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

Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

written by Melissa Shaw
Originally printed in Fantasy Magazine

arkhamasylumFrom top to bottom, Batman: Arkham Asylum for the Sony PS3 is a vivid, detailed, and sometimes chilling foray into the gothic world of Batman.

The premise is simple: Batman delivers a newly-captured Joker to Arkham Asylum, the notorious Gotham prison housing all his vanquished supervillain enemies, only to find himself at the center of a sinister plot. The Joker plans to make Batman witness his creation of an army of huge, bestial soldiers by using the Titan venom, a chemical compound developed at Arkham. The Joker’s more personal ultimate goal, which he reveals just before the big final boss fight at the end, is both unexpected and satisfying.

Every step of the way, the Joker is in control, leading and taunting Batman through the game’s earlier levels. But Batman is not without his own resources: an array of gadgets that allow him to master his environment by gliding with his cape, grappling up to ledges and gargoyles, using the Detective Mode view to locate enemies, and more. The fight controls are simple but responsive and effective. The game wants you to feel not only physically powerful but clever, focusing on both fighting and detective skills, and it gives you plenty of tools to do both. Despite the perils of the nighttime environment and its denizens, it’s clear that you, as Batman, are the most dangerous creature at Arkham.

The narrative in this game, written by Paul Dini (a veteran writer and producer who has written for Batman: The Animated Series), holds the game together and gives it added depth, demonstrating the increasing importance of strong scriptwriting as video games become more complex.

The game takes place over a single night, and takes Batman not just through Arkham Asylum but all over Arkham Island, in and out of various large, impressive buildings. From the moldering cemetery to the abandoned mansion, the lavish, realistic settings are filled with nooks and crannies to explore, many of which contain the 240 extras , riddles, trophies, interview tapes, and secrets maps , left for you by the Riddler.

Throughout this long, dark night, Batman encounters and must deal with any number of lunatics, henchmen, and sub-bosses, but it is his battles with Scarecrow and the hallucinations Scarecrow induces that are the most developed and affecting. The Scarecrow sequences are genuinely chilling, and delve deeply into the Batman mythos, producing some disturbing images.

The graphics are gorgeous, taking full advantage of the PS3’s processing power to deliver sharp, detailed settings and characters. (The game is also available on the Xbox 360 and the PC.) Where possible, the game integrates gameplay with narrative and dialog. For example, during the opening gameplay sequence, Batman , under your control , escorts the Joker through the entrance to Arkham, while the Joker taunts Batman, his head and body swiveling in surprisingly naturalistic movement to follow Batman wherever you move him.

The voice-over performances are strong, particularly that of Mark Hamill, who reprises his Batman: TAS role as the Joker with intelligent, psychotic glee. The soundtrack supports the narrative without intruding, creating a sense of menace and urgency where appropriate.

The game is a little on the short side, but the richness of the world and the large number of extras make up for a briefer linear gameplay. The game’s foremost flaw is that while it provides maps of the island and its various buildings, it’s not always clear how to get from one place to another; a door that was unlocked before may be locked now, and because the buildings are so large and labyrinthine, it can be difficult to figure out how to get out.

A more minor flaw , which some will see as a strength , is that despite the budget that Arkham Asylum’s massive scale clearly requires, the warden somehow couldn’t afford to clothe Poison Ivy, who saunters through the game in panties and a half-undone shirt. (While Harley Quinn’s outfit is also brief and geared toward seductiveness, she has the excuse of wanting to please and amuse her paramour, the Joker.) Of course, this game, as with most games, is geared toward teenaged boys, but as the number of adult women who play video games continues to grow, the industry would be wise to be responsive to more of its consumer base.

One note of caution: this game is a dark ride, its nightmarish imagery of corpses and skulls inappropriate for young children.

Overall, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a strong, satisfying game that lets you taste what it’s like to be Batman, up against nearly insuperable odds, but finally winning the day. Or, in this case, the night.

10527_1187758026540_1606014926_30480607_3193812_nMelissa 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.

Fun With Flash Fiction!

