Author: David Steffen

David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer. If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee! He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.

Review: The Golden Compass and His Dark Materials trilogy

My advice: Read the first book and watch the movie. Don’t bother with the rest, which betrays the characters created in the first book and is driven by a message as subtle as a bludgeon. If you’re a parent pre-screening books for your kids to read, do not judge on the first book alone. At the very least, get a summary of the rest of the series. This is especially true if religious beliefs are important to you.

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels written by Phillip Pullman comprised of The Northern Lights (known as The Golden Compass in the US), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. The first book of the series was adapted to a movie in 2007.

The series first came to my attention when The Golden Compass movie came out. The previews looked interesting enough, but what really grabbed my attention was the religious groups protesting what they saw as an open attack against organized religion, and especially the portrayal of this within a movie that’s being marketed to children.

As an avid fantasy reader, I’m used to this sort of reaction from certain groups, and usually these reactions seem to be based on the assumption that magic is inherently evil, and so a plot that portrays the side of good using magic is somehow blasphemous. The Harry Potter series is the most memorable such example. I’ve read that series and have not found a single thing in it that I see as damaging or offensive to religion in any way, so I expected His Dark Materials to be the same way.

So first I went to The Golden Compass movie.

The Golden Compass movie

The movie primarily concerns 11-year old Lyra Balacqua and her daemon Pantalaimon (Pan for short). Now, “daemon” in this context has nothing to do with evil creatures of the underworld. The story takes place in a world parallel to ours where every person has a daemon. The daemon is the physical manifestation of each person’s soul. Instead of residing within the body, it exists as an independently thinking animal familiar which can never venture far from its human. For each adult, their daemon’s form resembles their own personality. So a guard might have a dog daemon, someone stubborn might have a badger, and so on. Children’s daemon’s are ever-changing, able to take a variety of forms at will, due to the fact that the child is not yet the adult they will become–so Pan’s shape is ever-shifting to whatever is most convenient at the time. This idea of the daemon souls is one of the coolest things about the series.

Lyra has grown up an orphan raised by Jordan College in Oxford. She eavesdrops on a conversation with Lord Azrael (Daniel Craig) talking to the Magisterium (the church that controls much of the known world), discussing an expedition to the north related to Dust. Dust is a secret well kept by the Magisterium, one of their many secrets.  Soon after that she is placed in the custody of Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) which seems to be a blessing, but events soon take a turn for the worse. Along the way she meets Iorek (voiced by Ian McKellan), an ice bear, one of a race of sentient armored bears and Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliot) a Texan aeronaut.

The movie is well worth watching. The visuals are stunning and do a good job capturing the cool idea of the daemon familiars. The stars in the cast, while offering poster appeal, do not rest on their laurels. Each of them plays their part well, convincing me of the people they’re portraying. And it’s mostly faithful to the book, which is a rarity. Most of what is changed is that the book ends after revealing one more major plot point than the book (more on that in the spoiler section).

But throughout the whole movie, I didn’t see a single thing as objectionable. The church of this world plays a major villainous role but even in our world, regardless of what you think of modern religion, past religions have done some terrible things in the name of their god. To portray one religion as villainous, especially a fictional religion, does not imply an overall anti-religion message. After watching the movie, my only guess was simply the fact that the word “daemon” was used to represent the soul.

His Dark Materials trilogy of novels

My interest still piqued, I picked up the books. As I said the movie was mostly faithful to the first book. I enjoyed the writing style, the characters were rich and interesting, the descriptions were fun, the worldbuilding was superb, and still no anti-religious undertones that I could detect.

But starting with the second book, The Subtle Knife, the anti-religion message began to coalesce even as the quality of the story declined. The third book, The Amber Spyglass, has an anti-religion message as subtle as a club with nails in, which I might’ve been able to overlook with great effort except that the story was weak as well, serving only to provide the framework with which to hang the message. Major characters constantly take a 180 degree turn in traits without any warning or provocation, even including our protagonist, Lyra! They spend embark on quests with no clear goal and much of the time is spent with secondary characters in other worlds that end up having no appreciable effect on anything! More details after the spoiler warning just below.

Now, finally, the reasons why I hated the series (other than the first book):

1. Story vs. Message– I often like a story that carries messages inherent in it, but the writing has to be a story, first and foremost. But I don’t like tales where the message carries the story, or in this case, robs and leaves the story bleeding and half-dead by the side of the road. Pullman is capable of writing a really great story, as evidenced by book 1, but the quality of the story steadily declined as the strength of the message increased.

2. Betraying Characters– Not only does Pullman disrespect his readers, but disrespects his own creations by destroying the characters he took so much time characterizing in the first book. Nearly every major character makes a 180 turn in character traits without inciting incident or really for any reason whatsoever. I want to find out what happened to the real Lyra, not the doppelganger that takes her place for most of the series!

3. The Grand Con–But above all, Pullman’s plot is structured to fly under the radar of concerned parents. If a parent reads the first book of the series and sees no objectionable material, they may decide it’s okay for their kids to read. Above all, my main objection is not that I hate the message, it’s the fact that the story is structured to conceal the message for so long. The message is clearly anti-religion, and I can totally understand why parents with strong religious beliefs would not want their kids reading it. He’s pulled off the oldest con in the book–the bait and switch. My advice: concerned parents should at least read a synopsis of the series before deciding if it’s objectionable–do not judge based on book 1 alone. For this reason, I think that the religious groups’ protests are completely merited in this case, and serve as a warning to parents who would otherwise have been duped by Pullman.

I’ve heard that Pullman intended His Dark Materials to counterbalance C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Narnia is well-known for it’s religious allegory, particularly the Aslan to Jesus comparison with the self-sacrifice and resurrection themes. Pullman hates Narnia, and more power to him: he can dislike whatever books he wishes to. But, regardless if you agree with Lewis’s religious message or not, he was upfront about it. The religious themes are present in the first book, so any parent who didn’t want their children to read religious themes could easily see that and just set the book aside. Lewis’s story carried a message, but he managed to do so without having to resort to the bait and switch. Also, Lewis’s stories stay true to their characters and carry their message much more seamlessly than Pullman has managed. I can read Lewis’s stories and just enjoy the stories.

Begin Spoilers!

And, for those of you who don’t mind knowing the plot details, I’ll now give details to back up my claims.

As the series go on we learn that Lord Asrael plans to kill God. That alone doesn’t make the series anti-religious, of course. The character is not the author, and at the end of book one it becomes very clear that Asrael is a psychopath, bent on reaching his own goals regardless of who he hurts along the way. I hesitate to use the word “evil”, but he is representative of some of the worst parts of humanity: selfish, greedy, void of compassion. Where this storyline does become anti-religious is the portrayal of God. He is no creator, merely the oldest surviving angel who has succeeded in duping everyone into believing he is all-powerful and the maker of everything. And even angels are nothing particularly special. They are merely a species that happens to look rather human-like, and have very long lifespans, but otherwise are like humans in every way. God, in the story, has gone completely senile. He is a drooling idiot without any clue what’s going on around. He is merely a figurehead, a puppet in the hands of the Metatron. And, shortly after he’s shown, God dies. Not only that, but the death scene is so unremarkably, remorselessly written that it may have well have been a description of someone eating breakfast.

