Goedel, Escher, Reviewspam

Wotcher chaps,

Slight hiatus on sarcasm and funnay here as we have been embroiled in book stuff. Will be making time as soon as opportunity gives to provide you with some kick-ass wurdz (see, if you spell it with a Z it's "edgy") soon.

In the meantime, some reviews:

• Jonathan Cowie at The Science Fact and Science Fiction Concatenation has given us this slightly mixed review of Eric Brown's Cosmopath.
  
  "As is typical with Brown's novels, we are off at a cracking pace almost from page one."
  
  
• Jonathan also gives us this very kind review of Jeste de Vries's Shine.
  
  "This anthology, in its way, markedly stands out from the crowd."
  
  
• Ian Hunter at the Concatenation gives us this very warm review of Justin Gustainis's Evil Ways.
  
  "A tough, fast, gripping read."
  
  
• The wonderful Jared at Pornokitsch gives us this gleeful appraisal of James Lovegrove's Age of Zeus.
  
  "The Age of Zeus is fun, entertaining and endlessly explosive."
  
  
• Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic also seems to have enjoyed Age of Zeus.
  
  "And the action is just unbelievably good."
  
  
• Liviu, meanwhile, gives a slightly more moderate review of Shine.
  
  "Shine starts with a bang with six stories that I enjoyed a lot and could not stop reading."
  
  
• Martin Willoughby at Hub Magazine has provided this review (at time of writing, you will need to download the PDF of issue 118, although it'll go fully online shortly) of Brian Lumley's The Lost Years: Harry and the Pirates.
  
  "The book is not something you want to read late at night if, like me, you are prone to nightmares!"
  
  
• Detra Fitch at Huntress Reviews seems to have been all over Shine.
  
  "5 Stars! So possible that it makes me shiver in fear for the future. Outstanding!"
  
  
• ...and was at least as happy (you'll need to scroll down a bit) about Age of Zeus.
  
  "FIVE STARS! A brilliant combination of modern warfare and Greek mythology.... Lovegrove is on his way to greatness."
  
  
• I think we need to take Detra on staff. She also loved the hell out of (again, you'll need to scroll down) all four of Gail Z. Martin's Chronicles of the Necromancer stories, including Dark Lady's Chosen.
  
  "FIVE STARS! Every time I pick up a novel by Gail Z. Martin, she takes my breath away!"

Phew. Big one there. Do give our reviewers some love by reading their posts.

Cheers,

David

Reviewspam!

Hey doods,

Some quick reviewspam for you:

• Nayu's Reading Corner, whose review of Cosmopath we've already mentioned, has published this very nice review of Ed Greenwood's Archwizard, second book in the Falconfar trilogy.
• Nayu's also written this review of Gail Z. Martin's Dark Lady's Chosen, fourth and final instalment in the Chronicles of the Necromancer. She told us in her email that she "absolutely adored it." Not bad praise, eh?
• Review site Cybermage (you'll note he's also featured our podcast in his most recent post) has added his voice to the many applauding Eric Brown's Cosmopath.
• Lastly, Tim at Mass Movement Magazine has reviewed Brian Lumley's Haggopian and Other Stories, Volume 2.

Some great reviews there, so take a look at them, and if you like anything, remember you can buy it right off our site.

Cheers,

David

Reviews and another "Best of..."

Hi all,

Mark Chitty of the Walker of Worlds blog has just written a very nice review of Eric Brown's Cosmopath, the third Bengal Station novel. Ten out of ten!

He's also put the second Bengal Station, Xenopath, fifth in his list of the best books of 2009 (as he only gave Xenopath nine out of ten, I'll expect to see Cosmopath high in his list next year).

And with Justin Gustainis' Evil Ways now out in A-format paperback, Mark's reminded us of the review he wrote for that one, too.

Cheers, Mark!

The Four Authors of the Apocalypse: Eric Brown

I am now, according to my publisher, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse… or should that be authors of the apocalypse? For one of such a normally cheery disposition, I might find this hard. I'm of the view that whatever mess we make of things, life on Earth in some form will survive, and prosper. A critic once said my fiction was imbued with logical positivism, and I won't disagree.

This blog came about when junior editor Jenni Hill suggested we four get together to write about the end of the world, and James Lovegrove, being the optimistic soul he is, came up with the title you see above.

By a stroke of coincidental luck, my next-but-one novel from Solaris will be a post-catastrophe tale set sixty years after the fall of civilisation on Earth. The story came about when Mike Ashley invited me to submit a story to his forthcoming Apocalyptic SF anthology, and I wrote a long piece entitled "Guardians of the Phoenix". During the writing I realised that there was far more story than I was telling; it extended both ways: that is, before the story opened, and after it closed.