Hi everyone! I have a writing exercise I’m going to try out. I’m curious to see how it works, and I’ll need your help to do it. Don’t worry, no heavy lifting or paperwork required. All I need from each and every one of you is a trigger. Now you’re probably wondering what the heck I’m going on about. Well, a trigger, in this context, is a word or phrase that is used to try to create a story from. Once I have a trigger, I’ll try to use that to root a story idea in it, and will let the story grow from there. The story does not have to contain the word, nor does the connection to the word have to be obvious. The goal is get the creative flow going and end up with something in the end. So what I need from you are the trigger words. You can leave a comment here. I intend to use each and every one of them to create a story–the time frame for doing this is uncertain since I’m not sure how big of a response to expect from this, and I do have other writing projects as well as Real Life going on in parallel. So please, drop a message here with a trigger. Please keep it clean to some extent.

Where did the idea for this come to mind? Two places:
1. I first came across this idea at Liberty Hall Writer’s Forum, where they hold a weekly flash fiction challenge. Once you log in to see the trigger, you have just 90 minutes to write a complete story and submit it so you can view others’ stories and vote on your favorite. It’s a great way to get a story going when you’re having trouble getting the start. I encourage you to stop by and give it a try.

2. I lovingly stole the idea for taking triggers from a group of friends from an interview with writer Greg Van Eekhout who has tried this before. It sounded like fun, so here goes. Thanks Greg!

Niche Game: Kingdom Hearts

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.

Kingdom Hearts is a parallel world story, with a twist. The game is a joint venture between Squaresoft and Disney, released in 2002 for the PS2. The main character, Sora, travels from world to world, and each of them will be very familiar, because each is the setting of a Disney movie, from the pride lands of The Lion King, Wonderland, and Neverland. Besides the worlds, there are also many cameos from Disney characters, and characters from Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy series.

The protagonist of the game is Sora, a fourteen year old boy. His friends Riku and Kairi also play important roles. At the beginning of the game they are all living on Destiny Islands, and they want to leave the islands to explore the world outside. One night, shadowy creatures appear, the Heartless. He discovers the magical Keyblade, which is his weapon throughout the game, a giant key that he wields like a sword. He’s separated from his friends as the Heartless destroy Destiny Islands.

Meanwhile, in another world, King Mickey (yes, the mouse), heads off to deal with the Heartless and sends his knight Goofy and his mage Donald to go find the key to stopping the Heartless. They seek out Sora, and join forces with him. You always control Sora directly, never his companions, but you can equip them, and set their behavior during battle. Donald’s attributes are based around magic, as he learns various spells as he levels up. Goofy’s primary weapon is a shield–yeah I know it’s weird. Though Sora technically carries the same Keyblade throughout the game, he can add different charms to it that will change it’s attributes drastically, changing the length, the appearance, the power, and even adding extra attributes like extra mana for abilities.

In each world, the Heartless take on new and varied forms which match their surroundings. So, in the pride lands they take the forms based loosely on African animals, in Neverland they often appear as pirates. I like this variation, all tied together by the “Heartless” logo they wear as a badge. Besides the minor Heartless enemies, each world generally has a big boss, also going along with the theme of that world. The objective of travelling through each world is to use the Keyblade to seal the keyhole, the heart of each world that the Heartless seek to destroy.

Different from most Squaresoft games, the fights in the game are real-time, though there is a menu item for performing actions like casting spells and using items. There are also hot-buttons to help speed up these side actions. You never control your two companions, all you can do is set their equipment and attributes. When visiting other worlds, sometimes a hero from that world will travel with you, and can temporarily replace either Goofy or Donald as your fighting companion. In addition, some characters are available as summon magic, where you call them up (Goofy and Donald temporarily disappear while this happens) to bestow some powerful effect and then disappearing. I liked the real-time aspect of the fighting system. It kept the game much more exciting from moment to moment, and much of the challenge is figuring out ways to defeat each unique type of enemy and dodging their attacks.

The one element of the game I wasn’t really impressed by was the Gummi ship. It’s your method of transportation between worlds. The transit ways are filled with enemies that attack you as you fly through Gummi space. You build your Gummi ship from scratch out of spare parts you find or buy along the way, including armor, weapons, radar, etc… It wasn’t that it was a bad element, but it just didn’t really seem to relate to the rest of the game that much and was just a diversion from the important parts–all the different worlds.

