Minor spoilers in this review, nothing that will ruin the book though.
"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood is an incredible piece of science fiction. I first encountered Margaret after reading "The Handmaiden's Tale" and never guessed from that she would end up writing one of my new favorite books. I can't wait to acquire the next book in this series.
This particular little work has all the mainstays of awesome scifi: New technologies that feel like they're just beyond our reach, the dystopia created by hubris, interesting characters and a wonderful narration. She even manages to make you care about despicable characters.
You follow a lone anti-hero character, 'Snowman', through his life in a
series of flashbacks as he navigates the world after the fall.
As 'Snowman' aka Jimmy grows up you see him squander his intelligence
while his friend Crake distances himself as his intellect propels him
forward. There's plenty of references to classic scifi advances like gene splicing and eugenics, and the way that Atwood leverages these things is brilliant.
Interspersed with the flashbacks are glimpses into 2 incredibly diverse societies: the old world in which he grew up full of decadence and perversion and high technology, and short glimpses into a 'perfect' society created by the title character Crake after he joins a major biotech corporation.
I think this book would genuinely be enjoyed by a wide audience even those that aren't particularly inclined to science fiction. For science fiction fans, however, this is a must read!
June 28, 2012
Yale Writer's Conference
For the weeks of June 12-22 I was off in New Haven Connecticut for a Writers Conference at Yale. It's been quite an experience and I met some thoroughly amazing people there.
The idea of a writing conference is to bring a large number of angsty writer types together, stick them in a room and have them do battle using their overripe and easily bruised egos. Hopefully you come out of it with a better handle on the craft, a glimpse in to how readers might view your work, and a few friends you can bounce ideas off of. There was also a master class scheduled for some point during the two week period and some panels involving editors, literary agents and publishing houses.
We were housed in Calhoun College for the summer session and given the normal amenities available to Yale students for the duration. When New Haven was bored of trying to drown us we were hit by a heat wave that brought us into the upper 90's. Realize that our dorms included a 10x20 room fit for a gerbil with double thick insulation. I kid (mostly), we were warned about the heat in the dorms well in advance and I should have bought a fan.
Now for the meaty part. I'll be candid, this was my first proper critique workshop.
Other workshops were less stringent and the writers less involved. In short, an amateur group. I feel that the 'no barrier to entry' thing, much like in the e-publishing scene, causes a drop in quality. In those workshops I was dealing with people bringing in their rough drafts more often then not, and it was painful to try to critique at that level. What do you tell someone who hands you their first attempt?
Our workshops held 12 writers each with a faculty member who oversaw the critiquing process and guided us through the discussions. My adviser was John Crowley who actually teaches creative writing at Yale and is a published sci-fi author (what I aspire to be).
Luckily at this conference, and specifically my group, everyone was great. They were reading and gave great critiques. My class had interesting stories and good ideas for how to improve one-anothers works. We worked well as a group and had great banter, even when we disagreed with one-another it was done respectively.
I'm actually jumping back and forth from my manuscript critique and this blog post, and the written comments are even more insightful then some of the discussion. I truly had a great group of people!
The other works that I was critiquing ranged from fantasy to fiction to creative nonfiction about family genealogies, and the size of the works ranged from packets of short stories to novel excerpts. Everyone brought something different to the table and the writing was superb.
It being the first writing conference at Yale, there were going to be some bugs which will need to be worked out and I actually spoke directly to the organizer who agreed with what I had to say (How often do you get to just chat up the organizer? He was so polite about us critiquing the conference!).
Most of my complaints were just that there was too much in one day. We would have our critiques for several hours, then a student reading followed by faculty readings. Of course all the readings were optional, but having them right up against each other made many people skip quite a few (I'm guilty as well).
The master classes were a big let down. Instead of being an actual class with an established author we ended up at a very personal book talk. This is partially because there wasn't a structured class format given to the authors and also because of the people who attended; our master class author had some exercises with him but people just kept asking questions about his book. This would have been better served at the reading he was doing in 2 hours rather than during our 'class'.
I ended up being too exhausted to do much writing but I did get plenty of reading done, which was something I'm severely lacking in my personal life. I was given lots of reading suggestions in my genre after my critique, and all of the books so far have been dead-on and I'll be reviewing them in the weeks ahead.
The panels about current trends in publishing, how to send in your manuscript, publishers houses, the Penn-Faulkner group, and literary agents were dead-on! I got a lot of great information about every step of the process. I wish there was even more of that and that it hadn't all been (mostly) the same day which made it hard to get through the editors panel.