Another message that I absolutely hated was the lessons learned in the afterlife. In the second book, a knife is introduced which can slice gateways between worlds. In the third book, they decide to go to the land of the dead, which is reachable through this sort of gateway. Why they want to go there is never adequately explained, but it somehow becomes a major goal, and they pursuit it with great ambition and no point. Every soul goes to the same afterlife, a lightless place where everyone is tortured by harpies. Why this should be is never explained, this is just how it works. Lyra’s grand solution is to cut a hole into another world and strike a bargain with the harpies. When souls pass through the portal they dissolve into nothingness. The harpies gain nourishment from hearing stories, so they will let souls pass through the gateway if they have stories to tell. This is where one of Pullman’s grand morals comes from: Live your life with curiosity, ask questions, learn, so that your grand reward will be nothingness. If you live any other way, then you will suffer through eternal torture. I enjoy contemplation of the afterlife, but to determine placement in heaven or hell by such an arbitrary concept is very annoying to me. I’m a curious person who enjoys many sorts of learning, but I don’t think that incuriousity should condemn you to hell. It seemed to me this was just his further condemnation of religion. If you rely on faith for your beliefs then you deserve such a fate, he is saying. That is just as bad as religious groups claiming that non-believers will be condemned to hell for their lack of belief–odd that someone who so readily condemns fate is the creator of such an illogical theological system.

One element that Pullman apparently meant to use for shock value is the presence of homosexual angels. I’m not objecting about the presence of homosexuals or homosexual angels. Historically, I think that angels are generally considered to be devoid of sexual organs or even gender differences, so the idea of them being homosexual is a little bit silly, but whatever. What bothers me about these characters is they have no other distinguishing characteristics other than their homosexuality, as if being gay is the only trait they have that is worth mentioning. I wish he’d taken the time to flesh them out a little bit more so that I could believe that he really meant them to be real people in his world, not just token gay characters who are present only to get a rise out of the more vocal religious groups.

As for how he betrays the characters: worst of all is how he treats Lyra throughout. She very well characterized in the first book, charismatic, a constant liar but not an immoral person. She’s very strong-willed and always willing to fight for what’s right, no matter the risk. The biggest change between the movie and the first book is that the movie truncates one huge plot element. At the end of the book, Lyra sets out to rescue Lord Asriel from captivity. That’s where the movie ends, but in the book she finds him, and he rewards her by kidnapping her best friend, carrying him away and forcibly separating him from his daemon. He’s discovered that the bond between a human and their daemon holds massive amounts of energy. By severing the link, the energy is released all at once. He harnesses the energy to open a portal to another world, remorselessly leaving her friend a shattered husk of a human being. This lowers my opinion of Lord Asriel’s character to a point that he can never be redeemed from, and especially since Lyra’s best friend was the victim, I would expect her to do the same. She’s mad at first, but as the books go on, she has more and more sympathy for Asriel, and seems to have completely forgotten what he’s done. This is never resolved in any way that makes sense for her character. Her feelings simply dissolve as if nothing had ever happened.

Worse than that, is the price she pays to get into the underworld. She is told that she cannot take her daemon with her into the underworld, when she boards the raft that will carry her into the underworld. After a shockingly short time of deliberation, she agrees. There’s no apparent reason that he couldn’t turn into a bird and follow along behind, but this doesn’t happen. Once the distant is too great, the bond breaks, and they are separated. This is her SOUL, for the love of Pete. And, in this world, the sould is a separate mind, so she is causing torture to this other individual for no reason. And remember, she had no reason to go to the underworld in the first place! I lost all respect for her at that point, and never regained it.

The end result is that I wasted weeks of reading time finishing these, and wish I’d read something else instead. But I hope this review will make the time somewhat worthwhile to share the information with others.

Niche Game: Super Smash Bros.

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

If you’re like me, you got sick of playing those old tournament fighter games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat whose main difficulty was based around the user memorizing long strings of button combinations to trigger special moves. Like in Mortal Kombat, I still remember that Scorpion’s spear move was Back, Back, B. So anyone who has taken the time memorize dozens of these moves has a major advantage over someone who is a good player but hasn’t memorized.

Enter Super Smash Bros. (SSB), released for the Nintendo 64 by HAL Laboratory in 1999. The most unique feature of the game is immediately obvious: the fighters are all Nintendo-licensed characters from other games. Mario throws punches and fireballs. Samus Aran fires charged-up plasma shots, missiles, and drops bombs from her morph-ball form. And others, including several that characters that you can unlock. If you’re a Nintendo lover like me, it’s a lot of fun sending Donkey Kong in for a wind-up punch against Fox McCloud.

The damage system in SSB is one of a kind. Instead of having a health meter that signals how close to death you are, you have a damage percentage on the bottom of the screen. I’m not really sure why it’s expressed as a percentage, because it doesn’t stop at 100%, it just keeps going. The higher the damage level, the farther you fly when you’re hit, and the longer it takes you to recover. An enemy attack doesn’t kill you directly; to die, you have to leave the edge of the screen on any side. But the higher your damage meter goes, the more likely you will fly off the screen. This means that anybody can still have a chance to win even if their damage percentage is very high. A character with 0% damage can die by slipping off the edge, and a character with 400% damage can keep fighting (though he’ll have to be very careful not to get hit too hard).

Besides the obvious appeal of the Nintendo characters, the big appeal of this game for me is the simple play control. Regular moves, like punches and kicks, all involve the A button and some direction on the direction pad. Down+A might be a sweep kick, for instance, and forward+A might be a punch. Smash attacks are also easy to perform, and are more powerful (though often slower). These are done by “tapping” the direction pad in a direction at the same moment that you press the A button. These really pack a wallop, and are often the best way to send an enemy flying off the screen once you’ve brought up their damage level.

The special moves are no harder to perform than the regular moves, they are just combinations of the direction pad and the B button. so each character has 4 special moves. As an example, Pikachu:
B: Shoots a bolt of static that hops along the ground in front of you. It also climbs walls until it runs out.
Up+B:Â Pikachu jumps super-fast, no damage, but good for recovery
Forward+B:Â Pikachu charges up then fires himself forward like a cannonball
Down+B: Pikachu’s best move, and the easiest move in the game to spam. Calls a powerful lightning bolt down from the sky, striking Pikachu directly. Anyone in the path of the bolt or touching Pikachu himself takes heavy damage and gets thrown a long way.

Each character is lots of fun to play, each with their own special traits. Zelda is one of the most unique because she is two characters in one. Zelda has powerful magic bursts for her regular moves and has some nice long range and short range special attacks, but she’s pretty slow to move around. With her Down+B move, she transforms into Sheik, her ninja-like alter-ego. Sheik’s attack are weak but super-quick. In the hands of the right player, Sheik can run circles around her enemies.

Up to four players fight at a time in arenas themed around Nintendo games, and random items drop down. Food items allow fighters to heal their damage. The home run bat has medium reach and a decent damage when swung, but when swung in a smash attack it has devestating knockback ability. Also, there are pokeballs which summon a random pokemon to damage your enemies.

The original game was followed up by Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001 for Gamecube and Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008 for Wii. Each has some new mini-games and lots of new characters. Most of the appeal is the improved graphics, new characters, more and more each time. In Melee, Bowser and Peach (Princess Toadstool), as well as Ganondorf are major additions. In Brawl, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Solid Snake become some of the first non-Nintendo created characters to be added. Brawl also has the addition of a single-player quest style game, involving all of the characters. It’s a fun diversion in it’s own right. Most of the enemies in that section are unique to that, and the only way you can collect trophies for them is to use the “trophy stand” item against them. The stand appears randomly, and if you throw it and connect with a sufficiently weakened enemy they will turn into a trophy. The stand will appear more frequently the higher the difficulty, but you also have to survive the rest of the level without losing your lives or you will lose your trophy as well.

