Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Nobel prize in literature this year, and we’re ecstatic.
Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian
Why?
Well, the reason is that some people think that genre fiction is somehow less than literary, as if the injection of a fantastical or a technological element somehow lessens the impact of a perfect story.
Ishiguro, like Heinlein before him with Stranger In A Strange Land, has proven that you can talk about love, you can talk about science fiction, you can talk about mortality and make it shine.
What I really like about him is a tidbit of a belief that I have injected into my own stories, this quote below:
Like the saying goes, history is written by the victors. But history is rewritten every day, in every tiny event, in any major revelation. Steve Jobs was said to ignore facts that didn’t match his beliefs.
And people, when they tell themselves that something happened a certain way, they alter reality for themselves. Because it’s impossible to be truly objective, you can only be subjective and hope for the best.
The God Complex Universe is a warped version of events, a splintered timeline branching out from 2009, in which people have told themselves how certain events happened and have affected the future.
And when a powerful billionaire tells himself that something happened a certain way, everybody bends to his will eventually.
As for Kazuo Ishiguro, we can state for certain that he did it by himself, he won the Nobel prize fair and square. No Muses were dispatched.
Psyche was born so beautiful that she was worshipped as a new incarnation of Venus, the goddess of love. But human lovers were too intimidated to approach her, and Apollo recommended her father abandon her on a crag where she would marry “a cruel and savage, serpent-like winged evil.”
It evolved into modern storytelling.
But Psyche’s story ended up being much more interesting. Brendan Pelsue shares the myth of Cupid and Psyche in this excellent video from TED-ed:
You might not have known his actions until only yesterday when the media picked up the story, but he has been a legend all my life. He has been dead since May but unfortunately we only learned about it yesterday.
Petrov didn’t blindly follow orders. Petrov used his brain. Be like Petrov.
Stanislav Petrov was the officer in place back in 1983, during the Cold War. He had an early-warning system in front of him, cutting edge at the time, and a button.
Alarms blared in his face, the system showed that an attack was coming at his beloved motherland. He had no reason to disbelieve the system.
He had orders, specific ones: If the alarm blares, press the button.
Retaliate.
Start a nuclear war.
For some reason, it didn’t make sense. The data was clearly there, there were nuclear missiles incoming and he had seconds to decide.
It just didn’t sit well with his gut.
So he didn’t press the button.
Disregarding his orders, disobeying his superiors, he risked becoming a traitor to his country because he felt that THIS WAS STUPID.
So he let the minutes pass.
And the missiles did not hit.
The man’s story is as simple as it is important. I have always been inspired by his actions that day. Imagine what would have happened if another man had been assigned that day. Imagine if the incredibly stupid status of Mutually Assured Destruction had taken place.
Imagine the world we would be living in right now, if saner heads hadn’t prevailed.
Yes, we would be alive. Contrary to what movies portray, it’s not easy to wipe out humanity. We’re like cockroaches in that regard. But what kind of life would it be? With half the world contaminated by radiation, with mutated stillborns and deadly fruit and meat?
Imagine that for a moment. Thank Petrov for the pretty little world you live in right now.
I’ve always had his story in the back of my mind. That monumental decision, that button. Sure, the button probably had a cap on and a keycard and some convoluted security protocols with calling the superiors, but the truth was that the assigned officer had the authorization to press it and fire the nuclear missiles. And being the science fiction writer that I am, I of course always wondered what the worst case scenario might be.
So I wrote it down. The series of ‘Press Any Key’ are zany scenarios of people who foolishly did press the button and faced the consequences.
Patronage. Just like the practice of old, we’ve resurrected the model into a digital mold, more fitting to the age.
I’m new to this. Be gentle.
Micropatronage, having a bunch of regular people pitching in small amounts instead of one wealthy patron, is being successful with plenty of examples.
What I had was a PILE of story ideas sitting on my projects folder. Some have merit, some are simply the butt of a joke. Others are pretty damn brilliant, I might say.
I took all that and decided to squeeze out at least one short story per month. That way, I can see the works-in-progress slowly thinning down, I can test them with real people and real readers, and see which one’s a winner and which one’s a dud.
I’ve been doing that already with the Epic Poets, but to be honest, I firmly believe in putting one’s money where one’s mouth is. Feedback from fans is excellent, but feedback from people who have paid a dollar carries much more weight.
Also, I have plenty of ideas that fall into fantasy or urban fantasy. At some point, as I burn through the sci-fi ones, I’ll eventually work on those too. Having patrons will provide a steady and verifiable metric that my output will be worth the time invested. I’m bound to change a lot of this on my Patreon page, I just threw one up quickly.
There’s a short story waiting for you right now, called “Life Coach.”
So, click the orange button to get a steady flow of speculative fiction short stories. I’m your story-dealer. Be patronizing. Or just share the post with your friends.
Audible made a nice gesture for the people in Houston, namely removing all cost for 3 months for the afflicted areas.
Audiobooks for everyone!
My colleagues at Audible, ACX, and I watched the terrible news about Hurricane Harvey with the same sense of “What can we do to help?” that so many others had. We’ve noted publishers making books available to schools, libraries and shelters in the area and applaud their efforts.
We wanted you to know that we’ve contacted the tens of thousands of Audible members in the greater Houston area to let them know their memberships are on Audible for the next three months and that they won’t be billed during this time. Our hope is that this makes life a little bit easier for our customers who are impacted by Harvey.
We did something similar after Hurricane Katrina and try to extend the same spirit of “do the right thing” in working with school kids in Newark (more on that soon). We won’t be billing our Houston-area members for their audio over the next three months. We’ve already gotten a few notes from members in Houston who are grateful for our offer. Let’s hope that listening to some high quality audio may brighten a bleak situation for some people.