There’s quite a cast of voice actors for this game, including Haley Joel Osment, Hayden Panattiere, Billy Zane, and Lance Bass. They all did a really good job at their parts, making the characters seem real and helping to bring the game alive. Many of the Disney characters are voiced by the “official” Disney voice actors for each part.

The theme song, Simple and Clean, was composed and performed specifically for this game release by Hikaru Utada. I love the original version of the song, and the graphics of the sequence (though unfortunately with a remix instead of the original) at the beginning of the game just make it even more awesome to watch. When I first played the game I sometimes just watched them over and over to hear the song and see the sequence.

The plot is a reasonably good, though the main character is a bit corny at times. I loved to see the Disney villains working together across movies, Captain Hook and Maleficent, among others. Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty) is one of my favorite villains of all time; I love her voice, her look, her power, everything about her. These villains were worked into the plot and blended seamlessly with the Squaresoft characters and the Heartless, despite their different animation styles.

Kingdom Hearts II was released in 2006 in the US, and used many of the same concepts, revisiting some of the same worlds as the first game, while expanding the ground covered. Despite their efforts to add fresh worlds and plot elements, it just came off as more of the same, so I give it a “meh,” despite the addition of Christopher Lee’s excellent voice acting abilities. It’s not a terrible game, and it was fun to see some of the new worlds they covered–such as Tron–but overall it just came off as more of the same to me.

Finding a copy of Kingdom Hearts shouldn’t be difficult at all, probably 10 bucks or less on eBay. It’s totally worth it. Enjoy!

The Best of Podcastle

podcastle-iconPodcastle is a podcast of fantasy stories, which I’ve been listening to for the past couple of months to get caught up on their backlog. They’ve provided a whole lot of great stuff for free distribution. They do ask for donations, but they are not required to listen to their fiction. Now that I’ve listened to all of their episodes, I’ve made a list of my top ten favorite episodes (and some honorable mentions that almost made the list).

If you like this article, you might also want to check out The Best of Pseudopod, in which I make a similar list for Podcastle’s horror counterpart, and The Best of Escape Pod, the science fiction counterpart.

1. Cup and Table by Tim Pratt
Read by Stephen Eley

Superpowered agents on a quest to find the Holy Grail. You can’t get much cooler than that! On top of that, the protagonist has a confused time sense, and Pratt’s writing of the story in non-chronological order works surprisingly well. And if that’s not enough, the ending was both cool and unpredicted (by me anyway).

2. A Heretic by Degrees by Marie Brennan
Read by Paul Tevis

Worldbuilding at its best. The strange world of Driftwood is revealed to the reader bit by bit. I know from experience that this is a tough balance to strike. Too much at once and it gets boring. Not enough and it’s confusing. Parallel worlds have always been one of my favorite fantasy elements.

3. Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery by John Schoffstall
Read by Heather Lindsley

This one starts out relatively normal and ramps up the weird as it goes on which, for me, made it easier to digest. I don’t particularly like the protagonist of this one, but she feels like a real person and that’s more important to me than likeability anyway. If you’ve never read any surrealism you might want to give this one a try just to see what you think. There are some lewd images and swear words–they fit well within the story, but just FYI.

4. Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters by Tim Pratt
Read by Matthew Wayne Selznick

Clearly Tim Pratt’s style is well suited to my reading tastes! This is a very long one, one of the Podcastle “Giant” episodes, and one of the few Giants that I’ve liked. Most stories this long are much longer than they need to be–they could benefit by cutting their length in half and they seem to be padded for word count. This one is worth every word, every second. I do love superheroes, and this story gives nods to old-school superheroes alongside more modern styles, and has some unique ideas I haven’t seen in any other superhero stories (which is hard to do in this day and age). Lots of good rip-roaring action, as well as some good mystery elements.

5. Come Lady Death by Peter S. Beagle
Read by Paul S. Jenkins

This is an oldie but a goody. First published back in 1963, it tells the story of Death in human form who attends a party. The setting is similar to Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, but the style and plot are all their own. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a female Death figure (Susan Bones from Pratchett’s Discworld series, for instance), but this incarnation is distinct and provides an enjoyable experience.

