Just a quick update. I’ll be at CoSine 2015 in Colorado Springs this coming weekend. The convention will be held at the Hotel Elegante and it runs 23-25 January. There’s a lot going on for a relatively small convention, so if you’re in the area, I recommend checking it out.
I’m excited for this convention because it has a good guest line-up and it looks like I’ll be on several interesting panels. Friday night I’ll be on Applying Modern Morals to Speculative Fiction with Connie Willis, Saturday at 1 pm I’ll be on Repercussions of Magic with Sarah Hoyt followed by Female Characters in F&SF at 4pm, and then Sunday at 2pm I’ll be on Research for Fiction Writers. I think they’ll all be fun panels.
I’ll also be at the author signing on Saturday from around 5pm to 7pm both to sign books and if anyone wants to get paperback copies, I’ll have a few extra on me.
I’ll preface this by saying that Interstellar is the best movie of 2014 that I nearly didn’t see. Why did I nearly decide to discount it? Well, the trailers did a terrible job of telling me what the movie was about. The trailers made it out (with me reading between the lines) that the movie was about how terrible mankind was that we had destroyed our only home and had to go to space to survive. Heavy on a message of doom and gloom and without any real ounce of hope, with the thought being we were destined to repeat the process as celestial locusts. This was not the type of movie I wanted to watch. Luckily, it wasn’t the movie I got to see.
You see, Interstellar is nothing less than a movie about discovery, adventure, and exploration. The crew that goes to the stars in this movie are people chosen to do that most dangerous exercise: go someplace new and come back to tell everyone all about it. They are also the last, best hope for humanity’s survival, so no pressure. The movie has a slow, building pace where weight is added to every decision and the protagonists are struggling against that most certain enemy: time.
The science of the movie is excellent as well. Yes, there are liberties taken, but there are also elements and plot twists taken from science and enough ‘what if’ that any science nerds will probably be on the edge of their seats. Visit a planet in close orbit around a black hole and have time dilation wipe out twenty three years in an hour. Also, get to see the tidal effects upon that lovely ocean planet, and that the woman sent ahead ten years ago died only minutes before your arrival, and just right after her own arrival. Playing with time is something this movie does incredibly well, along with hints and peeks not only at the movie’s plot, but also at the great potential to be found in humanity.
Some of the best lines in the movie are about human nature and nature itself. At one point, the characters in space argue about what they might find being more or less dangerous than what they bring with them. Later on, they are both proven correct when one man is killed by the waves on the first planet they find and another is killed by a human scout sent ahead, who was willing to do anything necessary to ensure his own survival, even if it meant dooming billions of people back on Earth. The movie manages to capture the stark beauty of space, with apparently scientifically accurate depictions of both black holes and wormholes (see this interesting article).
And too, this movie does very well in capturing the spirit of exploration. The characters pause in wonder at the sights, caught up in the wonder and excitement of doing and seeing new things, and while they’ll take the time to mention the why or the how, that doesn’t rob the moment of it’s beauty. The characters are very much explorers, having little idea of what they’re going to discover, building upon what they learn and finding ways to use that knowledge to survive. They are forced to make decisions based off of their supplies and equipment as well as their limited amount of time. The weight of those decisions is upon them all and each choice they make is one that comes with a cost.
The movie does have its faults, I’ll admit, and several of them are in the plot-driven variety. The voyage to the wormhole takes a meager two months, which is incredibly impressive given chemical-powered rockets. My assumption was that they used a nuclear powered drive and just didn’t want to discuss it in the movie. The ‘blight’ that seems to be affecting the crops is more of a mysterious force than anything else, though depictions of it as breathing nitrogen suggests either a very odd metabolism or just hand-wavium. Why this terrible stuff doesn’t follow the evacuees from Earth is another question I asked myself. Contamination is sort of a given for colonization and transportation. I mean, we can’t even stop rats from getting to remote islands, how can we stop an apparent super-microorganism that has adapted to attack all manner of food crops? Also, what did people eat if it killed everything else while they were waiting for their star ships over fifty-plus years?
