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Boosting the Signal: Crucible, by T.D. Wilson

Meanwhile, post #2 of today’s Carina Press doubleheader on Boosting the Signal is for the SF/F lovers among you! T.D. Wilson’s second book in his Empherium Chronicles series has dropped, and with it, he offers up this piece on how one of his alien characters rises to a noble goal: opposing the destruction of new human friends and their civilization. Check it out.

Crucible

Humans. They are a fascinating species whose lives are entangled in unexplainable drama and contradictions. The ones who arrived on this planet they call Cygni 4 are full of passion and the desire for adventure, often at great risk. Yet they are fragile creatures. Much like the delicate crystals fashioned for each new life in a Cilik’ti birthing, their bodies cannot sustain their structure under great physical stress.

The great invasion against the humans initiated by the Chi’tan, the leaders of the Shi Council, and their allies was a testament to how little the Shi understand humans. This one has studied much of that conflict. Human death tolls were in the multitudes beyond egregious and still they found the will to fight on. Despite the lauding of great victories by the Chi’tan, those lives were extinguished without honor. The trophies of conquest brought home to display in front of the Shi council were hollow and worthless.

The N’lan, this one’s Shi, was not a part of the conflict and stood opposed to the idea that any Shi should annihilate a species based on presumption of a threat. The human colonists on this planet knew nothing of the Shi, until Captain Hood and his ship arrived. Even after the colonists’ accidental discovery of this one’s observation cave in the canyon, this one was not feared or shunned. The colonists embraced the opportunity to study and learn. This one’s mission on this world was the same—to listen, to observe and to understand.

In the quiet darkness of the cave, this one could hear the thoughts of the colonists nearby. Through concentration, their feelings and surface thoughts became clear, especially those from Commander Jillian Howard. This one has spent much time with this female. The humans speak of a bond called friendship, a sense of mutual trust and admiration. This one has finally understood, but it has already been put to the test. This one does not blame Captain Hood. His revelation of her younger sibling’s death during the invasion of the human’s system was harsh, but she would have discovered soon anyway. This one can sense her anger and her fear. Even now, this one’s presence reminds her of his death. Her pain is strong and it echoes through this one’s body. It is odd. Cilik’ti do not share their feelings in this way. This one did not know it was possible.

It no longer matters now. The Chi’tan are coming. They will bathe this world in destruction and the humans here will be no more. It is their way. This one has done what was necessary to warn them, but there is little hope. The N’lan can stop this. They have chosen not to. Their inaction is shrouded in the same shame from years past when the Chi’tan and their allies had annihilated other species in the false search for worlds to satisfy their lust for destruction. They have lost their way.

The N’lan will not act, so this one must. This one will remain here and face what end may come. This one is not afraid to face the end of life, but this one fears for those humans—those new friends—who stand against the Chi’tan. The N’lan must be reminded of who they are. To stop the bloodshed, there is no other way.

~Kree O’ta N’lan

June 6, 2014 by Angela Korra'ti

Boosting the Signal: Cooking Up Love, by Amylynn Bright

Got another doubleheader on Boosting the Signal today, folks–and specifically, a Carina doubleheader! Our first post is for Amylynn Bright’s new romantic comedy release, Cooking Up Love. And I think it’s safe to say that her heroine Holly has a very sensible goal: i.e., not wanting her kitchen to EXPLODE. Well, that, and she’s a food critic, so you’d think she should know something about food, right? Speaking as someone who is just barely able to boil water without burning it, though, I would just like to note categorically and for the record that to date, I have not actually set any kitchen appliances on fire.

(We won’t talk about how my wife has banished me from the kitchen.)

Cooking Up Love

A copy of the homeowners insurance claim form Holly Darcy filed after the incident.

Date and Time of Occurrence: Yesterday at dinner time

Location of Occurrence: The general kitchen area in my condo

Type of Occurrence: Small, alright medium, kitchen fire. (I’ve had bigger if that matters)

Property Damaged: Self-cleaning Freestanding Electric Stainless-Steel Convection Range – 4 months old. (Was this purchase overly optimistic? Probably.)