A lot of fan groups on the internet cry out for Mega Man as an addition in future games. I think he would be a good character. Between all the special moves he’s gained in all of his franchise games, he would have plenty of special ability opportunities. But there’s one character that I’d like to see even more than Mega Man: Earthworm Jim. He could use the worm whip for one special move, his blaster gun for another, maybe Snott for a recovery move. It would be so much fun to pit Earthworm Jim against Asmus Aran! Well, I can always hope, for SSB 4.

Finding a copy of this game shouldn’t be too difficult. A quick eBay search comes up with quite a few hits for around 20 dollars. But, really, you might be better off just getting one of the newer versions. All of the characters in the original game are present in both of the other two games anyway, plus the newer games have better graphics and are playable on the Wii. Check the series out. Enjoy!

Walking the Tightrope: Tad Williams

Tad Williams is a science fiction and fantasy author who has written many excellent novels, including the Otherland series and the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. Shadowmarch is his current series in progress, with the third of fourth books scheduled to be released in early 2010 with the title “Shadowrise”. He is also writing a young adult series called Ordinary Farm with Deborah Beale, his wife, with the second book scheduled for 2010 titled “A Witch at Ordinary Farm.” Check out his website, and while you’re there, check out the message board.

If you haven’t read his work, you’re missing out. Pick up a copy of one his novels, starting with The City of Golden Shadow, the first book in the Otherland series.

David: On your site you mention that you’ve “had more jobs than any sane person should admit to”. Not including writing, what was the job you liked the most? Hated the most?

Tad: Liked the most? Probably working at Apple, mostly because it was interesting observing the culture. I also liked doing instructional film strips and manuals as a technical artist. It was a fun company and I liked the people. I was the best at drawing hands! Least favorite was probably my time as a business-drone in a suit and tie, collecting overdue loan payments from deadbeats and sad, broke people.

David: At what point in your life did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

Tad: When I was offered my first multi-book contract. I always knew I wanted to be a CREATOR, but what form that creating would take was very much up in the air. If I’d been offered a contract first to do cartooning or screenwriting this would be a much different interview today.

David: How did you pull off the first big sale to DAW? Did you get an agent before submitting?

Tad: Nope. I was an over-the-transom author — in other words, the slush pile. We were all lucky it worked out; we’ve helped each other sell a few books over the years.

David: If you had to pick one defining moment of your writing career to date, what would it be?

Tad: Oh, I think getting that first acceptance letter. That’s when you know it’s real. That’s when you begin to think, “Maybe my life does have some shape after all…!”

David: The Otherland series is one of my favorite stories of all time. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so what was the first step when you came up with this one. Where did the plot for this one start snowballing in your head?

Tad: I used to say (truthfully) that it began when I heard the author of “A River Runs Through It” being interviewed on the radio, and began thinking about rivers-as-metaphors, and then about a river that was ONLY a metaphor, which led me to the virtual river that runs through the story. But I realized later that it really started when I was six and captivated by the Storybook Land ride (or whatever it was called) in Disneyland, where Snow White sits in the boat and says, “Oh, look, there’s Toad Hall! And Sleeping Beauty’s Castle!” as you sail past these little miniatures. That idea — all the stories on the banks of a single river — clearly was the true genesis of OTHERLAND.

David: Early on in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, there’s a scene where Simon sneaks through the throne room and looks at the throne, a scene which pays off two books later in a reveal about Bright-Nail’s true lineage. Do you labor over a scene like that more than others, because you know it’s going to tie in later?

Tad: No, because I often don’t know exactly why it’s significant when I write it. (I can’t remember in that case how much I knew.) If I’ve figure it out later I may make some changes in rewrite to make sure the point I want is clear but not oversold, but often I leave it the way it was so it slides past as naturally as possible. I pride myself that the best way to read my books is for the second time, to pick up the things that blended into the background the first time.

David: How different was the experience of submitting and publishing a young adult book, as opposed to novels for adults?

Tad: Hard to say because there were a lot of strange ups and downs on this one — our publishing company had to let several publishers and editors go, and one of them was ours, who had made a big deal out of our book. We were then handed to a new publisher whose work load had just gone from about 18 books to 60. She’s done a great job, but we obviously didn’t get as much attention as we would have. I’ll know better once things have stabilized a bit.

David: How has co-writing been different than writing solo? Is it easier or harder? How do you and Deborah split up the work?

Tad: The first book was all over the place because we started it and rewrote it several times. In general we plot together, then Deb is writing the first draft, then I’m rewriting, then we kick it around ’til we’re happy. As far as the process itself, we haven’t done it enough for me to be able to be really specific — after I rewrite the second volume I’ll be able to generalize better. I’m enjoying it, though, and she’s an excellent collaborator (and my favorite person.)

David: When writing a series, how far do you plan ahead? Do you know how it will end before you write a word, or is that still up in the air until you reach the ending? Do you prefer to outline or just write on the fly?
Tad: It’s always a tightrope walk between too much outline and too little. If you over-plan, then you lose the spontaneity, not to mention the fact that with a really big book it’s an exercise in complexity theory — you literally CAN’T figure everything out ahead of time. But if you don’t plan at all then your structure suffers, the story wanders, all kinds of bad stuff. So you have to find your own point of exquisite tension between the two, learn to trust yourself, and go for it.

David: Which do you like to read better, science fiction or fantasy?

Tad: Doesn’t matter. What I like best is good storytelling — and that’s true even for non-fiction. The outward form it takes is almost irrelevant, although I do like fantastical things. But if you asked me to name my ten favorite books they’d be pretty evenly split between several forms of fiction and some history and journalism.

David: What is your ideal writing environment?

Tad: A room with a decent view of the outdoors, good lighting, and lots of research material (which in my case means primarily books and the internet) close to hand. I use a computer, so I need one of those, too. And I like quiet, but I’m not a fanatic about it.

David: If you could only give one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

Tad: Write. Write and write and write. Oh, and finish things. (That’s two, I know. Hey, you’re talking to Mr. Long Books.)

David: If you could meet one fictional character who was not created by you, who would it be and why?

Tad: The Blue Fairy, so she could make me into a real boy.

David: What was the last book you read?

Tad: Last book I FINISHED? “NOW DIG THIS — the Unspeaking Writings of Terry Southern”. Last book I read, probably a dozen pages of “The Battle of Hastings” this morning while I was hanging out with the dogs.

David: Your favorite book?

Tad: One of these: LORD OF THE RINGS, RIDDLEY WALKER, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, THE PROUD TOWER, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING.

David: Who is your favorite author?

Tad: Couldn’t pick one. Me, I guess, because I’m always happy when nice things happen to that particular writer.

David: What was the last movie you saw?

Tad: In a theater? UP. On television? LOUDQUIETLOUD: A Film about the Pixies.

David: What is your favorite movie?

Tad: Pick one: WIZARD OF OZ, THE TIN DRUM, TOPSY-TURVY, TAXI DRIVER, MY FAIR LADY

David: Do you have any upcoming publications we should watch out for? Can you tell us a little bit about them?

Tad: The third and fourth parts (the ending) of the Shadowmarch series will be out next spring, SHADOWRISE and SHADOWHEART. Then not too long after we’ll have our second Ordinary Farm book, tentatively titled A WITCH AT ORDINARY FARM.

David: Do you have any works in progress that you’d like to tell us about?

Tad: Just the next set of books, which should be a bit different — shorter, more modern, but still full of swingin’ action! (Sorry, I was channeling Stan Lee for a moment.) The first one should be called SLEEPING LATE ON JUDGEMENT DAY.

David: Thanks, Tad, for taking the time to answer these questions.

Also thanks to Craig Steffen, Gary Cuba, Chris Cuba, and Anthony Sullivan, for your contributions to the interview.

When I was offered my first multi-book contract. I always knew I wanted to be a CREATOR, but what form that creating would take was very much up in the air. If I’d been offered a contract first to do cartooning or screenwriting this would be a much different interview today.