The grounds of Yale itself are beautiful and have wonderful architecture. I enjoy a bit of photography so the chance to wake up in the college and run around collecting pictures of the grounds was a great experience for me. I've got a large album of pics to run through once I have the time.
I think the Yale Conference has a bit of maturing to do but I would definitely do it again if I had the money and time. The people I met there were amazing and the knowledge I gained about the craft will hopefully help me get my novella ready to publish.
After all, now I have competition.
The idea of a writing conference is to bring a large number of angsty writer types together, stick them in a room and have them do battle using their overripe and easily bruised egos. Hopefully you come out of it with a better handle on the craft, a glimpse in to how readers might view your work, and a few friends you can bounce ideas off of. There was also a master class scheduled for some point during the two week period and some panels involving editors, literary agents and publishing houses.
We were housed in Calhoun College for the summer session and given the normal amenities available to Yale students for the duration. When New Haven was bored of trying to drown us we were hit by a heat wave that brought us into the upper 90's. Realize that our dorms included a 10x20 room fit for a gerbil with double thick insulation. I kid (mostly), we were warned about the heat in the dorms well in advance and I should have bought a fan.
Now for the meaty part. I'll be candid, this was my first proper critique workshop.
Other workshops were less stringent and the writers less involved. In short, an amateur group. I feel that the 'no barrier to entry' thing, much like in the e-publishing scene, causes a drop in quality. In those workshops I was dealing with people bringing in their rough drafts more often then not, and it was painful to try to critique at that level. What do you tell someone who hands you their first attempt?
Our workshops held 12 writers each with a faculty member who oversaw the critiquing process and guided us through the discussions. My adviser was John Crowley who actually teaches creative writing at Yale and is a published sci-fi author (what I aspire to be).
Luckily at this conference, and specifically my group, everyone was great. They were reading and gave great critiques. My class had interesting stories and good ideas for how to improve one-anothers works. We worked well as a group and had great banter, even when we disagreed with one-another it was done respectively.
I'm actually jumping back and forth from my manuscript critique and this blog post, and the written comments are even more insightful then some of the discussion. I truly had a great group of people!
The other works that I was critiquing ranged from fantasy to fiction to creative nonfiction about family genealogies, and the size of the works ranged from packets of short stories to novel excerpts. Everyone brought something different to the table and the writing was superb.
It being the first writing conference at Yale, there were going to be some bugs which will need to be worked out and I actually spoke directly to the organizer who agreed with what I had to say (How often do you get to just chat up the organizer? He was so polite about us critiquing the conference!).
Most of my complaints were just that there was too much in one day. We would have our critiques for several hours, then a student reading followed by faculty readings. Of course all the readings were optional, but having them right up against each other made many people skip quite a few (I'm guilty as well).
The master classes were a big let down. Instead of being an actual class with an established author we ended up at a very personal book talk. This is partially because there wasn't a structured class format given to the authors and also because of the people who attended; our master class author had some exercises with him but people just kept asking questions about his book. This would have been better served at the reading he was doing in 2 hours rather than during our 'class'.
I ended up being too exhausted to do much writing but I did get plenty of reading done, which was something I'm severely lacking in my personal life. I was given lots of reading suggestions in my genre after my critique, and all of the books so far have been dead-on and I'll be reviewing them in the weeks ahead.
The panels about current trends in publishing, how to send in your manuscript, publishers houses, the Penn-Faulkner group, and literary agents were dead-on! I got a lot of great information about every step of the process. I wish there was even more of that and that it hadn't all been (mostly) the same day which made it hard to get through the editors panel.
The grounds of Yale itself are beautiful and have wonderful architecture. I enjoy a bit of photography so the chance to wake up in the college and run around collecting pictures of the grounds was a great experience for me. I've got a large album of pics to run through once I have the time.
I think the Yale Conference has a bit of maturing to do but I would definitely do it again if I had the money and time. The people I met there were amazing and the knowledge I gained about the craft will hopefully help me get my novella ready to publish.
After all, now I have competition.
June 25, 2012
Book Review: Ready Player One
"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline is a quick read dystopian novella for the 80's-90's kids who've grown up and want a bit of nostalgia. Brimming with pop-culture references and trivia, the book really shines as a sort of YA crossover piece and is more of a candy read for adults who just want to lose themselves in a curious piece of fiction.