6. Nine Sundays in a Row by Kris Dikeman
Read by Kane Lynch

I have a lot of respect for anyone who can do a nonhuman point of view well, and Kris Dikeman has done that with this story. It’s the tale of a deal with the devil with the point of view of the devil’s dog, sent to watch over the supplicant who must spend every Sunday night at a crossroads for nine weeks in a row in order to earn a meeting with the devil. The characters are great, and the ending is fitting. A great story.

7. Komodo by Tim Pratt
Read by Cat Rambo

Yes, another one by Tim Pratt! Apparently I’m a huge fan, though I made the list on the stories without thinking much about the authors. His style and subject matter must just be particularly well-suited for my tastes. So I’ll definitely be watching for more from Pratt. This is the tale of a very powerful sorceress living in the modern day, when she comes up against something that seems to be beyond her abilities. She’s a well fleshed-out character, and the magic system in this is really good, not like anything else I’ve read.

8. Colin and Ishmael in the Dark by William Shunn
Read by MarBelle

Usually I don’t like omniscient point of view, where the narrator is an apparently corporeal third party in the room, unable to affect, only to observe. But it works well in this story, describing an encounter between a prisoner and a guard in a pitch black jail cell. The story is told almost entirely through dialogue between the two, and because the scene is dark, the actual events that are occuring are not always straightforward to interpret. This helps keep the story as disorienting for the reader as it is for the characters, which is quite a trick.

9. The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson
Read by Heather Lindsley

The premise of this story is very interesting, with domesticated animals suddenly gaining the ability to speak, and it focuses on the interaction between dogs and their former masters. As the dogs develop a lingual culture, they develop (as the title states) trickster stories, which are interspersed with the narrative itself. I actually liked the trickster stories better than the main narrative, despite their short disconnected nature. I wish the world had been fleshed out a bit more, animals gaining the ability to speak didn’t have nearly the effect that I would’ve expected, but there’s still a lot to love about this story, and the trickster stories themselves made them worth the listen.

10. Castor on Troubled Waters by Rhys Hughes
Read by Alasdair Stuart

This is a ridiculous tale told by a character who has quite a story to tell in the time honored tradition of making stuff up to get out of paying people money. This is clear from the very beginning, which just makes his tale all the more funny.

Honorable Mentions

It was hard to pick out just ten, so here’s a few that were strong contenders to make the list.

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe
Read by Cheyenne Wright

I know, it’s nearly a crime for Poe to be on the honorable mentions and not on the actual list. I’ve loved Poe’s writing since I first read them in English class, and this is one of my favorite authors. I love Cheyenne’s voice, and he narrated this quite well, except for one detail. The word “Amontillado” is mispronounced throughout, which drove me to distraction. One mispronunciation isn’t the end of the world, but since the word is used many times within the story, is in the title itself, and is in fact the central motivation for one of the characters, I found it hard to ignore. Even if it had been pronounced phonetically, it would have been better. In any case, Poe is one of my favorite authors of all time, I still wanted his story to be mentioned.

In Ashes by Helen Keeble
Read by Marie Brennan

The Twa Corbies by Marie Brennan
Read by Elie Hirschman

In Order to Conserve by Cat Rambo
Read by Mur Lafferty

Niche Game: Final Fantasy Tactics

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.

I trust in Squaresoft to provide RPG games with intricate plots, interesting characters, varied special abilities, lots of room to explore, and heavy but surmountable challenges. The Final Fantasy series is a particularly shining example of this, especially Final Fantasy III (titled VI in Japan), VII, and X. Each of those games deserves an article in their own right, so I’m not going to dig into them here. Final Fantasy Tactics is an offshoot, not included in the main numbering of the series titles, but the numbering doesn’t matter much anyway. Despite their numbering, none of the games really have anything to do with each other plot-wise. They do tend to share much in the way of game mechanics, NPC races, monster types, some character naming, and other aspects, but otherwise the games have nothing to do with each other in terms of continuity.

Most of the games in the Final Fantasy series have a very artificial battle system. I’m not saying they aren’t great games in their own right, but the battles generally consist of the enemies lining up along one side of the screen and the players lining up along the other. When each character’s or monster’s battle timer fills up they have the opportunity to perform some action. If they choose to attack, they run over to the other side, slash the enemy with sword (or whatever weapon) and then run back to their own lines, as though they could charge unimpeded into the midst of an enemy group like that.

