Edge of Tomorrow aka All You Need is Kill

We picked up a English trade paperback translation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel being marketed under the title of the film Edge of Tomorrow.  

I reviewed the film Edge of Tomorrow aka Live. Die. Repeat some time ago, and now that I've read the book I thought I'd take the time to muse about both, and their relationship to my novel Bad Dog.  

As I said, the similarities between Bad Dog and the film Edge of Tomorrow are all surface level stuff, with the MacGuffin driving the plot being entirely different.  Alien tachyon technology versus my idea of a holographic multiverse.

For the purposes of this review I shall refer to novel by its original title – All You Need is Kill.

The book is quite short, running in at around 50,000 words, and I managed to read it over the course of Sunday morning.  While there are many small differences between the film and the book, which depending on one's tastes either adds or distracts from the story, in general the plot is the same.  

I thought the translation was very well done, and I'm really nit-picking when I say I noticed a couple of things that I would have used different words for – namely clip for magazine, especially as the word magazine was used a few line later for instance.  The ending of the book is differs from the movie, and this makes it worth reading if you want to see how the author originally intended the story to end. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading All You Need is Kill, it reminded me of science fiction that I read back in the seventies and eighties.  Plot driven action that runs with an idea.  

So if you are into military SF with power armour then this book should hit the spot.

This week I've finished the first out loud read through of Strike Dog and rewrite.

I feel a bit burned out after five days of solid work editing 100,314 words, with 1,072 words trimmed in the process.  I've made some notes about things that I need to go back too.  Mostly to do with duplication of background information.  I plan to do another out loud read through next week, which hopefully will go a lot faster second time round.

So that's it for another week.  See you all on the bounce.

I've Got Friday on my Mind

Which can only mean one thing, write a blog entry.

Things are interesting.  Not being shot at kind of interesting, but I'm going through one of those writer phases.  I'm not sure if it's a power-up to the next level or delusional thinking, as in emotional responses are not a solid basis for rational assessment.

Still I've been working on my writing, and some parts of the process seem to be coming together, because contrary to what people think just because one can write a sentence down on paper doesn't mean anything.  Stories consist of sentences – hard to argue with that – and sentences are grouped into paragraphs, but here's the thing, a story is greater than the sum of its parts.

All novels are in effect magic tricks, as in illusions performed by the writer to convince the reader of the veracity of the stories setting, but stories are not reality.

They're a construct to explore the human need to understand the world we live in.  Gosh that sure sounds pretentious, but we tell each other stories all the time.  Usually they're very small stories, mundane in their scope, and explain our actions to others so that they'll understand that we're (insert meme of choice); so that we don't end up in a conflict with them –  as in appear inconsistent and untrustworthy.  In short we want to feel good about what we do, and have others feel we've done something good too.

Exceptions do occur.

So, I've spent the last week reading my first novel out loud from beginning to end.  That was a thing.  My throat tells me it's a thing.  It was a useful exercise, even though at times it was painful, because reading out loud is slow, and I feel the need for speed.  Most authors will read what they've written out loud, it's one of those tools you get told about, but sitting down and reading a novel from start to finish is quite a task.

Inevitably I ended up revising some parts of the text, and made some notes to action after the read through.  This resulted in a couple of chapters being taken out of the story.  Sounds like quite a big thing.

And in one sense it was.  Three scenes that duplicated parts of the story were merged together.  But other overlapping scenes were kept.  I just moved them to another chapter, so in terms of words lost not such a big thing.  As a result I've started reading out loud my second novel, which due to it being a lot less polished is actually taking longer to do. It's taking longer to revise scenes, and the re-ordering the chapters as a result of how the story flows.

The result is that I have novels on my mind.  Everything else pretty much taking second place to my need to finish what I've written and send them out to be sold.

London Falling & Severed Streets

When I was preparing to write this piece I was going to say and see my review of London Falling, only to find that said review exists only in my imagination.  Well this post is going to transfer my thoughts about reading London Falling and its sequel Severed Streets from the interior of my mind into something that can be read on the internet.  Such is the power of the blog!