In it the protagonist Wade Owen Watts (WOW - get it?) is a poor kid from the new ghetto - vertically stacked trailer parks accessible by construction scaffolding - who is in the middle of a contest bequeathing the fortune of James Halloway to the first player to solve all of it's riddles. After years of no activity in the leaderboards he luckily uncovers the first piece and solves the puzzle, earning him a lot of celebrity and the enmity of a multinational corporation hell-bent on winning the prize.
The story grows from there in to a classic sort of hero's quest in both this virtual world and the real world. Wade has to deal with things on both fronts since this mega corporation is a force to be reckoned with. The government seems to be non-existant or powerless in the universe, and as such he must act as his own guardian, hacking and dodging the corp when he can (this is a less developed motif then the actual game world, no complaints there).
All in all the story was interesting, a fun romp and a good look in to a dystopian future world. The author poses some very interesting thoughts on how education and gaming in a virtual massive multiplayer RPG could be married together.
Unfortunately, the piece hinges on all the silly tropes of bland scifi including James Halloway, the socially inept developer of the MMO, the greasy unwashed and socially inept gamer, a series of deus ex machina that will make your head spin, and the power of teenage love. This is more of a thing that makes me sigh rather than a jab at the book which was well-written overall and fun.
If you're a fan of YA and/or Science Fiction I say go for it.
In it the protagonist Wade Owen Watts (WOW - get it?) is a poor kid from the new ghetto - vertically stacked trailer parks accessible by construction scaffolding - who is in the middle of a contest bequeathing the fortune of James Halloway to the first player to solve all of it's riddles. After years of no activity in the leaderboards he luckily uncovers the first piece and solves the puzzle, earning him a lot of celebrity and the enmity of a multinational corporation hell-bent on winning the prize.
The story grows from there in to a classic sort of hero's quest in both this virtual world and the real world. Wade has to deal with things on both fronts since this mega corporation is a force to be reckoned with. The government seems to be non-existant or powerless in the universe, and as such he must act as his own guardian, hacking and dodging the corp when he can (this is a less developed motif then the actual game world, no complaints there).
All in all the story was interesting, a fun romp and a good look in to a dystopian future world. The author poses some very interesting thoughts on how education and gaming in a virtual massive multiplayer RPG could be married together.
Unfortunately, the piece hinges on all the silly tropes of bland scifi including James Halloway, the socially inept developer of the MMO, the greasy unwashed and socially inept gamer, a series of deus ex machina that will make your head spin, and the power of teenage love. This is more of a thing that makes me sigh rather than a jab at the book which was well-written overall and fun.
If you're a fan of YA and/or Science Fiction I say go for it.
June 9, 2012
Short Story: Escape
Escape
That’s why you ride.
To get out of your head. To get out of the grind. To save on gas. To be with friends. To dance with modern day predators. Cat and mouse. Bug and bird. Man versus metal.
Even though the season is ending, its a great day for a ride. The last ride - after this I’ll fill the gastank, coat the chain, and cover it for the winter months. But this is too nice a day to give in. I just need to get my work laptop, what’s the worst that could happen?
I crest the first hill of a small valley and do the usual assessment of the situation: The light is red but will be green by the time I get there, no cars leaving any of the stores, no one making the left turn of death from oncoming. The four-way intersection is empty.
The signal turns green and I see a sedan approaching from the right street. Their blinker is on to take the right in to my lane. But no one could be that much of a-
The sedan jumps out
I swerve into the left lane
Gun the throttle.
I’m beside them, alive. Then the front left turn signal comes on and they merge in to my lane.
I jam both breaks, swerve and lay on my horn, the bike vibrating like a jackhammer. I’m riding the yellow line and just as I’m about to ditch the bike he swerves away, I release the breaks and gun the throttle.
Escape
That’s why you ride.
Escape
That’s how you survive.
I flip him off and coast away to the waiting red light, shifting in to the right lane in case he decides to rear end me to complete the full gambit of dumb shit to do to a motorcyclist. My heart is beating in my ears, I’m sweating in my helmet, and my hands are shaking, but I’m fine. No worse for the wear.
It’s only another hundred feet to the first turn that leads to the highway and that’s where I forget the damage that was done to my good mood. The momentary doubts of whether I should ride anymore are gone, I’m leaning in to the turn, dodging the potholes and wringing my throttle to slalom the staggered vehicles.