Final Fantasy Tactics uses a completely different battle system entirely. It is still turn-based, but the real interesting part is the use of terrain. The layout of the level has as much effect on the outcome of the battle as the strengths of the enemies or the skill of the player. In particular, holding the high ground is very important if either side has ranged fighters. Archers and mages are incredibly effective if they gain a little height, as their attacks gain a great deal of range when shooting at a lower location. Also, they’re harder to hit–if they’re high enough off the ground, an archer’s arrow won’t even be able to reach them.

Using the terrain takes some getting used to. In one of the first levels, your enemy is standing on top of a house throwing rocks down at you. To really face off against him, you have to go around the back and climb some crates on the back of the house to get up there. Until then he’s a constant annoyance, pelting you as you try to fight other enemies.

As each player’s turn comes around, they can move once (the range dependent on their class and the terrain, among other things), and perform an action (such as attacking, casting a spell, or using an item). Use these moves wisely, as that character will be a sitting duck, stuck in one place, until the next turn.

Another strange thing about the game is your ability to hire fighters to join your ranks. Your main character is always involved in every battle, and is the center of the plot, but you can bring along 4 other units to any fight. Any human unit can change character classes between fights, allowing you to customize your little army to a large degree. And as you play the game you can unlock new and unique character classes, each with their own special abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. You unlock these by creating obscure combinations of levelling up other character classes–to get the more interesting classes I needed to look up hints online. I would recommend doing so, because some of the classes are fun enough to make the game totally worth it on their own.

The game is based around a really good skill system. You build up ability points as you fight, which can be applied to different skills for each class. You can get them all in the gradual cheapest first order, or save up for a whopper of a skill. Either way, I like purchased skill based systems like this, they make the experience building into an interesting resource management challenge in themselves.

By far the best class in the game is the Mediator class. He doesn’t have much in the way of offense or defense, but what he does have is the unique ability to talk enemy characters over to your side. This works on both humans and monsters (but not bosses). It’s a great double threat, because not only do you reduce your enemies’ number by one, you also add one to your own group. This is the only way your group can ever number more than 5, so that’s another huge perk. Also, this is the only way you can get monsters on your side. And once you have a couple monsters, they randomly breed and lay eggs, creating new monsters. And for the human initiates, once the fight is over, you can strip them of their valuable equipment and get rid of them. The mediator’s talk skill has a fairly low rate of success, so you’ll want to have a well-rounded party to be able to fight and heal and all that good stuff even if he accomplishes nothing.

Besides the hired hands you get along the way, there are also plot-important characters that join your party. These guys tend to have their own special skills, not held by anyone else, though you never know if the plot is going to kill one of them off or make them leave your party. These guys are the real powerhouses of your group, and you should make good use of them.

When I first started playing this game, I had an idea for experience building that turned out to be a terrible idea. I hired several extra people for my party, and tried to rotate them all in and out of the current party to make them level at equal rates. In other games this would’ve worked fine, but the trouble is that the game-makers decided to increase the challenge level with the overall experience gathered by your party. The monsters are set to keep it challenging if your small party are the only fighters, so I soon learned that the more I tried to increase experience in a well-rounded way, the enemies got tougher at a much higher rate than I was. So my advice is to keep your active party small, and just keep those people around as long as you can.

One thing that really annoyed me in this game is the low success rate for white magic. Imagine you’re in the middle of a tough fight. Your archer is dead. Your knight is severely wounded. It’s your white mage’s turn, and he can either try to cast a cure spell on the knight or cast a life spell on the archer. He starts casting the spell, which takes a while–he stands in place and mumbles for a while. After this interminable wait, he finally casts it, and “Miss”. Well, your archer’s still dead and you’re knight’s soon to follow and your white mage has just wasted a turn. Arg! So I ended up relying mostly on items. Most of the character classes are only able to use items from one square away, which really limits their usefulness, but the alchemist class can throw items for several squares. Items always succeed, as long as they’re successfully administered (that is you don’t try to throw them through a wall or something). And the action occurs instantaneously. But an alchemist isn’t useful for much else, so I like to make one of my special plot-characters into an alchemist. He still keeps his inherent skills, but also has the ability to throw items, so he can be both a killer and a healer, as the situation demands.