Fiction Sale #4–Turning Back the Clock to Bull Spec

David here. I’m happy to say I’ve made my fourth fiction sale! ÂAnd good news for my friends who’ve said you would like to read my writing but don’t care for horror: Âthis is the first story I’ve sold that I wouldn’t classify as horror. Â:)

The story: ÂTurning Back the Clock, a time travel story about a man trying to prevent his wife’s death.
The publication: ÂBull Spec, a brand new market edited by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn. ÂTheir premier issue is scheduled to come out in the next couple weeks. According to their website, they’ll be offering stories in print, in e-books, as well as audio versions in multiple languages. The date: ÂNot sure yet. ÂNot Issue #1, but perhaps #2 or #3, Summer 2010

And, as if that wasn’t cool enough, this will be my first professionally paying sale! ÂIt doesn’t yet qualify for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) membership because it’s such a new market, but as long as they prove themselves with longevity and magnitude, then this would retroactively count toward membership.

Niche Game: Grand Theft Auto

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

The original Grand Theft Auto, the game that started the memorable series, was released by DMA Design, now known as Rockstar North. This is just one in the long list of ingenius games this company is capable of, with such varied gameplay that you never get bored. This game is similar in some ways to its descendents, but has many unique traits of its own.

The game is mostly 2-D. Technically it’s 3-D, because the height of buildings is clear as you drive by them, but the game rarely involves interacting with anything that’s not strictly on the ground. The view is top-down only. This view works pretty well for the most part, but isn’t very helpful when you are beneath something opaque like an overpass.

The plot moves through three cities, which will sound familiar to fans of the later games. You start in Liberty City (New York), move on to Vice City (Miami), and the last level is in San Andreas (California). The game starts out with your character in Liberty City, near a bunch of ringing telephones on the edge of Central Park. Each telephone kicks off a different mission, which you then try to complete. When you pass or fail, you return to the phones if you want more missions. Or, like the sequels, you can just choose to rampage.

Completing missions is important, but in this version is not required to advance through the game. Advancement in this game depends on the points, though missions are an integral way of rapidly increasing your points, and succeeding in missions tends to open up more missions. Besides getting a huge point bonus for completing a mission, doing so also increases your points multiplier by one. The multiplier is applied to every point you receive. The points are labeled as dollars on-screen, but it’s not really clear who is paying you $10 for every pedestrian you run over, so I tend to think of them as points. You can use the points to purchase things, such as a paint job to lose cops or planting a bomb in a car.

Missions vary widely. Sometimes you’re the driver for a bank job, evading pursuit with a high police level, or other times you’re sent on an assassination mission. One mission re-enacts the premise of speed. Once you get in this bus, you must maintain a minimum speed or the bus will explode. So you have to drive on sidewalks and swerve in and out of traffic to pull this off, keeping it up until someone can disable the bomb while you’re driving.

You do get points for pretty much anything, including running over people with your car, shooting people. You get lots of extra points for mass carnage. For instance, if you steal many cars and parks them side by side, then blow them all up with a shot from the rocket launcher. This works with people too, which is especially noticeable when you see a line of Hare Krishna walking in single file. If you can run over the whole line without missing a single one of them, then you get a huge bonus, along with the word “GOURANGA” filling the screen. Another way to cause carnage is to scare people onto the third rail of the city trains. Fire a gun or a flamethrower at no one in particular at a train station and people will flee in every direction, even if they zap themselves to do it.

Of course, the more visible crimes you commit, the more your police wanted level goes up. With one star, you’re usually only pursued by one or two cops who don’t try to kill you, only to arrest you. As your wanted level increases, so does the level of pursuit. A little higher and cops set up road blocks with their cars blocking the road. It escalates up to the point where the military gets involved, sending tanks barreling down the street. If you get “BUSTED” or “WASTED” (both of which come with their own awesome sound clip), you will come to at the nearest police station or hospital without weapons and with your multiplier reduced. This is very disappointing when it happens, because those multiplier values are everything.


Besides the phone missions, there are also missions you begin by jumping into abandoned cars parked in various places in the city. And sometimes you get important mission information via your beeper which scrolls messages up on the top of the screen. It’s all open-ended, so you can do any of these missions, or not. it’s really up to you.

There is a wide array of cars in this game, most modeled after real cars, though using different false names than the 3-D GTA games. For instance, the Dodge Viper is a “Beast” in this game as opposed to the “Banshee” used in later games. Each car has its own attributes, and of course stealing cop cars is one of the most fun things to do. Turning on the sirens increases the cop car’s top speed.

Just like GTA3, this game has radio stations with made up songs on them. This was one of my favorite parts of the game, just driving around and listening to the fake music. There are several radio stations, and not every one is available in every car. For a laugh, grab a pickup truck, which has just one possible station. It’s a country station and it plays just the one song–which is a hilarious country parody. After the song, the DJ comes on for a few moments and says “In fact, I liked the song so much, I reckon I’ll play it again.”

Once you reach the minimum point level to pass the level, then you are given a special mission. If you pass that mission, then you pass the level and are allowed to move on. Personally I’ve passed the first two levels, but did not make it through San Andreas. I just wasn’t very good at gun play in this top down game and tended to get smeared across the landscape. Some time I should pick up the game and try again, to see if I have any better luck now.

The 3-D sequels are well known, so I won’t list those, but there some a couple of lesser known sequels to the game. Grand Theft Auto: London takes place in 1969 in London, with different music, different kinds of cars, and of course in London itself. It’s not as big a game as the original, but can be sort of fun if you’re craving more. Grand Theft Auto 2 is done in the same top-down style, but with a gang war system added. In each level there are 2 or 3 major gangs fighting for contention over the city, and you have a reputation with each of them (measured by meters on the heads-up display). Completing missions for one gang will increase that gang’s like for you, but will decrease other gangs’ like for you. The higher your reputation with a gang, the more of their missions are offered to you, and the lower, the more hostile they become. This game was hard for me because I have a tendency to want to complete every mission for everybody, which isn’t really possible for this game as you’d just end up with a neutral reputation with everybody instead of really gaining something. Grand Theft Auto 2 added a new feature, an evangelist hut that says “Jesus Saves!”. And he does save. Your game that is.

If you want to find a copy of the game, you’re in luck! Rockstar offers a free download of Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2 on their website. So you have no excuse not to play it. See where the carnage began. Enjoy!

Wheel of Time Re-read Review: Crossroads of Twilight

[Fair warning: The beginning of this article is a lengthy explanation of why I’m re-reading this book at this moment. If you don’t care, then skip down to the part below that says BEGIN REVIEW]

I’ve long proclaimed that Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time fantasy series is my favorite fantasy series of all time. The characters are great, the magic system is detailed and interesting, and the worldbuilding is just extraordinary. Jordan strikes just the right balance between style and substance, hitting a medium that flows easily but still reads in an appealing way.

But, since 2007, I have been dreading picking the series again. The reason for my dread is not anything that Robert Jordan did, but rather a change in my tastes, leaning towards the critical. I started writing fiction back then, and it has changed my reading preferences forever. Above all, I’ve learned that my most valued trait of any writing is conciseness. Is it the best length for the story it has to tell. This has made it VERY hard to read Stephen King novels! Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels are very long, and there are a lot of them (11 written by his hand before he died), so I’ve been worried that I will no longer be able to enjoy the books now that I’m so much more picky.

