It’s Saturday niiiiiight!

If you’re attending Balticon, Bertie has a reading tomorrow at 5. St. George room! Come find us! We’ve enjoyed meeting everyone… Thanks for all the support! 

Joe Haldeman is an artist, poet, teacher, and amateur astronomer who has also been writing science fiction for rather a significant number of years (his first Worldcon was 1963). He’s living in Gainesville now. I’m not sure why this startles me, to find him so relatively near, but I am unreasonably delighted by this, and to learn that he takes part in a weekly life drawing class. He works with ink, watercolor, pastels, and oils. In addition to, you know: writing. He’s got multiple projects in the works. Reading his blog revealed that he does this writing with a fountain pen. And not even a cartridge-filled fountain pen!

(No, I’m not even tempted. Open bottles of ink and I have a long history of … let’s call them mishaps.)

Why does this matter? Well, if you join me in reading his award-winning novella, The Hemingway Hoax, you’ll understand the hint I’m making about the nature of parallel universes, and the very faint question of if the ones in which I read that story might result in my attempting to forge create a pastiche of a Haldeman book, in which case I’d need to know about that fountain pen. The book is set in Key West, and quite captures the air of the place. Haldeman’s experience as a veteran wounded in action adds an intense realism, which is useful groundwork before playing fast and loose with the universe as we know it. It revolves around the proposed creation of counterfeit Hemingway texts, and the complex human motivations surrounding such an attempt.

The layering of multiple universes is complex; I’m not going to attempt a plot summary, as that’s not my job here, and I can’t do it without spoilers. There are Large Questions in this short book. It’s not a work to read without time to think. Characters both develop and become more fuzzy. The plot progresses, and doesn’t, and shatters, and what you think is happening is not what is happening. Sometimes, saving the world is not the desired outcome. Or even, perhaps, possible. This is a fascinating, sometimes dizzying, read. Please, nobody press me to describe it in three sentences, because that’s when someone surely will take a video of me gibbering for several minutes. Let me just point out that this book picked up both a Hugo and a Nebula. If you want to stretch your brain in interesting ways without pharmaceuticals, this book will do it. (Not one for the wee kids.)

While I chose to read an older book, Joe Haldeman is still an active writer. He keeps a daily diary, so you can keep up with his publications and other doings.

Cat status: undetermined, although his well-known Forever War includes a calico ship’s cat, initially hated by the dog-preferring protagonist (but dogs can’t adapt to free fall), that does end up purring in his lap at one point. Spoiler alert: don’t get too attached.

 

Jo Walton’s moving,

wrapped in grace,

wrapped in pain

down a flight of improbable stairs:

it has been an unlikely journey.

Jo Walton’s moving.

Words as lever,

thoughts as engine.

Down tumble ideas, improbable stones,

Flowing concepts: the pathways of legend.

Jo Walton’s moving,

understated grace,

understanding silence.

Tradition’s unexpected wild offspring:

fresh steps on a long winding spiral.

Next up in our Great Balticon Readathon is Jo Walton’s Just City, which she informs us we must read first before The Philosopher Kings (Book 2) and Necessity (Book 3). I am happy to note that Necessity has a release date of MY BIRTHDAY, July 12, 2016. Not that I’d do anything like be so crass as to drop a gift hint to my husband in my blog. Oh no. Not me.

Plato’s Republic is a sort of thought experiment on what the ideally just society could look like, written by a man with a great deal of genius, but perhaps not as much practical knowledge as such an undertaking might involve.  In this book, Jo Walton makes her own thought experiment, and places Plato’s theories into a version of our world. Overall concept of the book, or as far as I can go without spoilers: time-traveling goddess Athena actually tries this experiment with real 10-year-olds, and a comparatively small number of intellectuals and philosophers gathered from throughout time.

Other primary characters are Apollo, who chooses temporary mortality as a path to learning about volition, and a young female citizen of this ideal city. Excellent use of changing narrative views. Also strongly present: assorted Famous Personages from History whom you may recognize, robot servitors from the future, and a diverse cross section of young people handily poised to demonstrate a wide range of possible responses to living in such an environment.

I appreciated her deft hand with history, art, religion: informative, but not pedantic. Good characterization, interesting plot, but definitely a work of the mind. The space opera set may not find this to be their book, but it’s a genre-jumper for those interested in history, philosophy, mythology, or the many faces of love.