It’s good to be riding one more time.
I make it to the highway as night proper sets in, the streetlights make halos on the asphalt. I watch my shadow get impossibly long then squish and squat then spin off me like the hand of a stopwatch in retrograde. You only get so many nights like this to ride on Long Island.
There’s barely any other cars around and I’m smirking behind my helmet, the cool air slips around me. Now that’s air-conditioning. There’s no apprehension when you’re alone on the highway, no fear of other people, there’s just you, your bike, and all the asphalt you can traverse. It’s beautiful.
I gun the throttle to 75 for a moment then ease back to 65. I was told somewhere it’s good to break in the engine with a few blips. I’ve still got less then 1000 miles on it, that needs to change next season.
I need an excuse next season.
Escape
I’m at my building before I know it and my laptops secured in a blink. I have the rest of the ride back to think about how much of a waste this is. I just wanted to be on the bike one more time.
And when I get on?
Escape
June 8, 2012
A Proper Introduction
Let's start this like any initial meeting should start: Hi, my name is Chris and I have a writing problem.
I've been at it, on and off, for most of my young adult life. My love of reading and writing began with Roger Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber", which I must have read and re-read over ten times. In case you're unfamiliar (likely), it was a fantasy story about a family of titanic, crafty immortals vying for lordship over 'the one true reality' of Amber. It was one of the many worlds style books and rife with heroism, sarcasm, a bit of intrigue, some classic deus ex, and plenty of religious symbolism (the latter aspect was one of Zelazny's hallmarks).
Sadly, Zelazny died long before I realized I had to meet the man and I learned of his death something like a year and a half after it happened in '95. This crushed me; I worshiped this series and to know I'd never meet the man who wrote it was upsetting. To this day I refuse to read novels alleging to pick up where he left off that were written by other authors. Proving that I was kind of a moron, I didn't actually read any of his other stuff until much later on in my life.
I was captured more by the characters in his stories and their dynamics than anything else. I wrote my first stories about things that I had in my life, one was a many worlds story that was basically ripped straight from the Amber mythos that I craftily titled "Ruby" because I'm an ingrate. It wasn't anything worth mentioning besides the fact that I filled a 3 subject notebook with my inane scribbles and lost it sometime in the many years since. If I ever find it I might even transcribe a bit as a jab at my younger, stupider self.
After that I wrote something a little less derivative (only a little) about a game I was playing at the time called Infantry (and I think most 90's gamer nerds will have had some experience with that one) which involved energy guns, combat suits and flying surfboards. I would write that in a notebook too, ripping off the classes and the game dynamics while generating my own story about how it all came to be.
A friend of mine at the time would read it once or twice a week and comment on it until I took it off the rails and had the characters sucked in to a medieval setting through some sort of reality rift. This, I think, is where I first started to show a dueling ethos in my head: the more I consumed things the more my writing became this weird mash up of things I liked, gradually being copies of things less and less.
I wrote a story about mutants after that, which I thought was pretty clever but was mostly just me reading old X-Men comics after I inherited them due to a family member's passing. There was some pretty cool technologies in it, and I specifically remember the ISS making a big appearance as a massive intergalactic defense station (Master of Orion 2 was loaded up on my computer). This story made it in to the hands of my English teacher at the time, something which still embarrasses me to this day. I don't remember him commenting on it, possibly because he didn't actually read it. If so I'm quite certain I dodged a bullet; it was awful.
Now we're homing in a bit closer to the end of high school when I spent a lot of time writing a novel I called Azure (Zelazny would have sued my face off at this point). That one was all about magic and reality bending stuff, trying to tie magic in to the setting and the people in a believable way. My girlfriend at the time absolutely loved the story and when we broke up many years later I handed her the 3 subject notebook that contained the original work. The story still exists on my hard drive coming in at 146,309 words of utter garbage. I edited the work laboriously for many months before determining it would never be picked up, at least not in that form. But I'm a firm believer in the 'first novel is trash, and toss it' bit of wisdom, and will happily never seek print for it.
I took a long vacation from writing after the last piece. Looking back, it was the best thing for me: I grew up a lot and shed the last of my rampant plot robbery in the intervening years. I gained a real respect for reading and found many more genres once I let myself get away from it. That takes us up to now, where I'm working on a piece called RAM, which I'll talk about in later updates.
So that's my history, and I'm sticking to it.