Finding this game shouldn’t be difficult. A quick eBay search comes up with many hits, though if you want this particular game you will want to be careful not to get the PSP or Game Boy Advance or DS sequels. By using the following search string I was able to get a list mostly of just this version of the game:
“final fantasy tactics” -advance -rift -“war of lions” -“war of the lions”
I saw it on there for a Buy It Now price as low as $15 with plenty of open bidding going on for other identical items. And there’s always the possibility of getting a ROM for it, though I’ve never dabbled in Playstation emulators so I can’t give any advice on that route.

This game is definitely worth playing if you want an RPG that incorporates more battleground strategies instead of artificial “I stand over here and you stand over there and we’ll take turns” fighting style. Try it out. You won’t regret it. Enjoy!

Review: Tweedlioop by Stanley Schmidt

Tweedlioop,Review written by Frank Dutkiewicz,

The state of our economy has forced many to make hard choices when it comes to spending money on entertainment. If you are one that likes to plow through a new book in a day or two (I generally prefer to take my time), 7.95 for a paperback novel can start to get pricey after awhile. Let me introduce you to the world of the used book.

You can find a good book if you search. Although many can be dated, you might get lucky and find a jewel within the dusty piles of worn covers. The latest, I found on rack inside a truck stop in Indiana, caught my eye because of the name of the author. If you are one that writes you should be familiar with the editor of Analog, Stanley Schmidt. While I know of him, and read plenty stories that he found worthy of the iconic magazine (none of which were mine, Dave’s, or Anthony’s, BTW), I have never had a chance to sample one of his writings. So I put down my two dollars and a bit and dove in.

Tweedlioop begins with a vacationing Bill Nordstrom, camping alone in Alaska while he is trying to get over the loss of his wife and son in a tragic house fire when he is approached by a strange looking squirrel. It refuses his offerings of nuts and chocolates and instead chooses to eat the plastic bag. The odd looking squirrel returns the next day, says the word ‘Tweedlioop’ and prods Bill to follow him further into the forest and leads him to a crashed spaceship. Inside are three small bodies but all larger than Tweedlioop. Bill pieces together that the small critter is just a kid and is asking for his help. After thinking that would mean for him and Tweedlioop, Bill concludes the young alien would be better off left in the wild.

The next morning Bill packs his tent and finds Tweedlioop lying listlessly inside his camp. He doesn’t bat an eye as he leaves him there on the forest floor. His guilty conscience gets the best of him and he returns to see three wolves surrounding Tweedlioop. Bill manages to scoop Tweedlioop away from the indecisive wolves. The wolves follow them and finally attack Bill at a road when a tour bus stops for him.

It is the first instance in many where Bill wonders if he has made the right choice. Along the way he enlists the help of a lawyer named Danni and her nine-year old daughter Laurie. A long trip on the bus and a journey in a pet carrier aboard a plane back to Florida is rough on Tweedlioop and by the time Bill finally gets home the young alien has taken a turn for the worst, forcing Bill to take actions he hasn’t completely thought out and consequences he and Tweedlioop aren’t prepared for.

Tweedlioop is a story written in a time when the Cold War appeared to have no end and the ET craze was at its zenith. I found it curious that in that time space flight was still considered to be a top priority for our country (in reflection it could have been wishful thinking on Mr. Schmidt’s part). Reading this story set in our pasts present brought back a few nostalgic memories for me. Cell phones was a Star Trek fictional pipe dream, the personal computer was in its infancy, and playing a video game meant scooping up your quarters and hanging out at the local arcade. What I also remember was an underlying fear of the government but a bright hope in the future. Today the hope ain’t that bright and the fear of the government isn’t underlying anymore.

The storyline to Tweedlioop is pretty straight forward; lost alien wants to go home and seeks the help of an Earthling (does sound familiar now that you mention it). Despite the similarities with that Steven Spielberg project, Tweedlioop does take a more precarious path than what ET was subjected to. One glaring difference is the characters (with the exception of young Laurie) who are nothing like the ones in the early 80’s screenplay.