Describe the Occurrence: Boy, I’m tired of filling out these forms. Too bad I can’t just copy the last claim, huh? Well, this time I’d already taken off my work clothes and was in my pajamas. That’s what really started the problem. I should have stopped for take-out. There was no way I was going to eat pizza again and the guy at the Chinese place already calls me honey, I’m in there so often. Still, I know better. I have no idea what got into me. Some sort of inflated sense of accomplishment since I’d had a really great day at work, I guess. I thought I could handle a Lean Cuisine. I mean how hard is that? The directions on the box seem deceptively easy. I thought I’d brave the oven instead of the microwave—mostly because I hadn’t cleaned out the microwave since that mac & cheese explosion from Tuesday. I can’t honestly tell you what happened from there. Is it possible my oven is possessed? It seems crazy I know, but perhaps an exorcism is in order. Maybe the meal is supposed to come out of the box before you put it in the oven? Anyway, I may have forgotten to check on it like the box said. I do know for sure I never stirred it as per the directions. The next thing you know that damn fire alarm is going off and the kitchen is filled with smoke again. The regular fire department guys came in the big truck. I have no idea why they always send the big truck. It’s a small kitchen. Anyway, Captain Gary said the oven was a total loss. This is the second one this year. I don’t know if I should bother to replace it, but leaving a hole in the kitchen is admitting defeat, isn’t it? Jeez, all I wanted was some dinner.

Suggested Course of Action: I’m certain that you’re as tired of receiving my claim requests as I am of writing them. I have enrolled in a cooking class for beginners and I’m very optimistic. Cross your crossables.

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June 6, 2014 by Angela Korra'ti

Uncategorized

Well, that sure didn’t take long, did it?

Two days ago I was pleased to receive the official announcement, via the backer notifications I was receiving due to having supported the Kickstarter, that the special Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue of Lightspeed had gone on general public sale.

And last night I saw a link going around reporting on how, on one particular site, reviews of the material therein included some reactionary editorials. Very reactionary editorials. Natalie Luhrs reports on it over here. And James Nicoll relayed Natalie’s link here.

I wish I could say I’m surprised at how little time it took for the cane-shaking sexist bullshit to spring up in response to this project. But I’m not. Nor am I surprised that Natalie is targeted in the comments on her thread with the “I’m on your side, I swear, but your shrill argument is just going to drive me right over to side with this guy you’re arguing about” tactic.

This, this right here, is exactly why the Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue needed to exist, and why I was proud to be one of its supporters. So I encourage you all to check it out.

Likewise, I commend to your attention Amal El-Mohtar’s beautiful response to this latest brouhaha, in which she provides several quotes to illustrate exactly how long cane-shaking sexist bullshit has existed. Including Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley herself.

And Rachael Acks lays out why throwing “shrill” around is rife with sexist baggage.

At the end of the day, though, one of Mohtar’s quotes from Christie Yant is the crux of the matter:

We need your voice—don’t let it be silenced.

This is me talking. Because Yant is right.

Now pardon me, I feel some destruction of science fiction coming on.

June 4, 2014 by Angela Korra'ti

Books

Because I have a new ereader and why not ebook roundup

Bought from Kobo:

Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson. Future dystopian fantasy/urban fantasy. This was actually bought from my original Kobo account, but only because I had gotten a tiny amount of credit on that account and I wanted to spend it. Which means this book won’t sync to my main Kobo library but OH WELL that’s okay. I have ways of getting around that. And I wanted this book because I’d been meaning to read it for ages, and because I really like the title.
Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone. Fantasy. I saw this series getting some buzz on tor.com, and the third book’s just dropped, so the first book as of this writing is available for $2.99.
Artemis Awakening, by Jane Lindskold. SF. Another one I saw getting plugged on tor.com, and since I’ve read and liked Lindskold before, I thought I’d given this one a try too.
The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. Lots of great buzz about this one all over the place. But really, you had me at “elves with airships”.
Circle of Shadows, by Imogen Robertson. Mystery. Book 4 in her lovely Crowther-Westerman series, which I’m quite looking forward to reading!

From Barnes & Noble:

Revenant, by Kat Richardson (pre-order). Urban fantasy. This is, I believe, the final entry in the Greywalker series. I’ve got to get caught up!
Skin Game, by Jim Butcher. Bought for obvious Because Dresden Files DUH reasons. Got to get caught up on these, too.
Sparrow Hill Road, by Seanan McGuire. Actually bought this twice, because Dara wanted it in print, and I picked up the ebook. But since the trade paperback was for Dara, it’ll count only once on my tally here!

