In just a matter of days, I will be attending the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH. I know there was some problems with the programming this year, but thanks to Ellen Datlow I’m happy to be part of some interesting discussions. My schedule is below:

Thursday, October 27

5 PM – Reading: I think I’m going to read from an unpublished story that fits with the theme of the convention (Flights of Fantasy)

Friday, October 28

5PM – A Golden Age of Contemporary Asian Fantasy: There are some fantastic people on this panel including Brenda Clough, Mary Soon Lee, Amal El-Mohtar, Don Pizarro, and Mimi Mondal

Saturday, October 29

4PM – An Aviary of Beasties: w/ Auston Habershaw, Dan Koboldt, E. J. Stevens, and Susan Shell Winston

If you’re going, I hope to see you there!

I’m a little late in announcing this here, but I’m happy to say that there will be a third book in the series that started with Falling Sky and Rising Tide. The third book, currently titled Raining Fire, will be out from Pyr next year. I’m looking forward to putting an end to Ben’s story and bringing the series to a close (if only because all stories should have endings). I’m working on the novel now and all I can say is that it’s fun to continue to put Ben through his paces, especially after hitting rock bottom.

That being said, if you’re on the fence about the series or always wanted to pick it up but didn’t get around to it, or have friends you might be interested, Barnes and Noble is having a Start a Series sale and Falling Sky is one of the books featured. That means that the ebook version is selling for only $2.99 — not just at BarnesandNoble.com but everywhere that ebooks are sold. So grab it if you want, or tell your friends, or hell, even your enemies. And if you do read it, I’d appreciate it if you could leave a review wherever you got it from. Whatever you think. Links below:

Falling Sky at Barnes & Noble

Falling Sky at Amazon

Falling Sky at Kobo

As mentioned, I’ve been trying to catch up on old, classic science fiction, and after Rendezvous with Rama, I set my sites on Ringworld by Larry Niven, a book I have also been hearing about since I was a kid. Like Rama, Ringworld involves an alien artifact and a crew that visits it. But unlike Rama, I kind of hated it.

Ringworld centers on Louis Wu, a roughly 200 year old human who seizes upon the opportunity to visit the mysterious Ringworld along with a crew consisting of two aliens and a human woman. The journey uncovers secrets about the Ringworld and about each other, culminating in a massive revelation about one of the crew members in particular.

To be fair, the Ringworld concept is cool, a variation on a Dyson sphere, and I wish the novel had spent even more time there, but it takes far too long to get there. The novel felt bloated and meandering and far too obsessed with unimportant personal interactions.

But far more egregious, I thought, was the way the novel treats women. There are two of note — one is an actual space whore (once they find out that she was on a space ship, it seems like the only profession she could be) and the other one is a literal plot device. In fact much of what Louis Wu does is mansplain to his companion, Teela. Of course Louis also has lots of sex with both women. Both women felt underdeveloped to me, whereas Louis, and the similarly male Speaker-to-Animals, have perhaps the most fully realized relationship in the whole novel.

I had other problems with the book — it feels overly sentimental without earning it, its sexism almost seems to border on misogyny in parts, and don’t get me started on the idea of evolved luck. I questioned Niven’s understanding of biology and evolution after reading Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, and there seems to be more of that suspect thinking here.

Ringworld won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Locus Awards, which puts it in a very small group. To be honest, I don’t see its appeal. Disappointing, but at least I can move on to the next book.

If you read Ringworld, though, and liked it, please let me know why in the comments. I’d love to hear from people with different viewpoints than mine.

Elisabeth’s been delving into science fiction lately and that got me keen to start picking up some old science fiction classics that I had somehow never gotten around to reading.

The first of these was Rendezvous with Rama, a book I feel like I’ve been hearing about since the early 80s. And yet, I never picked it up. So recently, on my commute, I listened to the audiobook.

I really enjoyed it. In fact, I think it’s fair to say I loved it. Firmly in that old school hard sci-fi realm, and yet still very relevant if you ignore some of the outdated science (though that was remarkably minimal). It didn’t even bother me that Clarke’s characterization is minimal. I was pretty much riveted throughout. It helps that it’s a SF mystery. But honestly, I’m just a sucker for alien artifact stories.

I also saw how it could be adapted (pretty easily, I think) into a film, which is apparently something Morgan Freeman has been trying to do. You’d just have to consolidate some characters. But the structure is there. And I think it would be relatable (Hollywood, call me).

I’m definitely up for reading more Clarke. Obviously 2001 and its sequels are some of the best known, but let me know if you recommend any others in the comments.

2016 may just go on record as the weirdest year I’ve seen. It started with the devastating losses of David Bowie and Prince, saw the serious candidacy of Donald Trump, and continues to have people of all ages and lifestyles walking around trying to catch Pokemon.

Just the other day I heard a story about the U.S. government approving a robot landing on the moon from a private company. It’s not entirely out of nowhere, but I keep having to remind myself that this is the world that we live in.

But that’s not as startling as the other story, about the National Institutes of Health lifting a moratorium on experiments involving human-animal hybrids. Without being alarmist about it, this is certainly a science-fictional world that we are living in.

Of course, a lot of these things call to mind science fiction stories of yesteryear. The last story calls to mind The Island of Doctor Moreau, for example. Some of these events even make the science fiction stories of the past resonate more. Octavia Butler eerily predicted Trump’s campaign slogan. And I can’t think of Trump’s candidacy without thinking of the Ray Bradbury story, A Sound of Thunder. 

I first encountered the story many years ago, when I was a kid, on an audiotape that my parents bought me at Waldenbooks. I loved the story the first time I heard it, but over the years, one of the hardest things for me to take in that story was the presidential race it depicted (spoilers for the story ahead):

Here’s what a character says early in the story: