Summer 2007

by Subterranean Press

  AK: What’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened to you?

  PR: Hmmm… I live kind of a strange life. You want to narrow it down for me? Care to ask about a particular subset of strangeness?

  AK: Okay, strangest thing profile: Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever slept?

  PR: I can’t tell the story that would answer this honestly. The statute of limitations hasn’t expired yet. Ask me again in about… 19 months.

  AK: The strangest thing you’ve learned as an author?

  PR: Female Hyenas have a penis. They give birth through it.

  AK: The strangest thing you’ve signed in a book?

  PR: I actually wrote a blog about that. You can read it here.

  AK: The strangest question you’ve ever been asked?

  PR: Normally people write in and ask pretty reasonable questions. When’s book two coming out? Will you sign my copy if I send it to you? Will you read my manuscript? I answer those so often I should really put up an FAQ.

  But there are a handful of… different questions mixed in. So far the oddest one was from a girl who was coming to a family reunion in Wisconsin. She… ah hell. Maybe I’ll just let you see it.

  so i know you are all “famous author” guy who is nominated for a Quill award, which is awesome, but you live in WI too and that is the subject here. I am at a family reunion right now staying in a cabin with like..20 family members 5 minutes outside of Oxford. So i kept seeing signs for Steven’s Point and i couldn’t figure out how i knew that name. then my uncle is talking about how “if you got about 20 minutes (leave room for embellishment) that way it is flat as can be.” anyway then i figured it out and decided to message you.

  do u know of any sporting goods stores near here to get a soccer ball? i know that there is a wal mart supercenter in portage but we had to go there yesterday and i have this issue with going to wal mart too much, as do most people. anyway, i was going out on a limb. i doubt you play many sports, dont be offended

  Yeah. Witness a little moment of my surreal life.

  AK: Hah! Okay, how about the strangest thing you’ve ever done to inspire yourself to write?

  PR: Heh. Another question best answered by the blog I wrote on the subject. I don’t know if this counts at the strangest, but it’s certainly the most recent…http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2007/07/science.html

  AK: Was it a conscious decision to make the chapters so short?

  In general, I just let them be whatever length they needed to be.

  But it was a conscious decision to avoid being long-winded. Yes, I know, my book is over 650 pages. But you’ll notice that very little of that is the classic boggy description and narration that so many fantasy novels get mired in. God bless granddaddy Tolkien, but that’s one piece of his style that I wish people would stop emulating. Yes. The grass lush and inviting. We get it. Move on.

  AK: Your book is available in two different covers. Which is your favorite? What is your favorite cover of another author’s book?

  PR: Hmmm. It’s hard for me to really pick one as a favorite, as I like them both for different reasons.

  In terms of selling the book, this book tends to be double or nothing. People tend to love this cover, or hate it. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. Also, I’ve always worried that it gives the wrong impression of the book. It looks vaguely romancy, and if people read my book looking for a classic fantasy romance, they’re not going to get it.

  You’ve got to admit though. This Kvothe is pretty hot. Also, the artist, Donato, did an incredible job with the detail work. Look at the pegbox of the lute and Kvothe’s hands. They’re gorgeous. I can barely draw a stick-figure, so someone with his amount of talent is effectively a magician to me.

  This one people refer to as “the Gargoyle cover” or “the angry stone man cover.” It’s a safer cover, by which I mean it doesn’t really turn anyone off. No 16 year old boy is going to shy away from it out of fear that someone will tease him for reading it in public.

  Other plusses include the fact that it’s atmospheric, mysterious, and in keeping with the title of the book. It’s also a little more mainstream looking, so people who don’t ordinarily go in for fantasy might be willing to give it a try.

  It also, quite by coincidence, looks more than a little bit like me.

  AK: Which science fascinates you most?

  PR: I don’t think I could pick a favorite. I really dug chemistry in high school. And physics. But whenever I end up getting into something new I find it really interesting. I remember when I had to take Astronomy 101 as a GDR in college. I was pissed, of course, and I considered it a waste of my time.