What the movie does very well is to get it’s point and message across with painful brutality. The ‘teacher’ at the beginning criticizing the pilot about believing in the moon landings. The quotes: “Man was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.” and “We used to look up and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.” These are statements that paint a bleak (and unfortunately accurate) picture. We don’t look up at the stars with hope. Too many people are far more concerned with ‘fixing’ problems here rather than expanding out there. There will come a day that we are forced to choose between staying here and dying and going out to the stars and surviving.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I highly recommend it. It’s a great movie, with gorgeous effects, a powerful theme, and a spirit of wonder that still gets me excited thinking about it.
Star Citizen isn’t even past the alpha stage yet, but it already looks incredible.
As I said in my last post, space simulation games, such as X Wing, Wing Commander, and Freelancer, have basically been a thing of the past. RPGs such as Mass Effect or MMORPGs like Eve Online or Star Wars The Old Republic dabble a bit in this area, but these oftentimes come back to character skills rather than a player’s ability to fly. Up until fairly recently, big developers like EA didn’t want to produce games for what was seen as a ‘niche market.’
That all changed with Kickstarter, which has changed the paradigm for a lot of things. Chris Roberts, creator of the Wing Commander and Freelancer games, posted that he wanted to get a few million dollars and produce a modern space fighter sim game. The overwhelming response brought in over 17 million dollars. At this point, they are nearing seventy million dollars of funding from around half a million people, many of whom have access to the game as it currently exists in development. Other games, like Elite Dangerous, have been similarly funded and are going live.
What this means, in a lot of ways, is that the big developers were wrong… or at least, not entirely right. Star Citizen is an incredibly ambitious game design, which will feature First Person Shooting, Space Exploration, Mining, Combat, and a fully interactive in-game economy. All of this will be controlled by players, not their characters, but through actual player skill. The physics are, while not one hundred percent accurate, include inertia, acceleration and G-forces. A player in this game could fly up next to another ship, jump out an airlock, board the other vessel, and fight in first person mode, while a space combat occurs outside. The game isn’t even out yet and many of its detractors say that it never will be… yet I think it’s a sign that we want more, demand more, than the slow, incremental improvement (such as World of Warcraft getting new character make-overs… yay) of the same games and types of games that have been popular.
I think it’s also a sign that we humans still dream of travel into space and we want to be as close to the action as possible. If we can’t go out, we want as accurate a simulation of that as we can get. The great thing about games like Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous, is that they’ll inspire a next generation, not just with the excitement of ‘being there’ and doing things themselves, but with the idea that getting into space is something that we should put a bit more effort into… if only so that their children can experience it first-hand rather than through a computer game.
Going up against a Star Destroyer in a snub fighter, what’s not to like about X Wing?
I still remember the first time I bought X wing. I was in high school at the time. I spent $40 at the time, was so excited by the idea, couldn’t wait to get it home and hop in the cockpit of my very own spaceship.
Of course, I didn’t know much about computers and discovered I’d bought a mac version of the software, which I couldn’t then exchange (store wouldn’t allow exchanges of computer software). Money wasted, in a lot of ways.
But the dream lived on, and when I saved up, I got a version of Tie Fighter that worked, complete with a joystick and I settled down to play. Even at the time, I knew it wasn’t a very good simulation for actual space combat. Ships moved at WWII aircraft speeds (sometimes WWI), the graphics were great for their time (but very dated now), the physics were completely inaccurate, and the overall gameplay was relatively simple and linear compared to modern games.
What the game did do, however, was tell a great story, give challenging scenarios that required skills, thought, and even tactics. This further evolved with the follow on game a few years later with X Wing Alliance, which updated the graphics and allowed the player to play through a fun campaign, as well as evolving the multiplayer a bit more and allow crafting of scenarios.
What did I get from these games? Well, they let you live out some of the most exciting aspects of the Star Wars universe, putting yourself in the pilot of a tiny ship and pitting your skills against not only the computer, but other people. They were tremendously fun, but they also were a key aspect of inspiration to me. They opened up a section of the Star Wars universe that was, until then, sort of vague and abstract. You could not only see what it was like to be in a military unit in this universe, but you could see how the flight mechanics, technology, and tactics could unfold. You could witness the awesome firepower of a Star Destroyer and also work together as a team to take one down using outdated snub fighters and hot-shot piloting.