71 for the year.

June 3, 2014 by Angela Korra'ti

Music

Check it out, a cittern!

Shortly after I put up this excerpt from Victory of the Hawk, in which Kestar gets to see a sketch of his great-grandfather Riniel playing what is essentially a cittern, I decided “well hey, it’d be nifty to actually show the Internet one!”

My plan was to point you all at the joint site of Éric and Simon Beaudry, which they’d put up a few years back to promote their album Le sort des amoureux. There were some loverly pics there of the Beaudry boys, and in particular some featuring Éric with a cittern. That plan, however, failed miserably when I discovered that the site had gone down and the domain had gotten snurched by a registrar in Japan. (That the site is down is known to the Beaudrys, as I discovered in a conversation on Facebook that involved words like “the next album”, words that are highly relevant to my interests, but which digress from the immediate point of this post.)

BUT, my friend Ellen, who y’all will remember is participating in the work on the Bone Walker soundtrack, dropped a bomb on me. In that she does in fact own a cittern. And this past weekend, when she came over to do some recording work, she brought it with her! And told me we could babysit it for a while, since she hasn’t played it in ages! So check it out, this is what a cittern looks like!

Ten-Stringed Twang

And for those of you who are instrument geeks, the instrument’s a Sobell. Made by this gentleman, or so I am informed.

My immediate goal with this: try to figure out how the hell to tune it. Ellen said she had no recollection whatsoever of how it had been tuned before, so I had to turn to the Intarwebz for help. That led to learning that there is apparently quite the range of ways people tune their citterns, including GDADA, GDAEA, GDAEB, CGDAE, DGDAD, DADAD, and more. I thought GDAEB sounded promising, since that’d be adding an extra fifth on top of the GDAE tuning I already know.

Only problem there: B, apparently, was too much for the high course on this thing. It popped one of the strings when I tried to make it up to B. AUGH. And Ellen ruefully admitted that the current set of strings was probably older than her 13-year-old, so the instrument’s long overdue for a restringing regardless.

So Plan B: take it to Dusty Strings, ask for advice on how to tune it and what strings to use, and go from there. (Oh DARN oh DARN an excuse to go to Dusty Strings! Whatever was I to DO? I know you feel the burden this placed upon my soul, Internets.) This proved highly instructive. The guy I talked to at the store promptly took measurements of the strings currently on the instrument so he could identify their gauge, and then measured the length of the scale on it too. That led him to recommend that I tune it in DGDAD.

And I wound up buying individual D’Addario strings of his recommended gauges, which turned out to mean a mix of light and medium strings. So this’ll be an interesting experiment all around.

Once I get it restrung, then I get to figure out how to play it. Hunting for chord charts for a cittern turned out to be a Challenge, as the only chord charts I could find on preliminary Googling were for different tunings and therefore not immediately useful.

BUT! I discovered an app called Fretter, available for both Android and iOS, which I daresay will solve this problem nicely. This app’s a clever little beastie and will let you specify all sorts of different tunings for all sorts of different instruments, including custom tunings. The Android app (which I can now play with, thanks to my new Nook HD!) appears to be cleverer than the iOS version in that it can let you do truly custom instrument settings, as opposed to the iOS one, which just lets you specify custom tunings on the instruments it knows about.

So I’m going to play with this app and see if I can get it to generate enough basic DGDAD chords to cover the various Great Big Sea songs I know. If I can get it to give me G, C, D, Em, Am, and Bm, that should be a lovely start.

This is going to be fun. 😀

(And oh yes, if the Beaudry boys do ever put out another album, buy the hell out of it. Especially if Éric breaks out his cittern.)

June 3, 2014 by Angela Korra'ti

Uncategorized

Monday news roundup: Memes, Amazon vs. Hachette, and Jay Lake

I’m not quite convinced that participation in a meme still counts if you get tagged twice for the same thing–but that said, I’ve been re-tagged on the Writing Process one, specifically by M.M. Justus, who put up her post on the meme right over here.

And in case you missed it, my post on the meme went up in April, and you can find it here.