  But that only lasted for about 20 minutes. As soon as I was in the class I couldn’t help be fascinated. Pretty much everything is interesting once you get into it.

  AK: What kind of a student were you in school?

  PR: It depends. If you’re talking about completing homework and living up to my potential, then I was probably a bad student. But I was interested and polite, and I liked my teachers. I just wasn’t really motivated to impress anyone.

  I had mad scientist tendencies back in high school. Once in Physics we had to create a rube Goldberg machine machine. We were supposed to build a contraption using five or six simple machines. Mine had thirty eight.

  Needless to say, it was a disaster on a grand scale. When it failed for the third time in class I flew into a rage and destroyed it. Apparently the physics teacher still shows the videotape of that to his incoming students.

  AK: Trip “rolls sevens” — do you have a special knack for anything?

  (Besides writing, of course…)

  PR: Oh boy. The things I’m good at I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about in polite company.

  Let me think…. Oh. I have preternatural bargaining skills. I can sell anything to anyone.

  I have also been told on several occasions by several different people that I am the best kisser in the world.

  AK: So, did you not get the memo about never starting your story in a bar?

  PR: Oh please, that’s my most minor offense. If you’re going to take a dig at me, make it a good one. C’mon, I know you have it in you.

  AK: What’s next for you? And will it feature a bar and/or a redhead?

  PR: Are you making me an offer?

  AK: After the kissing comment, I just might. But answer this first: if you could be any superhero, who would you be?

  PR: Hmmm….. Emma Frost? Sexy. Super tough. Mind control. Possibly evil….

  Yeah. I think I’m going to go with Emma.

  Don’t read too much into that.

  Review: Race for the Rocket by Anne KG Murphy

  His Majesty’s Dragon–Naomi Novik–Del Rey

  Glasshouse–Charles Stross–Ace

  Rainbows End–Vernor Vinge–Tor

  Eifelheim–Michael Flynn–Tor

  Blindsight–Peter Watts–Tor

  Reviews by Anne KG Murphy

  It’s July, which means if you haven’t voted for the Hugo awards (and you plan to) you should get a move on–the deadline is July 31. Even for those of us who are not members of this year’s Worldcon (who vote on the Hugos), the list of nominees can make an interesting, if not always completely dependable, recommended reading list. This year’s nominees for Best Novel include a dragonback romp by air and sea (His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik), an interesting contemplation of power and psychology in a time when people and things can be both duplicated and edited (Glasshouse, by Charles Stross), an adventurous exploration of personal and (potentially) international drama as a post-senility poet reawakens in the cyberenhanced world of his granddaughter’s generation just in time to help save the planet from a viral do-gooder (Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge), and two very different alien contact stories: a high-minded moral, intellectual and social alternate history exploratory called Eifelheim by Michael Flynn; and a tension-filled battle between instinctive experience and cognitive analysi
s, the outer and inner space psychodrama that is Blindsight, by Peter Watts.

  In His Majesty’s Dragon, readers will find themselves sharing the frustrations and sometimes exhilarating successes of Temeraire and Captain Will Laurence, two like-minded souls who are thrown together when Temeraire hatches on the deck of Capt. Laurence’s ship and accepts the harness from him, propelling the duty-bound Laurence out of His Majesty’s Navy and into His Majesty’s Aerial Corps. Laurence bucks up under his highly unusual career move, and finds that piloting and caring for his unique and rapidly growing dragon is rewarding in ways he never anticipated.

  Temeraire is an inquisitive and thoughtful fellow, with the impetuousness, passion, and charming ignorance of youth. The mature and disciplined Laurence proves a perfect counterpoint to the young creature. With years of service to Britain under his belt, Laurence is dedicated to defending his country, but he will find his loyalties challenged when it comes to what is expected of himself and Temeraire.