I still maintain that a lot of modern games lack that same spark. Games like Mass Effect and Eve Online are RPGs, where it is the skill of the character rather than the player that determines an outcome. This is fine, in many ways, but it also somewhat distances the player from his accomplishments. With an RPG, you can ‘build’ a character to accomplish tasks. While you might take some pride in taking down a ship or discovering some new planet, you aren’t the one doing it… your character is. At most, you have skill in using the character’s abilities… which isn’t the same thing at all.
With simulator games like X Wing and it’s follow-ons, the player has a direct connection to their accomplishments. I think that brings a whole new level of excitement to the game. In many ways, getting into space behind a joystick is the pinnacle of my dreams… and doing so as me versus a character is far better. Other games, like Freelancer also explored and expanded on the groundwork, adding more options, entire worlds, star systems, and other mythologies as well as a bit more accuracy in physics and technology. They still have a WWII fighter feel, but they have entire star systems to explore and discover, with options to trade, explore, defend, and pirate.
These games, in many ways, allowed their player base to live out their dreams of reaching the stars, if only in a limited sense, in a way that RPGs can’t do, in a physical, exciting fashion that brings the risks and rewards of space to the player. I’ll gladly admit that those old space simulation games inspired me with ideas and possibilities, and in many ways were responsible for keeping my excitement over space travel alive. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be where I am now if not for the excitement that these games gave me in my youth. Unfortunately, these types of games became less and less common in the last decade, with most of the focus going to First Person Shooter games, sports games, or RPGs/MMORPGs. Space fighter simulations basically vanished, especially as big developers, like EA, consolidated a lot of the gaming companies and set about producing incrementally improved games based off their big sellers.
Check back soon for my next post: Computer Games: Modern Space Simulations.
If you’re looking for some books to read over the holidays, here’s some recommendations, either books I’ll be reading or books I think are definitely worth the read. If you’re like me and you already have a huge backlog of books to read (and stuff to write as well), then you can add these to the pile.
When young David moves into his new home, he decided that it would be more fun to go exploring the mountains around him, rather than unpack. When he reaches the summit of the mountain, he is met by a phoenix. After getting over their initial fright, they become good friends, and the phoenix decides to show him the magical wonders of his world. During their adventures there are many narrow escapes!
The next one is another fun book that I’m looking forward to reading:
NEW ENTRY IN THE BEST-SELLING BOUNDARY SERIES. Stranded humans must adapt alien technology to survive on a dangerous planet.
Lost in the dark, half a year into their journey to the colony world of Tantalus, Sakura Kimei, her family, and her best friend, the alien “Bemmie” nicknamed Whips, are torn from the safety of their colony ship. In a crippled lifeboat, they had one chance to find a habitable world. But even then, they would find that their apparent salvation was a world of a thousand secrets
If you’re not feeling the holiday spirit or else you just feel like the holiday shoppers are hordes of mindless zombies, this book (and series) is probably for you:
BOOK 4 AND CONCLUSION OF THE BLACK TIDE RISING SERIES FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR. Sequel to Islands of Rage and Hope, To Sail a Darkling Sea, and Under a Graveyard Sky. A hardened group of survivors fights back against a zombie plague that has brought down civilization.
With the world consumed by a devastating plague that drives humans violently insane, what was once a band of desperate survivors bobbing on a dark Atlantic ocean has now become Wolf Squadron, the only hope for the salvation of the human race. Banding together with what remains of the U.S. Navy, Wolf Squadron, and its leader Steve Smith, not only plans to survive—he plans to retake the mainland from the infected, starting with North America.
Smith’s teenage daughters have become zombie hunters of unparalleled skill, both at land and on the sea, and they may hold the key to the rebirth of civilization on a devastated plane
And if you’re looking for something big to keep you occupied, I recommend my book Echo of the High Kings:
In Eoriel, the High Kings are legend: rulers who once stood against the darkness and ruled the world for two thousand turns of peace and prosperity. In the long turns since their fall during the Sundering, Eoriel’s civilization has faded. Dark men and darker beings have torn down and destroyed the old works. While some have held out against the grind of history, other places have been reduced to primitive tribes of savages, worshiping dark spirits and demons as their gods. Yet a spark of hope remains. Some still believe in the old legends, some still fight to restore the old ways, and some will stand against the darkness, in an echo of the High Kings.
