem to hate it, and to wish there was no fight at all. The left accuse the right of loving to have an enemy to fight... and they're correct, right-wingers always expect there will be enemies, and look forward to kicking their ass. Lefties tend to dream of a day when there'll be no enemies... thus John Lennon, singing songs like 'Imagine', which tend to be seen as cuddly and harmless, but should really have been the theme song for Pol Pot's Year Zero, as it advocates almost exactly the same thing. As much as I dislike many of the right's policies, I have to reluctantly concede that the right's democratic credentials of late look far stronger to me than the left's. Most worryingly of all... possibly they've always been.

Grainger Quartet

2006-10-27T16:34:00.000+09:30

Some good friends of mine, formerly of the Australian String Quartet, have recently formed the Grainger Quartet, and will begin performing this November. These guys are undoubtedly some of the best classical musicians in Australia (and probably the world) so if you like great classical music, put yourself on their mailing list in the hope that they'll visit someplace near you eventually. They're worth it.

Models Wanted

2006-10-20T09:41:00.000+09:30

Following on from the men's ATP tennis tournament in Madrid, the women's WTA Madrid Tournament will now use models instead of real ball boys and ball girls... except these models will be male, of course.

I think that's wonderful. I mean, talentless, good looking people just don't get enough breaks in life.

Review on Fantasy Book Spot

2006-10-20T09:39:00.000+09:30

Another review for Crossover

Lagaan

2006-10-19T21:08:00.000+09:30

I'm pretty bullish on India. In fact, when I see bad news in the world, or future trends that could be alarming, I think of India, and am reassured.

There was a very popular Indian movie called Lagaan that well summarises why I think Indian influence on the world will be a generally positive thing (spoiler warning, for any planning to watch it one day). The movie is set in 1893, when the British ruled India. The plot's fairly silly but entertaining (hey, it's Bollywood), about a village that gets into a conflict with the local British garrison. To resolve the conflict, it's agreed that a game of cricket will be played. If the British win, the village tax will be doubled. If they lose, the garrison will be withdrawn, and there will be no more British tax. The problem, of course, is that in 1893, none of this village know how to play cricket.

Now in most post-colonial nations, the formula here would be obvious -- the colonials are evil without exception, they will lie, cheat and be generally unlikeable in all regards, so the audience can boo and hiss to their hearts' content.

But Lagaan is different. Sure, the British soldiers who comprise the opposing cricket team are arrogant and cold, but they never cheat, which is the usual writers' trick in such formulas. Furthermore, the Indians are assisted by an English woman at the garrison (a general's daughter or some such, I think) who teaches them the rules, and even falls in unrequited love with the Indian hero. When the game itself is played, some senior English gentlemen in the clubhouse applaud English and Indian players equally, with real enthusiasm when the Indians play well, despite it meaning their own side taking a hit.

Best of all is how the umpires are portrayed. Both are English, as the English are the only ones knowing the rules well enough, and again, the usual cliches demand that the umpires be biased against the Indians. But instead, at the end of the game, the Indians are saved by an umpire -- they need four runs off the last delivery, but the bowler oversteps the line and the umpire calls a no-ball (that's illegal, for you cricketing-know-nothings out there, like a baseball pitcher stepping forward off his mound). The English all celebrate, but see the umpire signaling no-ball, which means the ball must be rebowled.

"Are you sure?" the English captain asks, incredulously.

"Quite sure," says the umpire, with that impeccably English self-assurance. The Indian hero then hits the winning runs off the rebowled final ball, and the Indians win.

This demonstrates an attitude remarkably rare amongst post-colonial nations -- the ability to find praiseworthy qualities in one's oppressors. The invective and self-pity is missing, the victim mentality, the convenient blaming of a nation's problems upon colonial masters to absolve oneself of any responsibility for the nation's present state. It's a very different take on the English than what I would imagine being made in Mugabe's Zimbabwe, for example... or in most Arab nations, who have merely switched their blame-someone-else strategy from England (or other colonial power) to America and Israel.