A disclaimer.  I vaguely know Paul Cornell, but there again I'm acquainted with a lot of authors, but only because we tend to hang out at the same places; conventions and parties.  It's not some secret members only club or anything like that.  I met Paul at a SF convention.  I saw him on a couple of Dr Who panels, and threw a few questions at him about the Time Lords and the Daleks, which garnered a reply of, "Have you been spying on our writing meetings?"  We've also talked in passing, as well as being on a panel together.  In short he's a likable person.

I've said before that urban fantasy is not my core interest, but I will read books that have interesting premises written in the urban fantasy genre.  We heard Paul read an extract from London Falling at the Olympus 2012 British SF EasterCon, which led us to go and buy a copy.

London Falling is promoted as the first book in the Shadow Police series, and introduces a grimdark London where all is not what it seems.  It's effectively a realistic present day police procedural novel set in an urban fantasy setting.  Overall I quite enjoyed the story, but there were times when the tone of the novel went places that were not very entertaining.  Or to paraphrase my friend Roger said in his review (warning spoilers), the story is full of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to other unpleasant people.

However, I enjoyed the first well enough to want to read the sequel.

Severed Streets starts well enough, delivers a shocking development, and then the middle wallows around until the highly telegraphed plot twist, where it all picks up again, and comes to a reasonably satisfying conclusion.  But Paul Cornell's tendency to fall into describing the nostalgie de la boue does at times overwhelm the joy of reading the story.  My main gripe is that the novel does not deliver what it promised at the end of the London Falling.  Namely what happened to the old guard?  My friend Roger has a review with spoilers here.

On a lighter note, much lighter, we are burning through the last series of Xena: Warrior Princess.  Season five was very good and this one is managing to maintain the quality of the stories.

Writing wise I've been working through Alix's, one of my Beta readers, line edits.  I managed to do just over the first hundred pages before going on holiday to Provence, but only managed to restart work this week, because I became distracted by the controversy surrounding this years Hugo awards.  Looking in my diary tells me that I've edited 40,437 words this week.

So on that note I'm going to finish as I want to finish the edits for Bad Dog today so that I can start working on my Alpha readers feed back of the second draft of Strike Dog.

NB: Edited to include another link so that one can compare and contrast reviews.  Roger reads and reviews a lot of books and is well worth book marking his site.

Also, added as a reflection, this review is way too critical of a good writer. My apologies.

Hugos Where?

And who says that Americans don't do irony?

Reflecting on the 2015 Hugo Awards over the course of the last week I see that my conclusion that ninety percent of what I'll read will never win a Hugo award remains true (that's meant to be a joke or at least like a joke, if not very funny).  While I sympathize with the Anti-Puppies slate, I do think such things are a very blunt tool, which may produce the desired results, but result in unintended consequences.  As an aside, what appears to be a serious analysis of the numbers can be found here.  My view remains pretty much the same, as I prefer de-escalation of conflicts rather than escalation.  Arguably research and history supports the former rather than the latter.

From my perspective I was disappointed that the Edge of Tomorrow aka Live. Die. Repeat didn't win the Hugo for best film.  I thought it was by far the best SF movie of the year, though I would acknowledge in my heart that Captain America: The Winter Soldier was more likely to win.  I was surprised to see Guardians of the Galaxy win, given it was a Sad Puppy slate nominee.  What this means is anyone's guess.  Mine would be that no one who is heavily invested in the Worldcon and the Hugos has any real interest in films, or people figure that the studios don't care if a film wins the Hugo.  Take your pick.

I was saddened to see my friend Ken Burnside's work The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF getting burnt by the Anti-Puppy slate.  Likewise the editors going down too, but recognize that YMMV, and probably does where this is concerned.

However, Orphan Black: By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried, winning a Hugo was nice.  I thought the series should have won a Hugo last year, so the unintended consequences of the Sad Puppies resulting in an award for this show was a welcome outcome.