I've been at it, on and off, for most of my young adult life. My love of reading and writing began with Roger Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber", which I must have read and re-read over ten times. In case you're unfamiliar (likely), it was a fantasy story about a family of titanic, crafty immortals vying for lordship over 'the one true reality' of Amber. It was one of the many worlds style books and rife with heroism, sarcasm, a bit of intrigue, some classic deus ex, and plenty of religious symbolism (the latter aspect was one of Zelazny's hallmarks).
Sadly, Zelazny died long before I realized I had to meet the man and I learned of his death something like a year and a half after it happened in '95. This crushed me; I worshiped this series and to know I'd never meet the man who wrote it was upsetting. To this day I refuse to read novels alleging to pick up where he left off that were written by other authors. Proving that I was kind of a moron, I didn't actually read any of his other stuff until much later on in my life.
I was captured more by the characters in his stories and their dynamics than anything else. I wrote my first stories about things that I had in my life, one was a many worlds story that was basically ripped straight from the Amber mythos that I craftily titled "Ruby" because I'm an ingrate. It wasn't anything worth mentioning besides the fact that I filled a 3 subject notebook with my inane scribbles and lost it sometime in the many years since. If I ever find it I might even transcribe a bit as a jab at my younger, stupider self.
After that I wrote something a little less derivative (only a little) about a game I was playing at the time called Infantry (and I think most 90's gamer nerds will have had some experience with that one) which involved energy guns, combat suits and flying surfboards. I would write that in a notebook too, ripping off the classes and the game dynamics while generating my own story about how it all came to be.
A friend of mine at the time would read it once or twice a week and comment on it until I took it off the rails and had the characters sucked in to a medieval setting through some sort of reality rift. This, I think, is where I first started to show a dueling ethos in my head: the more I consumed things the more my writing became this weird mash up of things I liked, gradually being copies of things less and less.
I wrote a story about mutants after that, which I thought was pretty clever but was mostly just me reading old X-Men comics after I inherited them due to a family member's passing. There was some pretty cool technologies in it, and I specifically remember the ISS making a big appearance as a massive intergalactic defense station (Master of Orion 2 was loaded up on my computer). This story made it in to the hands of my English teacher at the time, something which still embarrasses me to this day. I don't remember him commenting on it, possibly because he didn't actually read it. If so I'm quite certain I dodged a bullet; it was awful.
Now we're homing in a bit closer to the end of high school when I spent a lot of time writing a novel I called Azure (Zelazny would have sued my face off at this point). That one was all about magic and reality bending stuff, trying to tie magic in to the setting and the people in a believable way. My girlfriend at the time absolutely loved the story and when we broke up many years later I handed her the 3 subject notebook that contained the original work. The story still exists on my hard drive coming in at 146,309 words of utter garbage. I edited the work laboriously for many months before determining it would never be picked up, at least not in that form. But I'm a firm believer in the 'first novel is trash, and toss it' bit of wisdom, and will happily never seek print for it.
I took a long vacation from writing after the last piece. Looking back, it was the best thing for me: I grew up a lot and shed the last of my rampant plot robbery in the intervening years. I gained a real respect for reading and found many more genres once I let myself get away from it. That takes us up to now, where I'm working on a piece called RAM, which I'll talk about in later updates.
So that's my history, and I'm sticking to it.
June 7, 2012
The Rundown
Welcome to the Weekly Writer
My goal is to post weekly about what sort of things I'm working on, what I've learned from others, and little tidbits about life to catalog the creative process. Eventually I'll be looking for a publisher and will also be providing updates on that process to help guide other writers as well.
I believe that art imitates life, and I think that the world around us is important to the creative process, so this will also be a glimpse in to my day-to-day.
I'll make liberal use of the labels to categorize my content, so please filter accordingly if you're curious about anything specific. Next week, for instance, I'll be at Yale for a Writing Conference and posts from it will be tagged as such for convenience.
Here's to writing!
My goal is to post weekly about what sort of things I'm working on, what I've learned from others, and little tidbits about life to catalog the creative process. Eventually I'll be looking for a publisher and will also be providing updates on that process to help guide other writers as well.
I believe that art imitates life, and I think that the world around us is important to the creative process, so this will also be a glimpse in to my day-to-day.
I'll make liberal use of the labels to categorize my content, so please filter accordingly if you're curious about anything specific. Next week, for instance, I'll be at Yale for a Writing Conference and posts from it will be tagged as such for convenience.
Here's to writing!
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