I enjoyed it, thought it on a par with The Force Awakens.
I’m not sure why people say it’s outside the main Star Wars series. To me, this fits right between Episodes III and IV. Episode 3.5. (Or is that III.V?)
The ensemble cast of characters in Rogue One was excellent. Every single one of them could have carried their own story.
In fact, two of my favourite characters will be included in a middle-grade novel (that’s right, middle-grade) called Guardians of the Whills.
If you haven’t seen the movie, these two are the best.
(Jyn also gets her own young-adult novel, too.)
The ending (which I’m not going to talk about, because, spoilers) was the hardest part of the movie to take. I understand it had to happen that way, because this was episode III.V and it had to work in with what happened in IV, but …
It’s one of the difficulties of writing an earlier episode in an already-existing movie series. Or in a book series.
You have to work with what’s already there. And what’s not.
Not Wendell’s ship, or not as we imagine it, but a ship, nonetheless.
Over on Goodreads, a reader asked about Wendell’s age. We answered the question over there, if you want to read it but Wendell is actually a character we have a lot of backstory for. We thought you might be interested in some snippets.
The Cord Gambits
The Cord Gambits were a series of two hundred and four war scenarios proposed by General Cord three hundred years prior to the start of the Linesman novels.
They were supposedly unbeatable, and were given as part of the final exams for students passing out of the Wallacian Fleet Academy. The idea being to show the newly-trained soldier that sometimes you couldn’t win.
The only person to ever come up with a solution for one of the scenarios was Piers Wendell. (He actually came up with solutions for two of them.)
How old was he?
Wendell was young when he made captain. Too young, some people said
A soldier isn’t normally considered for captaincy until his/her late forties, and usually not appointed as one until they were in their fifties. First, because captains need experience. You don’t want a raw soldier in charge of a ship. And second, ship captains stay with their ships, so once they take up that role, that’s as far as they go, career-wise.
Yet Wendell was thirty-two. (He’s thirty-nine now.) The youngest captain in any known fleet, ever. Why didn’t Wallacia wait?
Wendell was a brilliant strategist. He worked his way quickly up through the ranks. The Wallacian fleet didn’t want to lose him. Some saw him as a potential future leader of the fleet. But Wendell was getting bored, thinking about leaving the fleet altogether.
There was one sure way to keep him there. Give him his own ship, let him bond with it, and he’d remain in the fleet forever.
Why does Wendell dye his hair?
Wendell has steadily been working through the Cord Gambits ever since.
His crew bet him they could come up with a solution to one of the gambits as well. If they did, he’d have to dye his hair for a year.
It took months, lots of ‘what would the captain do now’, and precision teamwork, but they did it.
The crew chose the hair colour.
In Confluence, that twelve months was just up. Wendell was growing out the dye, but the crew had spent the last twelve months working on a new gambit and had just come up with a solution.
Back when I was a newbie writer, before I officially partnered up with Sherylyn and we started writing together, I’d foist my stories on anyone who’d read them. Friends and family had novels thrust into their hands as soon as they said, “That sounds interesting.”
Back then they were paper copies too, and printers only printed on one side of the paper, so potential readers left holding a ream of paper that they didn’t really want to read, trying to look enthusiastic about something they weren’t.
And of course, you’re the writer, so you expect them to be as enthusiastic as you are. To go home and read it immediately. And then come back to you the next day and tell you how wonderful it was.
Of course, they never did.
I was handing out first drafts. Raw, unedited fiction.
“Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It’s perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.” Jane Smiley
Even back then, some of my ideas were good. But my characters, oh my goodness. They were awful.
As Sherylyn used to say, “I can’t stand Scott (or whoever this novel’s hero was). He’s a wimp. He’s full of himself. He’s unpleasant. I don’t like him, I don’t want to read about him.”
She said it book after book.
She was the only one who gave me honest feedback. Other readers, when they did read my stories, said things like, “It was okay.”
