The first thing anyone sees of one of my books (well, except for my beta-readers!) is the cover. The cover is the living embodiment of "first impressions", and it's proven that a bad cover can be death to a book's sales. I've been fortunate in my covers, so far, and hopefully I will continue to be. How the Covers are Made Different publishers approach this in different ways. Some publishers have historically directed the art completely separate from the author – the author never knows anything about the cover [ Continue reading... ]
Just For Fun: My Top Ten Villains!
October 14, 2013 By 6 Comments
While, at least in theory, we cheer for the victory of the heroes, it is often the villains that define a work, and certainly the villains tend to get the best lines, best music, and commonly the coolest "style" in a work. This probably partly stems from the fact that villains are more "free" than the heroes; they get to do what they want rather than what they should or must. In addition, the villains tend to be in control, the ACTIVE force, in the story, at least up until the end; the heroes spend much of their time reacting [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Stainless Steel Rat
September 30, 2013 By 2 Comments
"James Bolivar DiGriz, I arrest you on the charge –" I was waiting for the word charge; I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop's head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: The Incompleat Enchanter
September 25, 2013 By 3 Comments
Fletcher Pratt and L.Sprague deCamp were well-known authors of science fiction and fantasy in the Golden Age. Separately they both produced well-respected works for many years. But together they created something truly amazing: the world of the Mathematics of Magic, featuring Harold Shea and Reed Chalmers – two masters of mathematical logic who theorize that mathematics and logic and perception dominate reality, and thus if one can encode the logic of a particular world into one's calculations, one could in theory travel to the [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: A Wrinkle in Time
September 13, 2013 By 3 Comments
"It was a dark and stormy night…" A Wrinkle in Time does begin with exactly that line, perhaps the most mocked opening line in literary history and certainly the most famous, courtesy of Snoopy's eternally-rejected novel (and originally from the not-quite-as-bad-as-his-rep Edward Bulwer-Lytton). But for A Wrinkle in Time, it's the perfect opening line and helps set the stage, as well as foreshadowing the story to come; for there is indeed a dark and stormy time ahead for Meg Murry, high-school student (about [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Hal Clement and _Iceworld_
September 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) was famous throughout the Golden Age and beyond as one of the patron saints of hard science fiction. While he would allow for the existence of an FTL drive to get his protagonists to some particular location, Clement's works were almost entirely focused on constructing worlds that, as far as we knew, didn't exist – but could exist, based on what we knew, and from these hard-edged foundations build stories of first contact, of investigation, of exploration, and of friendship across the boundaries of [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Lord of the Flies
September 6, 2013 By 19 Comments
For those who know me, this entry's title may come as a shock. "Ryk, you hated Lord of the Flies! How can you list it as an influence?" Well, sometimes things that really suck can influence you, too. For those (fortunately) unfamiliar with Lord of the Flies, it is something of a deconstruction of the "shipwrecked people" subgenre of stories (codified by Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Mysterious Island) and often said to be specifically a response to The Coral Island. In it, a number of British [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Support Your Local Wizard (Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series)
August 23, 2013 By 16 Comments
I had read the first book, and part of the second, of this trilogy (So You Want to be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, and High Wizardry) many years ago, but recently I picked up this omnibus and read it to my son Gabriel. The basic concept of the series is that wizards have a task of supporting the basic order of the universe, in essence attempting to minimize or even reverse entropy. Nita Callahan is a young girl (12 to early teens) whose major love is reading, and who runs across a strange book titled "So You Want [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Paper Dragon
August 21, 2013 By 3 Comments
This is undoubtedly the shortest book I've yet reviewed, a children's picture book which has been a favorite of all my kids. The Paper Dragon, like another I will discuss at some point (Shibumi and the Kitemaker, by Mercer Mayer), tells a fictional tale in the style of older storytelling traditions of the Eastern countries such as China and Japan (or, at least, if this particular tale is a real folktale, I can't find reference to it other than this book). In the story, a painter by the name of Mi Fei is chosen by his [ Continue reading... ]
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