***

I’m continuing to see a lot of sound and fury bouncing around re: the Amazon-Hachette dispute. B&N is apparently taking advantage of this by doing a Buy 2, Get One Free deal on affected books. So just in case something from a Hachette author is on your personal buy list, you might check this out.

Meanwhile, I was pointed at this post on the matter, in which the author is quite well and firmly on Amazon’s side. I was asked for my thoughts, and can sum them up pretty much thusly: I feel that particular writer has some cogent points re: the good things Amazon’s doing for authors. But on the other hand, I’m still not cool about the strongarm tactics they’ve been using against Hachette. My overall point remains that at the end of the day, when entities as big as Amazon and Hachette go at it, the people who are ultimately hurt by this are still authors–who can’t sell their stuff via Amazon–and readers, who can’t buy the books they may want to get.

And as a general reminder, if you want to read ebooks, Amazon is not your only option. There’s B&N. There’s Kobo. There’s the iBookstore, if you’re an Apple user. There’s Google Play, if you’re Android-inclined. There are device-agnostic places like Smashwords, and there are all sorts of publishers and imprints who sell directly on their own sites–like, of course, Carina. But I also heartily recommend the good folks at Angry Robot, Book View Cafe, and of course savvy longer-term, ebook-reading SF/F fans will be aware that Baen was a pioneer in the DRM-free ebook arena. Likewise, many authors are publishing their own backlists (e.g., Doranna Durgin, highly regarded in these parts). And many small presses may well be selling their own ebooks as well.

Long story short, a judicious ebook-buyer doesn’t have to be constrained to any one device. Do a bit of research and you may well find something awesome you want to read, available in a way that will let you get more money into the hands of the author.

***

Last but not least, for those who may have missed the news yesterday, Jay Lake finally succumbed to his fight with cancer. The SF/F community will be grieving for him for a while, I think. I’m continuing to see people posting about him all over the Internet, which just goes to show that his impact on the greater SF/F community was deep indeed. I particularly appreciated commentary I’ve seen from people who’ve also been fighting cancer, and who found him to be an inspiration–and also, just from readers who are grateful that his works remain as his legacy. If a writer has to go, I think leaving behind a lot of fans who’ll miss you and treasure your books is a decent way to do it.

My own brief post about this is here, and I reiterate my condolences to all who knew Mr. Lake, whether as a loved one, a friend, or an author.

June 2, 2014 by Angela Korra'ti

Ebooks and Ereaders

Ereader review: The Nook HD, by Barnes and Noble

As y’all know, my day job is QA Engineer at Big Fish Games. But what you may not know, even if you’re a regular player of our stuff, is that we’ve been pushing out hard into the mobile arena–and that now we have not only iOS games, but Android games as well!

I mention this because a) that shiny new Android page of ours was tested by yours truly (woo!), and b) since we’re having more of an emphasis on Android devices at work, I felt it was time for me to acquire one. We have a store of devices to use to test on when I’m at work, but I periodically do work from home. Therefore I wanted a device around to have handy in case I needed to test on it.

Which raised for me the question of what to actually get. So far I’ve had experience with Nexus and Samsung devices, neither of which really stood up and said “buy me”. What I ultimately decided upon was a thing that’ll be useful to me not only as a testing device, but also as an ereader and a tablet: a Nook HD. This is the smaller, 7-inch version of B&N’s current tablet, which I wanted because that particular size is more comfortable to me for reading purposes, and also because I’ve got my still-perfectly-delightful iPad covering the larger 10-inch form factor.

It was rather fun going into the B&N at Pacific Place downtown, where I started experimenting with one of the display models, with my srs bznz Testing Face on. The staffer in charge of selling Nooks took a moment to lock in on me–he was busy delivering his “so, are you interested in buying a tablet?” spiel to another customer when I walked in. But it didn’t take him long to get over to me to start the same spiel. At which point I promptly spieled right back at him as to what I wanted the device for (i.e., web page testing as well as reading, and why yes, I AM a current Nook customer), and to his credit, he immediately went into “oh okay this is an informed consumer” mode. So he cheerfully let me be as I gave serious thought between the smoke-colored model and the white one, and whether I wanted 8GB or 16GB. Final verdict: I got the smoke-colored, 16GB one. This is what it looks like.

(Pics and more behind the fold!)

June 2, 2014 by Angela Korra'ti

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