Well, it’s the final month of 2014, and with it, I’m working hard on multiple fronts. I’m editing some works for submission to a traditional publisher, writing Echo of the High King’s sequel, Wrath of the Usurper, and outlining and preparing to write the next installment of the Renegades and Shadow Space Chronicles books.
In addition, I’m finishing out my last month in active duty in the US Army. As you can imagine, that’s a big change for my family. What it should mean for my readers is that I’ll have more time to write. What it means for me is finding a new day job and all the stress that goes with that.
Wrapping things up, I hope to have Wrath of the Usurper finished by early next month and move on to writing the Renegades and Shadow Space books. Oh, as a side note, if you plan to buy gifts for the holidays on Amazon, please use the links from my page. I get a small amount in advertising fees each time you make a purchase. Thanks for reading and have a happy holiday season!
The Fallen Race Book I of The Shadow Space Chronicles
There’s a new review up for The Fallen Race from Planetary Defense Command. He reviewed the audio version. Check it out, and be sure to check out some of his other reviews!
Baron Lucius Giovanni, Captain of the battleship War Shrike, finds himself without a home or nation, his ship heavily damaged, and crew in bad shape. The odds against their personal survival are slim. The time of humanity has come to a close. The great nations have all fallen, either to the encroaching alien threats or to internal fighting and civil war. The aliens who seek to supplant humanity, however, have not taken one thing into account: Lucius Giovanni. He and his crew will not give up – not while they still draw breath. If this is to be the fall of humanity, then the crew of the War Shrike will go down fighting…and in the heat of that fight, they may just light a new fire for humanity….
The Fallen Race is available from Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and Kobo. If you’ve already read The Fallen Race, be sure to check out its sequel, The Shattered Empire.
Big Hero 6 caught my attention with its first trailer. I don’t normally find myself laughing hysterically at a movie trailer. This movie managed that and the combination of dry humor and silliness seemed like the perfect choice on an otherwise dreary weekend. They did a great job with the trailer, which spread its appeal to both kids and adults. Unfortunately, the trailer probably wasn’t targeted very well.
Let me say this: Big Hero 6 is a great kid’s movie. It has excellent characterization, wonderful visuals, and good moral lessons and choices for kids to enjoy. That said, for an adult, there’s just not much depth. The humor is good, except that they showed the best jokes/gags in the trailer. The story as a whole is a bit too predictable, with the big plot reveals being easily foreseen and the character development being aimed more at young adults than anyone who has already gone through puberty. The whole movie, also, feels vaguely reminiscent of How to Tame Your Dragon.
That said, the characterization and story are well done, the visuals are fantastic. For a kid this movie has everything. The story is engaging, a revenge story where the hero must come to grips with his own emotions and chose justice or revenge. It teaches the importance of responsibility and the potential for redemption. I very much recommend it, especially if you have kids.
I’m working steadily through Book II of the Eoriel Saga, Wrath of the Usurper. Got to say, all in all, I’m very pleased with the sales for The Shattered Empire, it’s back on the top 100 for Military Science Fiction. If you liked it, please recommend it to your friends or write a review. Heck, if you didn’t like it, please write a review. Reviews help authors in a number of ways, not least of which by providing some feedback.
What else am I working on this month? Well, it is national write a novel month. If an estimated 180k novel isn’t enough to work on, I’m also trying to complete the YA SF novel I was working on. We’ll see how that progresses. I’m also in talks with Henchman Press to possibly deliver a space opera novel to them in an unspecified period of time. That’s enough on my plate, don’t you think?
Well, that’s all for now. Stay tuned for additional updates!
Jeeze, not a lot of recent posts here. I’m kind of behind, but I’m working through Wrath of the Usurper while keeping a teething baby entertained and working a day job, so I guess I’m doing alright.
Thanks everyone who supported The Shattered Empire! It’s done very well. If you purchased a copy, please post a review. If you didn’t, check it out and see if it’s your thing. Right now it’s on the top 100 for Space Opera on Amazon in Germany and Australia, which is good. It peaked in the US around the top 70 in Military SF. If you liked it, please tell your friends.
I’m starting production of The Shattered Empire’s audiobook, which should be available before the end of the year. Thanks everyone for reading and we’ll now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.
Kal Spriggs 