Just City was inspired by the reading of Plato’s Republic by then 15-year-old Jo Walton. (Wish I’d known her then. She and then 13-year-old-me could have had quite the conversation. I’d have insisted on dragging in Shakespeare, though, so maybe it’s better that it took this long for me to find her.)  30 years, 10 novels, and many awards later, she revisited her early idea and created an engrossing story of the pursuit of justice and excellence. I’m so glad she did.

Jo Walton writes lots and lots of poetry. Lots. She’s more proficient at it than I am. You can see more of it on her blog, as well as links to excerpts from some of her prose works on her author page. If I’m given the opportunity to talk to Jo Walton at Balticon, I’m not sure what we’ll discuss. Perhaps the works of Sandro Botticelli, and the stupidity of humans that makes them destroy art for ideology. Or, if she doesn’t want to engage in the mutual gnashing of teeth, perhaps I’ll introduce the subject of blackberry crumble.

Cat status: undetermined, but there’s a photo online of her comforting a stone lion.

 

 

The Great Balticon Readathon continues with a pair of writers who are also a couple: Sharon and Steve have been married, as she says, “for more than half her lifetime.” Their partnership apparently works. They began collaborating in 1979. Not only have they remained married, but they’ve written many novels (she says 17, elsewhere 23, he says “more than 20” … nice sort of problem to have) and more short stories than you could shake a stick at, if you were the sort of person inclined to stick shaking. (I’m not. I just read stories. Sometimes write them. And draw pictures about them.)

Sharon Lee joins our list of the Cat-approved among Balticon Guests of Honor. In addition to serving our genre by catering to our feline overlords, she was Executive Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., and then vice president and president of that organization. She is a self-described introvert, which makes her willingness to serve especially generous. She likes Maine, setting five novels and her own self there. Steve likes it too. They say it’s beautiful … and a place freelancers can afford to live. (Yes, I did note this in my Official Record.) Appropriately, it seems that their current cats are Maine Coon Cats. You can find delightful pictures of the Crack Coon Nursing Team on Sharon Lee’s blog. (Search for tag Life with Coon Cats.)

Full disclosure: If I didn’t adore them for living on a Cat Farm, finding out that they’ve got a computer called Number 10 Ox would have won my loyalty. So I’m firmly entrenched at this point.

Steve Miller has a background as a performance poet who got tired of living on beer and started expanding into other writing, including submitting stories to science fiction magazines and fanzines. He also plunged into fandom. He edited a science fiction tabloid, was involved with his local science fiction club (BSFS), and eventually he and Sharon started a genre bookstore with a “traveling convention SF art agency component.” That BSFS connection should make Balticon feel like Old Home Week to Steve!

Attention, novice writers who’d like to travel: Steve says he’s attended “hundreds and hundreds” of conventions, as a fan, writer, and art agent. If I get a chance to talk to the two of them at Balticon, I think I’ll ask them about the practicalities of this. Anything they wish they’d known back at the beginning that would have simplified their travel? And most importantly, do the cats miss them terribly while they’re gone? (Not that I’d know anything about the kind of spite-and-boredom-fueled-toilet-paper-snowstorm that can happen when one relegates cats to the care of sitters…) OK, I’ll ask straight up: is the house more or less intact when you return?

Pretty clever, the two of them, figuring out how to make a living travelling and writing and visiting Most All the Conventions. But then, they are the two of them clever in many ways. Prime example: Sharon kindly linked (sharonleewriter.com) a FREE download of the “quirky little space opera” Agent of Change. The first of the Liaden Universe® novels, replete with charming but lethal protagonists and a deftly portrayed universe for them to live in. Clever, clever. The first one’s free? I think I saw how this works on TV. Because, yes, of course, I downloaded and read the free book. And then started looking around rather urgently for the next. Agent of Change is a solid mix of planet-side and space adventure, touched with humor and suspense both, and graced with understated romance. Lots of action, and well-written dramatic scenarios of large scale and small. I so liked the protagonists! They were multi-dimensional, with strengths and flaws. The story was well balanced between male and female dual protagonists, which was refreshing. And the Turtles? How can you not want more of the Turtles? Well played, Lee and Miller. Well played. You’ve definitely hooked this reader into returning to Liaden.

Next up on GBR: Charles Stross!