In September 2007, Robert Jordan died of a blood disease. I regret that I was never able to meet the man who created my favorite books. He’d known how the series would wrap up for a long time before the end, and since he saw the end coming he kept copious notes so that the Wheel of Time would not have to pass away prematurely with him. His publishers at Tor chose Brandon Sanderson to use the notes to complete the series. I’m not sure what to expect from Sanderson. I haven’t read anything else that he’s written so he’s a completely unknown entity to me. I got the newest WoT book, The Gathering Storm, for Christmas, so I will soon find out what I think of his writing. I will probably either love or hate him, depending on if I feel he is continuing Jordan’s legacy satisfactorily.

To be fair to Sanderson, I decided that it would be best if I re-read some of the Wheel of Time before reading the new one. After all, it is possible that I no longer care for Jordan’s writing style, and so it would be rather unfair to judge Sanderson against a nostalgic memory that isn’t all that accurate anymore. Sanderson is the guest of honor at MiniCon here in the Twin Cities, which I will be attending, so I want to have gotten started on The Gathering Storm before that time so I can decide whether I hate him. So I don’t have time to re-read many of the Wheel of Time books. I decided to re-read books 10 (Crossroads of Twilight) and 11 (Knife of Dreams), leaving me at least a little time to get started on The Gathering Storm before Easter weekend.

So, long story short, I’ve just finished Crossroads of Twilight, and here is my review!

BEGIN REVIEW

Spoilers ahead, and I don’t really feel like marking them out after this. So, if you don’t want to know, then don’t read it!

The good news is that I still enjoy Jordan’s writing style, his accessible characters, and the world they’re contained in. The bad news is that I found this book incredibly boring. I suspect (but am not entirely sure) that it’s just this book that I dislike and that I could still enjoy the other ones. There are several reasons why I simply had trouble getting into this one:

1. Too many POVs. By this point in the series there are so many separate groups of people, widely distributed from one another, most of them in a position of some power over a huge group of other people. The trouble is, there are just simply too many groups to be able to give any single one of them justice within a single book, even a book that’s nearly 700 pages. For the first 600 pages or so, the narrative takes turns going to each of these characters for two or three chapters in a row, then on to the next and the next. The trouble is that each time there’s a transition there’s a break in whatever tension had been built to that point and I start the next section in a null state. And when it became clear that most of these people would not even be returned to in this book, it was hard to care much what happened in their everyday lives. I understand that Jordan, by this time, had set up a wide cast of characters that we all care about, but he would be better served picking just 3 or 4 major characters and focusing on them for this book, and focusing more on other characters for other books. The way it was, it seemed that fairness and equal representation was more important than reader interest or conflict, and that really killed any tension that could’ve been created.

2. Aftermath syndrome. In the last book, Winter’s Heart, a hugely important event occurs. Rand and Nynaeve, along with a bunch of other helpers, manage to use incredibly powerful sa’angreal to do what has been thought impossible–cleanse saidin, the male half of the source. Since the Breaking of the World, the world has lived in fear of men who can channel because the taint on saidin eventually causes them to go mad. The modern version of Aes Sedai are only female out of necessity and an entire division of the White Tower (the Red Ajah) is dedicated entirely to neutralizing any man who can channel for the safety of all. This is a huge blessing for Rand and others who can channel, and though it will be hard to prove the claims of the cleansing of saidin on any large social scale, it will allow channeling men to live longer and be free from madness.

Anyway, the actually cleansing created a beacon of power of both saidar and saidin detectable from anywhere within the book’s world by anyone who can channel. This is understandably disconcerting for those who can channel because they would’ve thought that magnitude of Power usage would’ve been impossible. I understand why they’d be disconcerted. But one of the major annoyances of the book is that every one of these multitude of sections involved a rehashing of this concept. All of the sections took place more or less simultaneously, beginning just before this beacon appeared and lasting for a day or two after. So the mystery and the worry is rehashed so many times. Maybe this would interesting if we weren’t already aware of what the beacon was, but we already saw it in the last book! So it just gets tiresome.

3. No thread of standout importance. In most of the Wheel of Time books, there is a thread that is clearly meant to be the most important thread of that book. In book 1, the quest to find the Eye of the World. In book 3, the quest to catch up to Rand and Rand’s drive to go to the Stone of Tear. Many of the books end with a major fight with one of the Forsaken, or a major revelation such as Rand’s learnings in Rhuidean. In Crossroads of Twilight, none of the threads seemed significantly more important than the others. Each was just like a quick update on what that character’s up to, but in most cases it’s entirely clear that they’re in the same place they have been and will continue to be aftereward. Only in the very last chapter does any sense of change really take place and it’s so unforeshadowed and comes so completely out of nowhere that I never had any particular tension about it in the first place (More about that in #4).

4. No climax. Okay, yes, the book does end on a cliffhanger. Egwene sets off in a rowboat to use her mad cuendillar-making skills to block the harbors. She succeeds in blocking one of the harbors, but is captured and brought into the tower. Which is a great twist, and the quest that sparked it was both worthy and interesting. The trouble is that quest was not foreshadowed in any particular way. In her sections she thought from time to time about some unspecified plan she had, but never went into details. This bugs me to no end, because I like to really sink into a point of view when I read a story. I want to feel what the character’s feeling, but that’s impossible if she’s making huge overarching plans and keeping it as a secret from me. Finally in the last five pages, I figure out what she’s doing, and then she gets captured two pages later. Because I’ve read the book before, I knew her plan and knew the cliffhanger, and there was a hint or two but not enough to create significant tension for a first read. If I’d known her plan back when she started making it, then I could worry about how it would turn out, but revealing the plan and then having it fail at the same time doesn’t work well for me–I’m already disinterested! And because of my #1 complaint, Egwene had a very minor portion of the book, page-wise, so it didn’t make a great deal of sense to have her ending be the big ending.

I like when the beginning ties to the end in some significant way, but in this case there was no Chekhov’s gun to tie everything together. It ended up seeming more like a collection of uninteresting status updates on every character. Next I’m reading Knife of Dreams. I hope this one measures up more to my memory of the series! That’s Jordan’s last chance to get me warmed up to read the new Sanderson volume. Wish me luck!

-David Steffen

Game Review: “Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier” for the PS2

Written by Melissa Shaw
Reprinted from Fantasy Magazine

“Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier (TLF)” has no business being as entertaining as it is. It’s a Sony PSP port for the PlayStation 2, for God’s sake. To an eye accustomed to the PlayStation 3’s rich visuals, TLF’s graphics seem boxy and crude.

And yet, TLF is great fun, with solid gameplay, an interesting storyline, and a surprisingly compelling soundtrack. It features platforming, environmental puzzles, combat, lots of side quests and mini-games, and high-flying aerial missions that have you zooming around in the dogfighting plane of your choice.

TLF is the first game in the franchise to be developed by High Impact Games instead of Naughty Dog, and it has a slightly different flavor and focus than its predecessors. Gone are most of the familiar characters and locales from earlier entries in the series, as our intrepid heroes venture farther afield than ever before.

TLF opens with Jak, Daxter, and Keira (the only other character who has appeared in previous games) searching uncharted territories for eco, an energy source whose current inexplicable absence is creating storms that threaten the world itself. Find more eco, save the world.

As in previous installments, through the course of the game, Jak acquires weapons and abilities that bring a lot of variety to the gameplay. Instead of just retreading old territory with eco-based powers from previous games, however, this game brings a whole slew of new toys, including a weaponized ball of energy you can throw at enemies, temporary eco-crystals you can grow to change your environment at strategic locations, an ersatz jet-pack, and the ability to slow time (okay, that one was from previous games). The weapons are largely familiar, though High Impact Games has added a powerful grenade launcher that ends up being the game’s most useful weapon.

TLF also offers a number of mods, hidden as treasure throughout the levels or available in mini-quests, that allow you to upgrade your armor, weapons, and planes.