  Set in the time of the Napoleonic wars, Novik’s trilogy (His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War) is alternate history at its most creative and detailed. What if (she asks) there be dragons? Rigged with ropes, guns and crew not unlike a naval ship, in Europe Novik’s dragons serve in the military much as airplanes will serve later in history (though airplanes are perhaps less likely to be boarded mid-battle). The characters and relationships in His Majesty’s Dragon are believable, the story is nicely scripted, and the sense of high-seas adventure has lead many to compare the series favorably to the work of Patrick O’Brian. Well-written and captivating whether describing battles in midair or political intrigue at ground level, this is an outstanding first effort and ought to win Novik the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer (it has already brought her the Locus Award for best first novel).

  As we have come to expect from Charles Stross, Glasshouse is chock full of multiple what-ifs, but the ones that are key to the plot involve memory editing and nanotech assemblers that can manufacture nearly anything given time, mass, and the appropriate program (or original to copy). Such assemblers can be used as transportation gates, passing people from one place to another as information and reassembling them at the other end of the trip, but if those A-gates are corrupted or reprogrammed, people can be transformed in mid-transit. Glasshouse proposes a few interesting voluntary (and involuntary) mental and physical transformations people might experience, along with implications of the misuse of such technology.

  The main character, Robin, has apparently voluntarily wiped most of his memories and is in rehabilitation, knowing little about himself other than that he is very good at dueling and other types of violence. An intriguing four-armed woman named Kay draws him into a role-playing experiment that is supposedly about investigating emergent social structures in a technologically backwards culture, but soon seems to have more sinister motives. In the process they give up their bodies and names, to be placed in body and gender assignments determined by the experimenters. Complexities of mind/body identity, social psychology, conformity and rebellion against cognitive dictatorship make this book heavier than a mere adventure. This is a good thing, but it may not be to everyone’s taste; I found it distinctly slow in the middle, but it picked up my interest again toward the finish.

  Rainbows End considers a similar sort of involuntary mental editing, only in the form of a virus that could leave people vulnerable to suggestion so strong it’s more like compulsion–every marketing executive’s wet dream, and apparently an active experiment of some unknown agent. There is a danger the viral technology could be made to work on everybody–if it does, who will control it, to what end? To find out, an international team of investigators hires an independent cybernaut whose white-rabbit online presence only hints at the power and whimsy of his talents. Circumstantially enmeshed in the situation is the Gu family: Robert Gu, an elder poet who has been cured of his Alzheimer’s and given various youth-restoring treatments, his son and daughter-in-law, who both work in security, and his granddaughter Miri, a teenager who goes to school with a mix of peers that includes Robert and other rejuvenants who are being retrained to the modern world.

  Situated mostly in southern California, Rainbows End is well-written and briskly paced. The technology it highlights is wearable VR delivered and controlled through contact lenses, wired clothing and neural interfaces; the primary theme is self-expression, with a secondary cautionary theme about uploaded knowledge programs and other ways being wired might open people to losing control of themselves. VR-enhanced reality is second nature to the young people in the book, who construct sophisticated multimedia compositions in school and overlay visual jokes for their peers, but Robert Gu and other elders must come to it slowly, initially through awkward interfaces that seem like interactive paper.

  Sound like an unlikely background for international intrigue? Vinge keeps the action moving while he embroils the reader in the interpersonal issues between Robert and his remarkable family and friends, all affected and enabled by various technologies they use. Vinge is up there with the best of them in his seamless integration of imaginative technology with a compelling story. My only regret in the technical arena was how they typeset the person-to-person silent messaging–it was awkward and jarring; it looked like hypertext in a way that I didn’t intuitively internalize like the naturalistic IM systems already in use. Generally, though, the enhanced cyberworld was well done. Particularly well drawn was a battle of competing alternate reality creators, fighting over the future of a University Library doomed to be digitized and shredded, Not Vinge’s best work, but an excellent read.