I think a lot of it is simply that India is so huge, diverse and complex that no matter how strange foreigners of any stripe might be to individual Indians, they'll never be as strange as some other Indians somewhere, from some other part of the country. For Indians, the strange is ordinary, to be tolerated rather than feared. Which makes them seem, to our eyes, chaotic and fractious, but also as a pleasant side effect, amongst the least xenophobic peoples on earth. I think the world's future is quite safe in the hands of people like that. It's the people who are prone to various notions of racial, nationalist, ethnic, religious or ideological purity who worry me. India has all of these, but in such small pockets, and all conflicting against each other, that they cancel each other out.

Syndicated on Live Journal

2006-10-18T11:10:00.000+09:30

Some clever people have just gotten this blog syndicated on Live Journal.

Crossover Review on Bookgasm

2006-10-18T11:08:00.000+09:30

Here's another one.

Battlestar Galactica

2006-10-17T17:45:00.000+09:30

I've just now finished watching Season Two of the best show on TV, Battlestar Galactica, on DVD (we're a bit behind in Australia). If you haven't watched it, and want to, best you stop reading here, because there's major, serious spoilers in the post below. You have been warned...

First off, this show has everything I like in SF -- great characters, great writing, action, big philosophical issues, politics... it's not a usual mix in SF, but that's why I like it. Most of Season Two rocked, and I could sing the praises of most of the episodes in some other post. But I'm writing this one because the way the season ended really sucked.

The Fleet elects the wrong person to be president (after the President and Admiral Adama could have gotten away with a fraudulent victory scot-free, but decide against it for moral reasons) and that president sends them all to colonise a well-hidden little dump of a world, because everyone's just tired of running and wants desperately to settle down, even though their leaders think it's a terrible idea. They settle, they forget their defences, they think they're safe and let their guard down... and what do you know, the cylons show up after all, what's left of the Fleet is forced to flee, and the colonies are left defenceless, and are forced to surrender.

Now, it IS a fascinating dilemma -- would you have taken the fraudulent election, given what the alternative led to, and was always going to lead to? And certainly this is a problem with democracy, sometimes people get it wrong. As far as that goes, that's a subject worth exploring. But you have to explore it properly, and not resort to simplicity... which is not what Battlestar Galactica usually does with most issues, so I was surprised and disappointed to see it here.

The problem is that I see a trend developing, in writers exploring this issue. In the first episode of the TV series Jericho (which is the only episode of that show I'll watch, I'm sure) after some nuclear bombs go off, survivors are within hours fighting and clawing each others' eyes out to survive. And how many times have you seen it in disaster movies, where something bad happens, and people kill each other in panic and selfishness? It's the cliche of selfish, uncooperative people who, deprived of the thin veneer of civilisation in their daily lives, quickly resort to barbarian savagery.

In Galactica, they don't turn on each other (though they have in previous episodes) but they do resort to en-masse hysteria and irrational thinking, in hoping the cylons will leave them alone. There is a distrust of ordinary people here, in the writing. A cynicism of the choices ordinary people make, a distrust of democracy, and an underlying suspicion that the populace need guidance, to avoid making the wrong decisions. Now, democracy may in many cases be worthy of distrust (Hitler won %40 of the popular vote) but again, you've got to know what you're criticising.

Does anyone recall crowds of New Yorkers stampeding each other on September 11th? Of course not, the precise opposite happened. It's not always the case, of course, but in most disasters, people band together. When I lived in Perth, there were two moderately dramatic incidents -- one a car crash out the front of the house, and two a big bushfire in King's Park across the road, and on both occasions, everyone was helping everyone else. In any war or disaster or relatively minor challenge, this always happens. This, also, is the tribal instinct from which patriotism comes. And HERE's your dilemma (Galactica writers please pay attention), because the very good, positive, vital force that unites people in the face of danger and challenge, can also mutate into something nasty, under some circumstances -- see above reference to Hitler for proof. The problem isn't that people are stupid and make the wrong choices. The problem is that people are basically good, and band together, and help each other, and form united communities... that then begin to discriminate, become xenophobic and attack everyone else. The good and the bad, it's just two sides of the same coin. I've always loved the Chinese yin-and-yang symbol, and this is why -- it's life, and it's human life in particular. The things that make us good also make us bad. Evil and stupidity do not exist in isolation of more positive moral values.