The story begins:
It was dawn when we set off from beneath the twisted skeleton of the Eiffel Tower and crossed the desert to Tangiers. We travelled by day through a blasted landscape devoid of life, and at night we stopped and tried to sleep. I'd lie in my berth and stare through the canopy at the magnetic storms lacerating the troposphere. The heat was insufferable, even in the marginally cooler early hours…

The band of survivors trek across the desert that was France, towards the dried-up Mediterranean, in search of water. They travel in a truck encrusted with solar panels, drilling for water wherever they can, and scavenging – along with competing survivors, some more feral than others – for dwindling supplies of food. On the way they meet another troupe of desperadoes, this one from what was Egypt, led by a woman called Samara. She is in possession of a secret that might mean the survival of human race. Times might be desperate, resources almost exhausted, plant and animal life very nearly extinct, and the ozone layer shot to pieces – but there is always hope. The novel follows these self-appointed guardians of the phoenix towards what they hope will be eventual redemption...

I take the long view, which I think for the sake of my sanity is a wise way of looking at things. Perhaps it's a result of being a science fiction writer – or perhaps I became a SF writer because I tried to look past the here and now, the mess we're in, and envisage a more rosy future. Perhaps I'm just a head-in-the-sands, rose-tinted spectacled optimist writing fantasies of wish-fulfilment because the alternative would be despair.

Anyway, the way I look at it is even in a worse case scenario, where the human race fouls up and destroys itself, then something will survive – be it bands of stone-age people who scratch a living in the wreckage, evolving over the millennia into something unrecognisable to us today; or other forms of life, animal or insect, who over the course of time might evolve intelligence... and perhaps use it more wisely than poor, hapless, self-destructive Homo saps...

But it would be nice to look into the far future and learn that humankind has overcome its difficulties, its differences, and evolved into a peace-loving, tolerant species which celebrates difference and diversity and has learned to treat the Earth with the respect it needs… and perhaps even, equipped with these qualities, headed for the stars and the many adventures awaiting us out there.

But that's another blog.

~Eric Brown


Eric Brown has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories and has published over twenty books: SF novels, collections, books for teenagers and younger children, as well as radio plays, articles and reviews. His newest book for Solaris, the Bengal Station novel, Cosmopath will hit the stands in January.

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Eric Brown's Ten Tips for Aspiring Writers

Eric Brown, the author of several Solaris Books including the Bengal Station series, has been kind enough to send us his top ten tips for aspiring writers:-

1. Write. Write as often as possible. Write even if you think you haven't an idea in your head. Write until the subconscious kicks in and ideas and words begin to flow. Remember, fiction is modular. You can always go back and lift out entire sections, rewrite them and put them back, improved.

2. Trust in the subconscious. Beginning writers are beset by fear. I was. I overcame the fear - i.e., the doubt that I had anything to say, the tools to say anything - by writing and writing and trusting in the subconscious. Write long enough and the old SC kicks in. Try it.

3. Read. Read everything. Read what you like to read, and what you don't like to read. Admire and attempt to emulate what you like to read. Despise and shy away from what you don't like. Work out how certain effects are achieved, and learn from good effects.

4. Write what you know about. Also, write what you don't know about. You'll find that if you do the latter, the subconscious will kick in and soon enough you'll be writing about something you don't know about as if you did. (Crazy, I know; but it works.)

5. Rewrite. Never rest on your laurels. Never think that what you've written, because it was so difficult to produce, is good enough. It can always be improved. Put the piece aside for a week, two weeks, a month, and then come back to it with fresh eyes.

6. Find one or two, or even three, people whose judgement you trust, show them your work and ask for criticism. It's hard, at first, to have your precious MS ripped apart before your eyes, but it's necessary. The process of finding those few critics might take time - as you discard those critics who offer nothing - but persevere.

7. Remember that conventional education, or intelligence, has no bearing on whether you'll make it as a writer of commercial fiction. You don't have to be a college graduate to write good stories.

8. Write about emotions. Keep a jotter just for the explication of emotions, of how you feel. Remember, every piece of fiction is about characters; those characters are human beings. They not only think, but feel.

9. Remember that the majority of readers read fiction not to learn, but to feel. We want to identify with characters, and we can only do that if the characters' emotions are described with sufficient fidelity and verity. If the reader believes in your characters, feels for them, wants to know what will happen to them, then you've won over that reader.

10. Keep description to a minimum, no matter how wonderful the world is you're describing. The reader isn't interested in your world as a world; they're interested in how your world affects your characters. Have your characters respond to the landscape, as seen through their eyes.

10a. Try to make your dialogue as naturalistic as possible. Use apostrophes. Don't say: "I will now go to Mars," but, "I'll go to Mars." Use 'said' rather than the million and one synonyms for said. Keep your stories pacey, unless you're imitating Proust or Thackeray. Short scenes, preferably. Keep the reader guessing. End on cliff-hangers. (And remember that there are always exceptions to the above.)

10b. Send out your MS and keep sending the damned thing out. Don't be discouraged by rejections. (I had twenty novels rejected before I sold my first.) And, when you are published, don't take bad reviews to heart. Remember: they're just one person's opinion. Every book out there will have readers who hate it, readers who will feel neither love nor hate for it, and readers who will love it and think it the best thing they've ever read.

Never stop writing. The only people who have failed at writing are those who have stopped.

Good luck!

- Eric Brown

Eric's newest Bengal Station novel, Cosmopath will hit the stands in January. In the meantime, watch out for more guest blogging from Solaris authors, here at When Gravity Fails!