While most of the gameplay mechanics are familiar to fans of the series, in TLF, Jak has lost his ability to turn into the eco-powered Dark Jak or Light Jak. To make up for that, you now get some Dark Daxter segments in which Daxter, the fuzzy little sidekick, falls down a tunnel, gets doused with dark eco, hulks out, and has to navigate his own mini-levels. Unfortunately, these sections are the weakest part of the game, with no camera control, dull environments, and no integration into the rest of the story.

Speaking of camera control, the forced camera perspective in several spots in the game is an annoyance, particularly when navigating an especially tricky platforming section, or when you want to look around for extra goodies. Fortunately, some camera control is available most of the time.

TLF has a surprising amount of replay value in Hero Mode, which becomes available once you have finished the game. As you play through the levels again, you may notice environmental cues that you missed the first time through, and that lead you to secret rooms and hidden areas filled with loot. And if you don’t notice them, the game gently clues you in by sending a small, ethereal blue light to guide you to the goodies when you get close enough.

While it shows its PSP origins in its crude visuals and frequent lack of camera control, “Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier” for the PS2 is still more satisfying than many snazzier-looking action-adventure games for the PS3.

Melissa Shaw’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Analog, and several anthologies. Melissa is a Clarion West graduate and a “Writers of the Future” contest winner. She is currently writing for an as-yet-unreleased video game.

Buggers and Pathfinders–Orson Scott Card

I’m thrilled to introduce today’s guest, the one and only Orson Scott Card. Orson Scott Card is most well-known as the author of the award-winning novel Ender’s Game, published in 1985. Ender’s Game won both the Nebula and the Hugo awards. And no wonder that was so popular–I just finished reading it for the first time and I found it be compelling throughout.

He has written many stories in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and Biblical. And he’s contributed to the publishing business in other ways besides writing. He is the founder of professional speculative fiction magazine Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, which has published some amazing stories. He also runs a yearly weeklong writer’s workshop titled Literary Boot Camp. Entry to the workshop is application-based and very competitive. Graduation from Boot Camp would be a great addition to any cover letter. Check out his website Hatrack River, and while you’re there stop by the Hatrack River Writer’s Workshop, a writer’s forum where you can ask for advice, share commiserations and congratulations, and just generally shoot the breeze.

David Steffen: At what point did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

Orson Scott Card: I’m not sure I ever really did. Writing was ‘in the air’ in my house – my dad subscribed to Writer’s Digest, and as Mormons it was part of our culture to write sermons, essays, and even comic plays. So I always wrote and thought of writing as something regular people did all the time. But it wasn’t a career choice! I entered college as an archaeology major, but found I was spending all my time in the theatre department. So I changed majors. I started writing in order to fix plays (Flowers for Algernon, for instance, had a terrible second act, so with the director’s permission I wrote a new one based on the story and novel), and then to adapt novels for readers’ theatre productions. Then I started writing one-act plays for a playwriting class, and finally wrote a full-length play, which was produced by a faculty member. Later came mainstage plays at the university and elsewhere, and there were sold-out houses and held-over runs. So I began to think of myself as a playwright – though I was also a director and actor and singer.

Later, as a theatre company I started was failing (a relative term – our deficits, without subsidy of any kind, were remarkably low!), I needed to earn extra money. So I turned seriously to writing short stories as the only way I could think of to earn a buck. After that decision, my first story was “Ender’s Game.” Some of my earlier, hobby-period stories became “The Worthing Saga,” and I was off and running. Even then, I still earned more than half my income as a freelance editor and as an audio scriptwriter; I didn’t really think of myself as mainly a fiction writer until I started earning serious money at the gig. And in my heart, I still think I’m a better play director than writer. But I can’t get paid for it!

David: Where did the idea for the original Ender’s Game novelette originate?

OSC: In 1968, my brother was in the army. He was stationed at Ft. Douglas in Salt Lake City, and so he came home most weekends, where he met the woman he eventually married. For my birthday in 1968, he and his fiancee gave me the Foundation Trilogy, the first sci-fi novel I’d read since I read some Norton and Heinlein in junior high (I was not a dedicated fan, sci-fi was just one of the many genres I read in).

After reading Asimov – that brilliant, absolutely clear style! those sweeping stories! – I thought that I would like to be able to think of a great science fiction story idea. with my brother’s military experience looming in my mind, I thought: How would you train soldiers for war in space? I remembered Nordhoff & Hall’s novel about WWI aviators, and the problem the new pilots had with thinking in three dimensions (the enemy that killed them usually came from above or below, and they never saw him). It would be even worse in space, where there is no “down.” And if you just train out in space, you run the serious risk of having injured soldiers drift away. So I thought of the battle room, a football-field size cube in which trainees would get used to having to face opponents in three dimensions with a flexible up-and-down orientation. Sometimes there would be obstacles, sometimes not. And there the idea stayed for several years, while I worked on the Zenna Henderson-influenced Worthing stories from time to time.

Later, needing money, I took a notebook with me while accompanying a girlfriend as she took her boss’s kids to the circus. No ticket for me (which was fine, I am deeply bored by circuses); I sat on the lawn outside the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City and wrote, “Remember, the enemy’s gate is down.” The key new insight was: what if the trainees were children young enough that they could still absorb the three-dimensional, no-down space and make it, not second nature, but their FIRST nature? So Ender became a kid, the youngest commander in the history of Battle School, and then I just winged it from there.

David: I’ve heard that Ender’s Game is in the works to become a video game. What was your level of involvement of the design of the game? Is there anything about video game adaptations that surprised you?

OSC: The videogame is a problem, because there’s been no movie. Everybody wants to do the game of the movie – but that’s the game I DON’T want. I want to have games with replayability, not games where you just act out Ender and then you’re done with it. I want battle-room games, and battle-SCHOOL MUDDs, and games based on the formic wars, all three of them, and a version of the Mind Game from the books, and games about colonizing the former Formic worlds with all the surprises lurking there. The trick is to find someone willing to finance the development of these games. But this is the ONLY way to make it a franchise. My model is the way LucasArts developed and keeps renewing the Star Wars game franchise. I won’t settle for anything less. So I have detached the movie rights from the game rights – I learned my lesson with Warner, which was full of talk about developing the game regardless of what happened with the movie – all empty promises! Eventually, I’ll find a game publisher that doesn’t want to fire me and then make the game of the movie. Meanwhile, I have several brilliant game DESIGNERS, like the great team headed by Donald Mustard, who want to work with me on the game. But they don’t have the funding. It’s a matter of time!

David: You’ve also written for comic books. Did you find it difficult to adapt your writing to apply it to visual mediums?

OSC: Fortunately, I don’t have to be the artist – I don’t have to conceive the actual pictures. Essentially, writing a comic book IS writing a play. I write the panels and tell what should happen in the panels – but the artists will conceive the “shot” and find ways to make things clear. So I’m on very familiar turf. That doesn’t mean there weren’t things I had to learn – for instance, I had a scene in Ultimate Iron Man where someone pulls their hands out of manacles, cutting off fingers in the process. My brilliant editor (Nick Lowe) said, No, it’s unbearable to do that: it’s not like a movie, where the image flashes past you on the screen. It sits there on the page for the reader to STUDY. A great perception that I simply hadn’t grasped. So I definitely needed guidance, and I got better as I went along. Now I’m writing the first series of Formic Wars comics for Marvel – set before Ender’s Game – and I feel comfortable doing it.

David: What projects would you like to see yourself working on ten years from now?

OSC: I hope all my existing contracts and projects are long since fulfilled, and I get to spend my old age writing whatever I feel like, and not having to sell it until it’s written!