People aren't stupid, it's just that their reasonable intelligence and goodness can lead to unforeseen developments. Do a people who have just been subjected to genocide ever bury their heads in the sand and hope they won't be attacked again? Ask the Israelis. They'll tell you they don't think so. Galactica's fleet may well have elected Guyus Baltar, but to suppose they'd let their Fleet go to ruin and forget to protect themselves is silly. People who are survivors of genocide become militarist, patriotic and develop a fatalistic, potentially brutal streak. They say things like 'never again' (sounds familiar, yes?), and swear it on the many graves of their ancestors. That's called not being stupid. It's rational, and the more I've understood this as I've grown older (and a little wiser, I hope), the more appreciative of Israel's position in the world I've become. But it won't be news to any Israelis that too much of this attitude creates many negatives too, with the ultimate fear being that you might become what you hate (which thankfully Israel has never come close to being, whatever her many critics claim, because Israel at least is fundamentally aware of the problem... while by contrast, Israel's and indeed Judiasm's enemies, over the many centuries, all share one thing in common -- all are utterly incapable of that kind of self-criticism, or even self-awareness).

But thinking back over previous Galactica episodes, I'm suddenly wondering if as good as the writing's been, that's been missing all along. Where is the patriotic togetherness? Where are the kids listening to pilot frequencies, and cheering for their favorite heroes, like kids in 1940 England would read of the exploits of their favorite spitfire aces? It's never existed in the show, the Fleet's always at each others' throats, the military are always distrusted (despite not deserving it, mostly) and the black marketeers are always stabbing each other in the back. Is patriotism so un-PC these days? Is everyone so frightened of it, or so frightened of appearing square, like the old Galactica show was, of unquestioning, 1950s patriotism where kids sing the anthem and salute the flag, and say 'Gee Mr Apollo sir, I'd sure like to be a viper pilot like you one day!' Is that what people think patriotism always is, and thus, why they avoid it? Has it become that terrible a vomit-inducing cliche? And if so, why not just be original, and write something that tackles it differently, rather than just pretending it doesn't exist, because it makes you somehow uncomfortable?

I'm not asking them to fly the flag. I'm asking them to observe that the flag does fly, will always fly, and that human civilisation will end if it does not, because that's the glue, ultimately, that keeps us together. Then, making that observation, proceed to also observe that some glue can be toxic.

Bloody Servers

2006-10-16T21:41:00.000+09:30

Finally found the blog working today, after more than a week of nothing... might soon be time to find another server.

Review on the Hotlist

2006-10-09T11:55:00.000+09:30

A nice review for Crossover up on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist.

Eagles By A Point!

2006-10-01T00:16:00.000+09:30

Well thank God for that. West Coast and Sydney now have the best rivalry in the AFL, the last five games decided by 12 points total.

One thing I get out of sports is a tremendous character study. There aren't many arenas left in modern life where real people are tested under such pressure... probably the military is the only other. Watching how individuals handle it, and the various character-types that make up the team, is intriguing. There's Ben Cousins -- larakin, knockabout bloke, gets in a bit of trouble (lost the captaincy after a drink-driving incident) but under it all is intense, fearless and one of the best middle-distance athletes in the country. Then there's Chris Judd, captain and superstar at 23, under the pressure of being labeled possibly the greatest player ever, handsome, incredibly gifted, yet somehow softly spoken and unassuming, with no sign of runaway ego. Then big Quinten Lynch -- huge, powerful, rough-looking, rough-mannered and inarticulate, the guy would be a big bruiser cliche if written into any book... but you sense, underneath it all, struggling sometimes for self-belief and self-respect, and a little bit shy. The coach, John Worsfold, formerly a champion defender known for toughness and discipline -- now, as a coach, he's still tough and disciplined, reserved and calmly spoken... yet if you watch him long enough, you see the humor and twinkle in his eye, and realise he's actually a very nice, good natured guy. And you have a young guy like Steven Armstrong, who was caught in the Bali bombings a few years back and still has scars... was dropped by Melbourne Demons, picked up by West Coast, and was pinching himself that he's now a Premiership player.