The only other thing I have to say is that as a British person I find some of the things I'm reading in the aftermath rather puzzling.  For instance, the stuff being said about Terry Pratchett that only make sense if you think that the world revolves around America, which for me shows how much the Worldcon is at heart an American institution rather than something representing World SF.

The best thing I've read about what came out of this whole debacle is George R. R. Martin's Hugo Losers party.  Rock on George.  Him and Eric Flint, have impressed me throughout by just being plain professional.

A Week in Provence

We've just got back from our first holiday abroad in nine years.  We had a wonderful time paddling in the swimming pool, catching some rays and becoming acquainted with new friends – seen above.  Susan is still working on the other pictures she took, and I imagine will post them on Facebook in due course.

We traveled by Eurostar there and back, managing to avoid any unpleasantness with people waving Kalashnikov's around.  Despite having comfortable seats, and not doing much, apart from reading, eating and drinking, the journey was quite tiring.  As you can imagine I had a lot of emails to catch up with when we got back, having not logged onto a computer for ten days.

Provence, apart from the first day's thunderstorm, was sunny.   I even caught the sun a bit.  Since our return to London we've had unpredictable weather, with sun one day, rain the next.  Such is the joy of living in Britain.

In the Groove Five by Five

The title says it all; though hopefully I won't suffer the fate of the Colonial Marines.  I"m back from a sunny weekend in Brighton having caught the sun and everything to prove it.  We went down to celebrate my best friend Alix's birthday, which by good fortune or happenstance is the same day as my partner's.  So lots of celebrations and drinking all round – Pimm's was quaffed in large volumes.  Also got to see friends, and my godson and his sister.  So all good.

On the Sunday Alix gave me beta reader's feedback on my novel, which was most appreciated as she had put an awful lot of hard work into doing it.  Very critical, but managing to be also very constructive, leaving me feeling more confident in myself.  I've been having a lot of doubts about my ability to write an interesting story over recent months, and the discussion we had put things into perspective.

So, sitting next to me is a print out of Bad Dog with detail corrections, questions and annotations for me to work through.  I feel if this is not the end, then it must surely be the beginning of the end?

Currently I'm about halfway through redoing all the call signs and phonetic shorthand revisions, having edited 43,969 words this week.  My plan is to finish this round of edits first and then start working on incorporating Alix's edits afterwards.  So I'm going to be a very busy person indeed.

So yee-haw, and see you all on the other side.

Pluto & Reflections – WIP: 1st Aug 2015

If Pluto remained classified as a planet then these other eight worlds would have to be planets too, and there could be another thirty or forty worlds as yet undiscovered.

The last week has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride for me.  I started off at the bottom in the pit of despair (cue Mel Smith doing raspy voice) of facing another week of editing Strike Dog.  As I write this I record that I managed to edit 29,294 words, from eleven chapters, and managed to my usual couple of blogs that came to just under 700 words.  So the week ends on a high.  What a rush.  Could have done without the low though.

I did get a bit distracted by having some pieces of the puzzle of my fourth novel in the Bad Dog series click into place.  So I spent some time making notes and pulling information from my universe bible into what had been mostly a blank Scrivener document with the title Red Dogs.  As always I should add that these are working titles, who knows what the stories will be called when/if published?

Moving on I want to wade into the debate on whether Pluto is a planet or not.

I'm old, so for me Pluto has been a planet all my life and it therefore feels wrong to reclassify it as a dwarf-planet or Plutoid/Plutinoid.  However, when one looks at the evidence behind the decision to do so I can see why it was done.  The first picture explains where we are and what we know about Trans-Neptunian worlds.

However, what I find most intriguing, and an order of magnitude more important than the arguments over Pluto's status as a planet is shown in the picture above.  Pluto forms a binary system with Charon.  Unlike the Earth and Luna, where the orbit that both rotate around lies within the diameter of our planet.  Whereas the Pluto and Charon orbit around a barycenter with the other moons making Pluto unique within our Solar system.

This discovery I think more than makes up for any sentimental reasons for calling Pluto a planet.  Instead it is its own dwarf-binary system.  How awesome is that?