David: Looking back on the first five years of Intergalactic Medicine Show, did you go as you expected? What lessons have you learned through the launch?

OSC: Have we been doing it five years now? I didn’t think it was THAT long. No, it hasn’t gone as I’d hoped in the sense that we’re not finding as many readers as I wanted, and we’re still running at a loss. At the same time, the readers who DO buy and read the magazine really care about and enjoy the fiction, and it’s a joy to see the stories come to life. We buy illustrations for every story, so that the old-time magazine feel is still there, still alive in IGMS. And the readership is steadily growing, so someday I expect it will move from money-losing hobby to money-making institution! Ed Schubert does an excellent job as editor, and our pre-readers do a great job of letting the good submissions rise to the top. Kathleen Bellamy is managing editor but also art director, and she has assembled a wonderful array of artists who are willing to sacrifice to do excellent work for our pathetically low payment.

David: If you could give only one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

OSC: The main advice is: Stop looking for advice and just keep putting words on paper. You learn more from writing a 100,000-word novel than from any number of classes or books on writing or workshops you might take (and I include mine in that – why bother going to a workshop if you’re not actually WRITING and FINISHING things?).

Having said that, my next most important advice is: Writer’s block is your friend. It is your unconscious mind telling you that something you just wrote, or are about to write, is not working. Either you don’t believe in it or you don’t care about the story any more. Your unconscious is your best editor – it tries desperately to keep you from writing crap. So the answer is NEVER to tough it out and force yourself to move on through your outline. The result of that will be garbage that you don’t care about and the reader won’t either. Instead, go back and change or amplify or add to the what-happens-and-why of the story (the “plain tale”); pick up on a minor character and make them somebody and see what they do; give an existing character a more complicated set of motives; change the way the world works in some significant way. Then go back to where that change starts happening and write everything from there on as if the previous version never existed. Don’t look at it, don’t think about the old version. Just write the NEW story, the one that has freshened in your mind.

The danger of this is that you end up writing seven-book trilogies – but worse things can happen! Some of the very best stuff in my writing has been a gift of writer’s block, which caused me to reinvent the story.

Fiddling with language or tiny meaningless details, of course, accomplishes nothing except to kill the spontaneity of the first draft. The first draft is the best draft – you only change spots where it isn’t clear or where the story isn’t working; you never just fiddle with language. That just kills your natural style.

Oh, and a last piece of advice: Even if Strunk and White’s Elements of Style were not a bunch of meaningless drivel and hideously bad advice for ALL writers, it certainly is meaningless for fiction writers! There is no virtue to eliminating “needless” words in fiction – and if you’re thinking about style, your style will be dead. You think about story and character, what happens and why, and let your natural voice carry the story. You’ll have an inimitable style then – your real voice – and the rules from the ignorant, miseducated English teachers who abused your understanding of the language throughout your miseducation will fall by the wayside, where they should be left behind. You can’t be thinking about language while you write; that’s like trying to ride a bicycle while thinking about balance and pedaling. And you’ve seen the stories that result from that kind of writing – a “style” that calls attention to itself constantly, so you can barely find the story through the English-professor-pleasing nonsense that has been smeared on the lens.

David: Where did the name for your website Hatrack River come from?

OSC: Hatrack River is a town in the Alvin Maker series – the birthplace of Alvin (as his pioneer parents were passing through) and the place where he served his apprenticeship.

David: What was the last book you read?

OSC: The last fiction book was The Broken Teaglass, by Emily Arsenault. The last BOOK was If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren’t There More Happy People?: Smart Quotes for Dumb Times, by editors John Lloyd & John Mitchinson. Plus on my Kindle I’m nearing the end of a reread of Jane Austen’s Emma, and on my Nano I’m in the second half of Ken Scholes’s Canticle. Life is only happy when I have three or four books going at once.

David: Your favorite book?

OSC: For me, it’s a tie between Pride and Prejudice and Lord of the Rings. Those are the two books I most often reread.

David: Who is your favorite author?

OSC: The good writer whose book I am presently reading, because that’s the one I’m conversing with at the moment. There are so many writers whose work I love and/or admire that I can’t pick just one favorite – it would change every few weeks anyway!

Having said that – and it’s true – Austen and Tolkien are beloved favorites, as is Asimov; there’s a whole group of mystery writers whose work I avidly devour; I just discovered Thackeray and Trollope and am an enthusiastic new convert; and there are some extraordinary YA writers, the best of whom may well be Neal Shusterman, and the best of whose books (so far) is the absolutely brilliant, devastating Everlost. In sci-fi and fantasy, Ken Scholes, Patrick Rothfuss, Sherwood Smith, Robin Hobb, James Maxey, David Farland (but my favorites are the books he wrote as Dave Wolverton), and … and … I’m just going to leave out too many writers whose work I love, so I’ll stop.

David: What was the last movie you saw?

OSC: Me and Orson Welles. It was so brilliant I went back right away, this time with my wife and daughter, and saw it again. A great script, great directing, and above all absolutely brilliant acting, especially by Christian McKay in the title role – though all the other actors do a splendid job as well.

David: What is your favorite movie?

OSC: A Man for All Seasons – as close to a perfect movie as you can get. But I also love Far from the Madding Crowd and A Lion in Winter; and Sense and Sensibility (the Emma Thompson version) and Love Actually are also movies I frequently watch again. For the moment, call those my top five.

David: When is the next story set in the Enderverse going to come out? How about non-Ender related stories?

OSC: My next Ender-related work will be the Marvel comic series set during the Formic Wars. Outside of the Ender universe, I’m completing a novel called Pathfinder, which is ostensibly a YA novel but I’m just writing the way I usually do. And my Mithermages series is the next book I’m doing for TOR. Both are in progress at this moment.

David: Can you tell us about your works in progress?

OSC: Pathfinder is in a world colonized by the first human-built starship that attempted to do a time-space jump to cut down the length of interstellar voyages. In the time-jump it was divided into 19 copies, containing every single person and item (in addition to the original, which then went BACKWARD in time occupying the same space as the original ship on its voyage out to the jump-point). The copies of the colony ship also jumped more than 11,000 years backward in time – basically, the same amount of time since humans discovered agriculture and began to build cities.

So it becomes an opportunity for an experiment. all 19 colony ships land, each in a large enclave surrounded by a forcefield so there can be no mixing of populations. Technology is deliberately hidden so it has to be developed anew, and starting with the identical gene pool, every colony has eleven thousand years in which to develop their own civilizations – and their own genetic differences – before they catch up to the “present” of the ship’s original jump through spacetime.

At that point (well into the second volume, I might add), humans on Earth, having learned from what happened to the first jumpship, have perfected faster-than-light travel, and send out another ship some fifteen years after the first – but without the time-jump and the copying. That ship will arrive and find humanity much altered – in 19 different ways! – and, when they see what these people have become, they have the power and, perhaps, the will to destroy some or all of them and let new colonists take over. After all, the people of this new world are no long “human” – genetically or socially.

All of this is background – the skeleton on which the actual story hangs. The story begins entirely within one of the enclaves (each about the land area of Europe west of Russia), and only gradually, as we move through the story, do we step through the walls from one enclave to another. In a way, it has echoes of my novel Treason – another set of stranded colonists who, in isolation, developed differently – but the story is very, very different. I love the characters I’m working with and the world they’re moving through – it’s as much fun as writing Alvin Maker novels.