People who don't like sports, who say it's a pointless activity, miss the point -- the activity isn't really what it's about, it's about the people doing it. There's no other environment in which you can get to know a group of people, if only vicariously, and see what happens when events throw everything and the kitchen sink at them and demand they respond. I'll always love it. Especially when my guys win!

Crossover in the UK

2006-09-27T12:08:00.000+09:30

Well, I've just recently granted Pyr the UK rights for Crossover, thanks to leading UK bookstore Waterstones' very pleasing offer flog the crap out of it (that's a technical bookseller's term). I understand the first copies are arriving about now, so if you're in the UK... oh hell, you know the rest. Very exciting.

Space Blogging

2006-09-26T12:54:00.000+09:30

Lots of cool space stuff at Hobbyspace:

Anousheh Ansari, Iranian-born space tourist, is currently blogging from the International Space Station.

Armadillo Aerospace (brainchild of Doom-inventor John Cormack) have their latest test video up, this of the vehicle that will be competing for the Lunar Lander Challenge at this year's X-prize Cup. John says on hobbyspace that the video isn't very exciting... no? It bloody hovers in one spot on a rocket plume for 90 seconds! When was the last time you saw a rocket hover?

Bigelow Aerospace have announced they intend to launch the first private space station in late 2009-10, to be followed by a second, larger module in 2012, for a total capacity of nine people. Thus giving new rocket companies a new destination to fly to, and up to sixteen flights per year, thus increasing flight frequency, thus reducing cost-per-flight. There's also a plan to assist smaller nations to develop their own manned spaceflight programs, for a fraction of the cost of NASA or Russia's programs. I'm sure Malaysia would love a space program.

And finally, don't you hate it when someone starts promoting an idea you've already had? Al Globus reckons space settlement on lower-gravity planets would be complicated by the difficulties in raising children in low-G environments, thus mandating the use of large, rotational space stations that generate their own gravity for child raising in space. I already had that idea! I just hadn't gotten around to writing the series it was going to be in. I think they'll discover, in the future, that kids need gravity to grow just like plants do, we already know that long term weightlessness does nasty things to adults. I think kids in low gravity would develop brittle bones, poor cardio-vascular systems, and a whole host of accompanying health problems. So Mars settlement, for instance, would be complicated by couples wanting to have children, having to stick them on orbital stations until they stop growing -- like childhood boarding school.

Sporting Weekend

2006-09-24T09:12:00.000+09:30

I've had a great sporting weekend. First the West Coast Eagles beat the Adelaide Crows to make it into the AFL Grand Final, and now the Australian women's basketball team, the Opals, have won gold at the basketball world championships.

The latter means the most. I've been following women's basketball for a long time -- it's much more worth following in Australia than the men because the men are mediocre, while the women are world class. The reasons for that are actually related to Australian Football, because if footy didn't exist, there'd be another thirty or forty excellent tall athletes who'd probably be playing basketball instead, and quite a few would be stars. Women don't play footy professionally, so all the best tall female athletes play basketball instead.

For a long time the Opals have been stuck with very mediocre coaching, but Jan Stirling has steadily improved to the point where I can't find anything to complain about (imagine!) and she's blessed with some awesome talent, Penny Taylor and Lauren Jackson in particular. I'd honestly rather watch those two play than just about any male player you could name, including NBA superstars. Penny and LJ have more talent than most men, and talent has always impressed me more than pure strength or athleticism. Yeah, we got a bit lucky that the USA lost in the semis... but we creamed Russia in the final, after Russia beat America, so that's nearly as good.

Then there's the Eagles, in a rematch next weekend of last year's AFL Grand Final against the Sydney Swans. This is just a battle of good versus evil, pure and simple. The Eagles play fast, exciting, offensive football, the way the game ought to be played. The Swans play defensive, slow, choke-hold football that's ugly to watch yet disturbingly effective, like mustard gas. The Swans won last year, and I was subjected to a Paris bar full of cheering Sydney fans at some unGodly hour of the morning, reflecting that I'd rather have stayed in bed. Now, it's revenge time!