Sincerely, Beth Beth Anderson EVP & Publisher Audible, Inc.
So, hoping it all gets better. Head over to our Audiobooks page and pick something if you’re in Houston.
No, wait! Half our stories are disaster/tragedy plots. Why would somebody want to read them in that situation?
Teaser Chapter: Moirai – Brains operating @ 12 times normal human speed
Two weeks ago:
It was a secure white room, in a nondescript basement owned by Moiragetis Holdings. The three women were perched upon their marble pedestals, mumbling and threading the flow of information.
The women, dressed in white, seemed aged beyond their years. Their thin hair barely flowed, their frail hands moving, twitching, as if working the air with purpose.
Bundles of flashing and glowing optic fibres were feeding into their backs, directly into their spine. They connected them to the server at the room below, an unlisted supercomputer with a singular purpose.
Their eyes were glazed white, for they could not see in the conventional sense. Their optic nerves had been claimed by the stream of data. In front of their eyes, it was as if the internet was the Earth’s seas and rivers, and you had struck a blow in the rockface and made a marvellous shower erupt, the rays of the sun making rainbows in the mist. It was like that, each second of each day, for the three Moirai.
Klotho, to weave the thread of data.
Lachesis, to measure the thread and assign it to its proper owner,
And Atropos, to cut the thread at its proper place.
For data was fate and fate was data. For if one person or three could see the twists and turns of fate, they could see the immediate future and seeing the future meant seizing it. Snatching it out of the infinite possibilities and probabilities in the quantum foam of the universe and forcing it to gel into existence, an Observer making electrons decide on molecular trajectories by the mere push of his gaze.
There was one misunderstanding, though.
Fate was not tailored to a person, as it was commonly believed. No. Fate was a given constant, only the person it was assigned to was the thing to be decided.
Take the Twelve Labors of Hercules, for example. One might think that Fate came with the life of the person itself, the demigod, despised by Hera and forced to endure endless tragedies. In truth, the Fate of Hercules was a constant, and it happened to befall upon the poor man. Like a story looking for its protagonist.
“Sister?” Klotho wheezed.
“Yes, my dear?” Lachesis replied in the same rasping whisper.
“Take note of this particular thread of Fate,” Klotho said and passed the data on to her left.
“Oh, my, what a nasty one this is!” Lachesis rasped and measured the thread of data.
Klotho turned her cataract eyes to her sister, watching with interest as she worked the thread. “To whom shall we assign this, Sister?”
“Give it to me,” snapped Atropos, the nastiest and oldest sister, as she snatched the thread from them. “Yes,” she said with delight as she cut the thread. “Yes, yes, yes.” She picked up another thread of data from the folds of her white dress, it seemed as if she was saving it for a special occasion. She spun and weaved the smaller thread to the original one, matching twists and making ends disappear. It was an expert’s work.
The younger sisters turned to her side, dreading to interfere. A woman’s face showed up in the shower of Augmented Reality they saw, along with every bit of data about her. Every keystroke she ever pushed, every step she ever took, every frame of video she ever watched and was in. Her life, digitised. They gasped. “Can she endure it?” the two sisters said in unison.
Many of you have used Instafreebie as a way to discover new authors and book series to read.
Now, they have announced a phone app that honestly works really well.
The great thing about it is that it lets you load forgotten books you may have claimed.
The second best thing about it is that you don’t need to sideload files and mess with technical stuff, the app handles the loading itself. (In Android for example, it places the book directly into your Google Books folder for easy access.)
Check your email for the code, like the picture below
Copy/paste the code into the IF app
Enjoy all your claimed catalogue!
At the bottom of your claimed book from Instafreebie you’ll find a code.
The process is quite easy, the app is clean and fast, and the reading experience is the same as you’d expect from any other e-reading app. It may be missing a few features but it makes up for it in ease and functionality.
I’m about to share the bestreview I’ve ever got. Caron at Diminishing Thoughts blog was kind enough to read and review my book, “Crying Over Spilt Light.”
Android 3.0 by razzicr7
And now, get this:
It’s a 2starreview.
Why am I happy about a 2starreview, you might ask if you have your brains still attached to your body? Because, here are some quotes:
Thing is though, as annoyed as the layout of this book made me, I can’t say I hated it, because I didn’t.
I’m glad I waited a while to write this review because I was so pissed off and I honestly have no idea why.
But as I said, I didn’t hate it but the plot was not something I enjoyed. I continued reading because the author’s writing was amazing. I’m actually in a state of awe over how much I loved the writing.
I know that this review was basically me contradicting myself the entire time but my brain is still in shambles over this dang book.
And the absolute best:
I’ve come to realise whilst reading this novella that I do not like androids. I seem to have developed a deep dislike for them and probably won’t be picking up another book that features them ever again.
Not exactly what I intended, but I’ll take it! 🙂 I’m sorry Caron for ruining androids for you forever. I better put a warning label on it.
Last week we’ve had a rare partial Lunar eclipse that was red. Reddish. Quite a unique spectacle.
The copper-coloured moon rises over the Temple of Poseidon, Greece. Image Credit REUTERS
The eclipse was visible from Asia to Europe, sometimes appearing red in colour as the Sun’s rays shined on its surface.
The phenomenon happens when Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon – casting the Earth’s shadow on the Moon and obscuring it in darkness.
When only a small part of the Moon is obscured, the remaining rays of Sun can light it up a bright red-orange – the same refraction effect that makes a sunset look red.