  Another excellent book, Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim also takes place on Earth, but it speculates in both the near future and in an intriguing history. The time-split story features two communities of scholars and a deep mystery: what has happened to the village of Eifelheim?

  Pastor Dietrich is the pastor at St Catherine’s Church in Oberhochwald, a secluded village in the Black Forest. A scientific man with a haunted past, he once studied among such peers as William of Ochkam. His portion of the story starts in 1348, at Matins, the Commemoration of Sixtus II and his Companions. The countryside is electrified with a great and sudden power, followed by a loud noise and a fire. As the villagers recover from the fire with the help of Dietrich and his Minorite assistant Joachim, there are rumors of watching eyes and unnatural beings abroad in the woods. Dietrich sets out to investigate, trying in vain to assure his flock that something is not unnatural just because you have never seen it before.

  At the “Now” end of the timeline, Sharon Nagy is a theoretical physicist trying to solve the geometries of Janatpur space. Her domestic partner Tom Schwoerin is a cliologist–a mathematical historian. He is working to figure out why there is no modern town in a place where the patterns of history would logically put one. His growing theory is that something happened there to scare people away. Some of his sources suggest demons. Frustrated by a scarcity of information, by chance Tom recruits the librarian Judy Cao to be his research assistant. She discovers that Eifelheim was a gloss for Oberhochwald, and the clues start to come together.

  This book does something that is all too rare; it illustrates how scientists are influenced by the comments and other input of the people and events around them to come to conclusions they would never would have reached on their own. All of the scholars in this book stretch their minds over strange ideas, especially Dietrich, who takes into his community a most bizarre class of men. The Krenken are far from home, struggling to get back before they run out of food that can sustain them. Technologically superior to the men of this time, they need not fear the weapons of the local Lord’s men, but the structure of their society may be threatened by the beliefs of the people to whom they reluctantly turn for shelter as winter arrives. The outer world also threatens to encroach; denunciation from the mother Church looms in the wake of spreading rumors of demons, and there is the approaching plague coming to further terr
orize the populace. Their route home will ultimately be explained by Sharon’s research, but for some will involve a change in their definition of Home.

  I must give kudos to David G. Hartwell for producing the best edited book among the nominees. Eifelheim is the epitome of fine science fiction, based on exquisitely tantalizing physics, a fascinating alien physiognomy and associated culture, an insightful and well-researched grounding in history, a masterful use of language, and equally satisfying suppositions as to the possibilities inherent in man’s reaction to the unknown.

  I cannot say such laudatory things about Blindsight, though it obviously has its fans. Watts’ conceit is that a small pseudoscientific, semi-militant expedition to make contact with an unknown artifact in deep space suspected to be the source of the first alien mission to blitz Earth with (unmanned drone) scouts of its own will be lead by a vampire–a member of a reincarnated race that is as predatory as legend would have it. Jukka Sarasti suffers from the Crucifix Glitch–a weakness to right angles common to all vampires– that is kept in check with regular drug doses but isn’t removed completely because it relates to one of the vampire’s main strengths–an ability to see and think differently from humans. Not that the humans that round out his tiny crew think particularly normally.

  Susan James, the linguistics expert, houses four personalities (“the Gang of Four”) in her partitioned brain. Isaac Szpindel is a biologist, wired into his scientific apparati so deeply his nervous system twitches and his awareness is sometimes not focused in his body at all. Major Amanda Bates and whatever army of drones and other weapons she cares to generate onsite comprises their military arm. And the narrator of it all, Siri Keaton, is a Synthesist, an autistic savant who had half his brain removed and replaced with electronic prosthetics when he was a child. Supposedly he is there to observe and report, which he does with more melodrama than you would ever expect to hear coming out of a lobotomized person whose humanity is questioned by the people around him because of his aberrant lack of emotions and the way he maintains social function through conscious analysis of informational topology instead of instinct or empathy.