Interview

2006-09-23T11:15:00.000+09:30

There's an interview with me up at Pat's Fantasy Hotlist.

Interesting Review

2006-09-21T00:29:00.000+09:30

I know authors aren't supposed to respond to reviews, but there's a new reader-review up on Crossover's Amazon site that gives me a few talking points. It's actually a pretty good review, despite only giving three stars... from reading the text alone, I'd have thought it was a four-star. So I'm not going to trash the writer, I'm actually quite happy with it.

Anyhow, firstly something I'm not sure is my fault or not... he says he's fascinated that Vanessa Rice has a five year hetero/homosexual cycle. Um... she's kidding. This raises one of those tricky dilemmas as an author -- how much do you spell out? This is one of those problems that arises perhaps because people are reading in 'science fiction mode', and assume Vanessa's being literal. But I don't want to explain out the context too much, to explain that she's kidding, because if I did that with Vanessa, every second sentence would be followed by an explanation. Vanessa's joke is that she's bi-sexual, she's been married to a man for a few years, few of her relationships last, and she's putting her current relationship problems down to the fact that she's getting sick of men and wants a woman again. Thus, kidding about her hetero/homo cycle, as she calls it.

The reviewer also likes the holdovers, like paperback books... I never understood why some SF writers thought they would disappear, myself. In an infotech-heavy society like Tanusha, I see books as becoming stylishly retro, not just as ornamental furnishing (although full bookshelves are used for that purpose today) but also as a counter-movement against the excesses of too much fast data. Like how MacDonalds-style fast food is being countered in places like Italy with a 'slow food' movement, meaning... well, exactly what you'd think it would, in Italy -- pasta, wine, salad, good company and 'What's the damn rush?!' Societies are different from economies -- in economics, efficiency is everything. Society, however, often values the inefficient. That's not always a bad thing.

The reviewer then names some stylistic issues... I've noticed some people have an issue with my style, but luckily most seem to be cool with it. For example, he names 'fragments' as something he has a problem with here... a lot of that comes from writing from Sandy's (Cassandra's) point of view. How do you convey the experience of processing so much information at once, as Sandy does? When someone perceives twenty different sources within the space of a sentence, you have to leap around a lot, within the one sentence, to convey the sensation. Yeah, the grammar and punctuation can sometimes take a beating, but a lot of people have told me they like it, too, that it gets them inside Sandy's head.

The mirror. I've never been to writing school (save a bit of creative writing at uni a long time ago) and I don't think there's a 'rule' most good writers couldn't find a good reason to break. Yes, Sandy does look at herself in a mirror in the opening scene... but I don't really describe what she looks like, because that's not the point. The point is that Sandy looks in the mirror because that's what she'd do. She's new in town, she's looking at herself and wondering if she'll fit in, if anyone will pick her as something odd, and how she'll manage in this new life she's created for herself. And because she is, in human terms, young, naive, and somewhat visually fixated -- she likes looking at things, anything stimulating or curious, it's just what she's like, and hard to explain unless you know her like I do. This is why I hate 'writing rules'... if the mirror rule means characters have to flee shrieking at the sight of a mirror for the rest of literary history, that's a bit silly. There are many things one can do with mirrors besides annoy readers by having characters observe their faces in them.

And the reviewer says the opening chapter's a little slow... if that's his only pacing problem, that's cool. Others have told me they like the first chapter for doing what it does... it's just one of those things people will have different opinions of. But I think I had to open the story like that, because it demonstrates what Sandy's come to Tanusha in hopes of finding -- peace, and the hope of happiness. Thus adding to the power when it's smashed... and yes, chapter two is not for the squeamish. I'd explain why, but that would involve serious spoilers for anyone who hasn't read it. But it's there for a reason too.

Anyhow, as I said, I liked the review, and don't mind well intentioned criticism at all, because it encourages me to justify my creative decisions. Like this.

Institutional Sexism

2006-09-13T11:45:00.000+09:30

Given that institutional sexism is pretty much gone (or very well hidden) from most western organisations these days, it's always morbidly fascinating to see a reminder of what it used to be like.