Mithermages is a completely unrelated fantasy series, but it ties to two stories already released: Stonefather and Sandmagic. In our contemporary world, the old gods are still around – but having been cut off from their home world a couple of thousand years before, their powers are much diminished and they live pretty much in disguise, out of place in a machine-using society. Our hero in this story is the first person in many centuries to have the ability to create new gates between the worlds – and some of the families are determined to kill him. So the series moves back and forth between two planets – with the looming menace of a third, the one that is the source of the gods and angels of the Bible and the Koran. I think this one will pretty much offend everybody, but it’s a great magical universe and I love these characters, too.

David: Orson, thanks so much for stopping by, and good luck with your writing!

http://www.hatrack.com/

New Website Launch: Writrade Showcase!

Mark Turner is here today to tell everyone about the launch of the new website Writrade Showcase for readers, writers, and editors. Since Mark is the founder, I’ll let him tell you all about the website, why you should check it out, and details on the free stuff he’s giving away as part of the launch.

Writrade Showcase is a brand new idea in online promotions for writers.

Just launched this week, and offering a big swag of give-aways for the week-long launch, the Showcase takes a different approach to other promotion sites. ÂWe actually do our best to send people away!

Think of it as much as a directory to find the people, goods and services you seek, as it is a social and business network.

Where other networking sites try to keep their members and readers there, we get you to come back each day to check the site magazine for the latest news, announcements and advertising, then send you away to all the interesting places and people that you’re looking for.

Have you published the latest and greatest best-seller of a horror novel and need to tell the world about it? ÂBe sure to add the Showcase to your round of promotional sites. ÂSet up your free profile as a standing advertisement, and join the groups onsite that fit your book to make it easy for readers to find you instead of making them hunt through the membership list. ÂThen, start working the site magazine every day. ÂPost the schedules for your online blog tours, reviews and links to their sites, cover art and book trailer videos. ÂPost some excerpts from your book, give the readers a taser and get them slavering for the rest so they’ll follow your links to come buy.

If you have a magazine, do the same, post submission calls, release dates, new issues, and riddle your posts with links to make it easy for readers to leave us and come find you!

Are you a writer looking for markets for submissions? ÂFind the latest news from the publishers themselves on the magazine. ÂDo you want to post some samples of your work, some poetry, short stories, articles, or just your thoughts for the day? ÂThe Showcase magazine has a category for everyone, and you can post material to it as often as you wish. ÂJust so long as it’s at least vaguely writing-related.

Agents, editors, reviewers, novelists, journalists, shorts writers, promotions sites, publishers, writing sites, artists, graphic artists, poets; for anyone actually in the writing and publishing industry, or readers looking for news on their favourite authors and books, the news will be provided direct from the horse’s mouth, the people in the industry itself.

And what’s it cost, you ask? ÂThat’s the biggest ‘horror story’ of all. ÂNothing! (Gasp! Horror! Dismay!) ÂYep, I hear my competitors now, gnashing their teeth and wailing to the dark gods! ÂFree!

Why?

‘Coz I’m a great guy! Â(I’m shy, but let’s be honest here, heheh!) ÂNo, really. ÂAfter years of frustrated searches of the net hunting for information from this and that site, I often cried to the gods of frustration, ‘Why doesn’t someone put all this stuff together, in the one place?!’
Then, one day, I thought it was time someone did, so the Showcase was born.

Still only a baby yet, but from small beginnings can arise monsters that will take over the net, to become, in time, the first place each day you need to go for all your news and contacts in the writing and publishing trade. ÂWon’t it be heaven to be able to find whatever you need in one place? ÂAnd far from being ‘hell’ for my competitors, it’s actually a place they can use too, to make it simplicity itself for readers and writers and all others interested in any genre to come find them, and then leave to come to their sites!

A couple of new developments are in the offing. ÂThe Writrade News, a weekly online journal for a formal promotional and news publication, with special access to it available only for professional Showcase members. ÂAnd a possible new Showcase Community online Mall, with up to 200 stores, offering the chance to get into online marketing so cheaply and easily that you wont believe! Â $50 paid ONCE, to sign up, then nothing out of your pocket again, forever! ÂDetails on site.

All new members who join during our Launch Week, starting Mon, 18th and ending Sun, 24th at midnight, will automatically be in the draw for one the great prizes in the give-away basket. ÂYou can even earn extra entries, one for every day over Launch Week that you post an item on the magazine.

The prizes include no less than two free book trailer video packages, one from Dara England, the other from Apex Reviews. ÂThere are books from a number of great authors, including our own David Steffen from right here on Diabolical Plots, ‘Shadows of the Emerald City’, an anthology from Northern Frights in which his story, ‘The Utility of Love’ appears. ÂThere’s also ‘The Curse of Satan’s Collar’ by Dr John W. Miller, ‘Convict Grade’ by Azrael Paul Damien, a couple of great kids’ fantasy novels ‘The Book of Spells’ and ‘The Druiad’, by William E. Terry, ‘Radgepacket’, Tales from the Inner City and ‘More Burglar Dairies’ from Byker Books, and a the first of a terrific, old-fashioned Sword and Sorcery series by Glenn G. Thater. Â’The Gateway’, first in the ‘Harbinger of Doom’ series, is being made available to ALL members at the Showcase entirely for free by Glenn, as a free download, so you can read it right away. ÂNo waiting! ÂAnd finally, with the good stuff left till last (grin), a four issue subscription to Aurealis magazine, courtesy of yours truly. ÂAfter being an editorial staffer there for a while, mostly rejecting works from the slush pile, I finally get to make someone happy with some this prize of some great speculative fiction from Down Under.

So come on along to our launch week, join up and get your entry in the prize draw! ÂAnd at the same time help to support the greatest little promo site in the net, doing yourself a favour in the process by taking advantage of it for your own free promotions and news.

Let’s build it to a million members! ÂCome be one of the first! ÂThen you can say ‘I was there ages ago’ 🙂

Thanks to David, Anthony and the team here at DP! ÂYou guys have been a little guiding light in an otherwise slightly scary darkness throughout the process of getting the Showcase off the ground.

Mark Turner, Writrade.com

Mark Turner was raised in outback Australia. After a stint in the army and and some time working at a bush Base hospital, he returned to university to pursue his love of books. A viral illness cut short his aspirations and he didn’t finish the Lit’ Studies degree. Some years followed dealing with Murray Valley Encephalitis before he gradually got back into his writing. A job with Aurealis magazine followed, till he decided that it was time for his own publishing venture, and Writrade was born. The Showcase is the first of several sister sites; the Writrade News weekly journal and a speculative fiction zine, ‘Voluted Tales’ are soon to follow.

Fiction Sale #3–What Makes You Tick

I have good news to share! Northern Frights Publishing has purchased one of my stories for their upcoming War of the Worlds themed anthology. Since I was able to make it into the pages of their very first anthology, Shadows of the Emerald City, I wanted to see if I could make it into more of their excellent compilations, and I’m glad to say it worked out. I also submitted to their Timelines anthology, but got a rejection for my entry there so it’s not a clean sweep but two out of three ain’t bad. JW Schnarr is once again the editor, and I was really impressed by the quality of the stories he picked for Shadows (even if he hadn’t picked mine), so I’m looking forward to seeing who I’m sharing the table of contents with and what they’ve come up with.

My story is titled “What Makes You Tick” and it is the story of an alien autopsy from the point of view of the alien. It’s very short at only 600 words, but it packs a wallop in that small space! I like flash fiction for its brevity, a climax in such a short period of time can’t help but be exciting on some level!

For those who like stats:

Time since I started writing fiction: 2 years, 11 months

Time since I started writing short stories: 1 year, 7 months

Short story #: 22

Total responses before this sale: 209

Total rejections since last sale: 81

Time since last sale: —160 days

Total rejections of this story before this sale: 1

Total rejections from Northern Frights before this sale: 1