The story is seen through Bill Nordstrom’s eyes, an engineer working in the space industry (just a coincidence). Bill has issues with the death of his wife and daughter. Whispers (real and imagined) that he didn’t try to save them the night of the fire haunt him. When he first decides to leave the abandon alien to the hostile wilderness you cannot help but to feel disdain for him. That scene is the first in many that centers on mankind’s selfish desires and a reluctance of sticking our neck out for another. As callous as it seems to us today “not getting involved” was an accepted course of action in that period of our history.

Danni, the widowed lawyer, and her nine-year old daughter, Laurie, are the bright bulbs in this box of low-wattage characters. Danni comes off as the only competent lawyer in America. She easily spots the legal loopholes that spare Tweedlioop from the probing hands of scientists. Young Laurie develops a connection with the juvenile alien. Their friendship becomes a special bond any girl that age would dream of, a pet that can talk in a language only she can understand.

The last major character, President Wilbur Giannelli (would an Italian father really name his son Wilbur?), is a politician that was elected largely on his vision of a future in space. He sees Tweedlioop as a bargaining chip to help further America, and his political futures, best interest.

Tweedlioop, the small marooned alien, is the true draw of the novel. The squirrel like creature is a lot cuter and more convincing as a scared abandoned child on a strange world than the wrinkly, giraffe-neck ET. I never bought into the circumstances on how ET was left behind (come on, would they have really just taken off without him?), but with Tweedlioop I found the eventual revealed reason believable.

While most of the characters in this novel come off as dry, Tweedlioop (the character) is convincing as a scared child left alone on a hostile planet. The main character, Bill, however is difficult to like. He is at times selfish and wimpish. Mostly I would classify him as dense. Fortunately he had Danni’s brilliance to lean on for most of the novel. Laurie’s character is really an extension of the young alien. The two become a pair halfway in and are portrayed as inseparable chums. Giannelli comes off as a lout. He is a poor diplomat, a narrow-minded thinker, and a very bad president. I believe his character was miscast as the Commander-In-Chief. A chief aide to the Pres would have served the role just fine.

It is easy to punch holes into Tweedlioop‘s premise. I can buy that wolves would be curious about the strange smelling creature, and could see them either wanting to keep their distance or attack it out of fear but not both. How the local law enforcement went about seizing Tweedlioop is less convincing to me. It was as if all the lawyers in Naples forgot how to practice law. If a local man had a strange creature of unknown origin in his home wouldn’t an ‘importation of an exotic species’ be the proper charge?

The biggest problem I had with the novel was President Giannelli’s behavior. I would find it hard to believe that the leader of the Free World would be so demanding, unyielding, and adversarial to a people in whom he is unsure of their capabilities and clueless of the consequences in which his rash action may wrought. I would have at least if it wasn’t for the last eight years of the Bush administration. Now I would think it prudent that our government would deserve an answer from the aliens on why they were here. I could also see them asking for an exchange in technological know-how (doesn’t hurt to ask). But once those question were exhausted what’s wrong with asking for diplomatic recognition and perhaps a trade agreement (plastic industry would like that, give a whole new meaning to the snack-size baggy) between the two species? Instead of taking these logical steps, Giannelli turns all Somalian pirate, promising to back down if things get too hot. The UN diplomats act even less juvenile when they learn of events. The entire political world treats Tweedlioop as if he were a diamond ring found on the street and then discovered it belongs to the Queen of England. No ordinary reward will satisfy them at this point for his return.

Ironically, Tweedlioop is not the type of story you would find in Analog. It is hardly the ‘hard sci-fi’ that I am used to reading in their pages. It was clearly written to capitalize on the ET craze (as the review byline from Publisher’s Weekly suggested on the cover). There are two questions on whether this would make a good book to find today. Does it stand up after 23 years? And, is it an enjoyable read?

To the answer the second question, it must have been for me. I plowed right through its pages. I was genuinely curious to know what was going to happen to the little squirrel. The beginning grabbed me and I read entire story in a third of the time I would usually take for a book its size. As far as if it would be relevant in today’s market? Hmmm, I would suggest a few changes if Mr. Schmidt wanted to pitch a reprint. Mostly changing Giannelli’s character as an opportunistic aide with the president’s ear. Another suggestion would be to change that disco-ball cover (yuck). I could point Mr. Schmidt to a few artists that would do something grand for it.

Tweedlioop was a Tor book publication. Its original listed price was 3.95. I paid 2.25. I found it worth the price.