So I was flipping cable channels last night, and found something called "Mission Udaan", which believe it or not is a reality TV competition run by the Indian Air Force, presumably for recruiting purposes. They selected five competitors from the general public, who would compete in a series of trials, from dressing quickly in a 'scramble' to get geared up and into a fighter cockpit, to being winched from the ocean by a rescue helicopter, to parachuting from a helicopter, etc. The contestant with the highest final mark would win a ride in the backseat of a Su-30, India's top-line fighterplane.

It's not hard to guess they didn't want the women to win, because one of them was scared of heights. I shit you not -- an airforce competition, and of all the applicants, they chose one who gets dizzy any higher then five stories up. She had to pass on two events, obviously ruling her out of contention. The second woman, however, did annoyingly well... so well, in fact, that she was clearly neck-and-neck with another male contestant to win the final prize at the end. Whereupon, at the final presentation, some bigwig Indian Air Force dude stands before them on a podium on the tarmac, and announces that one woman has come last, and the other has come... second-last! And the men, of course, place third, second and first. I mean, the sheer lack of subtlety was breathtaking. They didn't even bother to re-edit it to make the second woman look like she was doing worse than she was. Just "I'm in command, and I say she came second-last".

This fits with everything else I've heard about the Indian Air Force, where they have a quota system of female pilots designed, as far as I can tell, not as an affirmative action plan, but to actively limit the number of women taken in. And of course they're not allowed to fly those Su-30s themselves, because the Indian brass, obviously knowning something most western airforces don't, have declared women aren't physically up to it. Here's hoping as India's defence relationship with America improves, some of these assholes find themselves in mock combat exercises against some of these girls, and get their backsides handed to them.

But it's instructive to recall that most Western institutions used to be like that, from law to medicine to you name it.

The Butterfly Effect

2006-09-04T23:01:00.000+09:30

I just picked up the second album by Aussie band The Butterfly Effect, called Imago... and I'm delighted to report it rocks.

The last five years or so I've barely listened to the radio, partly because they seem to think some pissant idiots yapping at each other about how pissed they got last night is more interesting than playing music, and partly because the actual music when they do get to it has been steadily getting crappier and crappier. But I've been complaining about this ever since one of my favorite songs 'Love Raises its Ugly Head', by my then-favorite band Living Colour, was remastered in dance-format, and released. They ripped its guts out, took out Vernon Reid's awesome guitar licks, replaced Will Calhoun's equally awesome drumming with a drum machine drone, and it hit the top of the charts. That was when it hit me that the popular music scene is actually talent averse, and will kill all musical talent if allowed to. Talent exists, and can succeed, but it has to fight for every inch. Bullshit, on the other hand, gets a free pass.

The '90s were rock heaven for me -- Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam's good phase, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, etc. How amazing, I thought naively, to be experiencing an era where the popular and the talented were actually the same thing. But the record labels crushed it, as they always do, and lately I've had only Tool, and Maynard Keenan's other band A Perfect Circle for consolation. The only good point was that I started listening to more classical and world music, rediscovered Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, etc (music exists for me to evoke emotion and beauty, I don't care if it's violins, sitars or amped stratocasters that do it).

But lately, rock started making a comeback. Wolfmother's good, though a little too predictable to be bothered buying. The White Stripes, Audioslave... close, but no cigar. I listen to those songs a few times, get bored and don't desperately need to hear them again. And then I hear The Butterfly Effect's new single 'Gone' and finally, that's what I've been waiting six years to hear. New rock that's complex, melodic, powerful, takes several listens to completely absorb, and sticks in your head, demanding another listen to recapture that riff, that rhythm, that thing you loved the first few times you heard but couldn't quite remember in entirety. And they're Australian! That's rare, most of my favorite bands are American.

If my taste sounds anything like your's, check it out. If you love Eminem, Shakira or 50 Cent, you'll probably hate it. But that's cool, there's enough love and hate in the world to go around...

Oh... and at the mention of Tool, if Vicarious, off the album 10,000 Days, isn't the most kick-ass rock song of the last decade... well, I'll argue!