After I teamed up with Sherylyn, the characters improved a lot.
I do wonder what it says about me as a person, though, when I write (wrote) such awful people.
I won’t read books by other authors whose characters are a turn-off, no matter how great the book is. So why do I write them?
For example, I have a lot of sympathy for Jordan Rossi, even though if I met him in real life I wouldn’t stand him. Luckily for those of you reading the book, Sherylyn wasn’t as enamoured, and made us cut a lot of his scenes. Nor, later on, were Caitlin and Anne—agent and editor, respectively—who made us take out even more Rossi.
Thank goodness for the drafting process.
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” Terry Pratchett
Nowadays, I enjoy songs like Dean Martin’s That’s Amore, and Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, yet as a kid, I didn’t like them.
Growing up, my parents loved the Dean Martin show. I didn’t. I was a puritanical little thing, with no sense of (adult) humour at all and to me Martin was a drunk, and he wasn’t even funny. (The drunkenness was an act; he drank apple juice stage.) Worst of all, he sang old-fashioned songs.
My parents also loved Johnny Cash. Not for me. He was so old.
I was into pop songs.
None of us—parents or me or anyone else in my family, I think—ever got into the Beatles. Our parents were too old for them, we were too young.
Yet all through the 70s, 80s, and even into the 90s, we were told “the Beatles are the greatest band ever”. Nowadays, ask anyone under about the age of 30 who the greatest bands is and you’ll more likely get U2 or Coldplay than you will the Beatles.
Classic science fiction
Back when my parents were younger, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra featured on almost everyone’s list of greatest musicians. You don’t find them on many lists now, yet if people are reminded about them, they will admit they were good for their time.
When books fall of the list, it doesn’t mean those books are unworthy of reading anymore, but that readers are forgetting them.
What makes a classic a classic?
I have read most of the books on the Classics of Science Fiction list. I enjoyed (some of) them at the time, but few of them make my own personal classic list.
Sometimes I feel there’s no such thing as a great book, at least not in a measurable sense. The books we think are great are merely the ones that reflect our strongest desires. They don’t need to be well written, brilliant, or literary. They just need to trigger emotions.
Yes, and so much yes. This.
Recommending science fiction to new readers
When people start reading science fiction, they’re often told to go read the classics.
I think that’s the worst thing you can do to a budding science fiction reader. It’s like telling them, “You must listen to Dean Martin and the Beatles. They’re the only real singers,” when the reader’s taste runs to Lin Manuel Miranda or Taylor Swift.
I do love modern science fiction, and often think it better written and more sophisticated than my favorites here. And I do prefer the diversity of modern SF.
Me too.
Later, he says:
My favorite science fiction is 50 years or older… these are the stories burned in my memory. I read most of these stories before I turned 20. It might be our life-time favorites are the books we read in youth. First impressions are often the lasting impressions.
I’m the same. I love the modern stuff, but some of my favorite stories are old ones. And many of my favorites don’t make the classics list. These stories don’t always age well. They struck a chord at the time, but for someone reading them for the first time in this day and age, they won’t have the same impact.
So next time someone says, “I haven’t read science fiction before, where should I start?” don’t recommend the classics to them.
Recommend something modern. Something written in the last couple of years. Something you think they might like.
The time to read the classics is afterwards, when the new reader is enjoying the genre, and they’re interested in what came before.
90% of the books I read this year (that both of us read, I think), were eBooks.
Here are some that we read in 2016, and liked. Not all of the books are new, they’re just books we read. Some were re-reads.
Michelle Sagara—Chronicles of Elantra
That’s right, we read all thirteen of them. One after the other. Talk about binge reading.
All thirteen books.
A reader on our blog recommended these, so we thought we’d take a look. Thirteen books later … yes, not too bad.
Connie Willis, Crosstalk
My favourite Connie Willis novel is To Say Nothing of the Dog. My favourite short stories of hers are those like All Seated on the Ground. Crosstalk is in the same vein. I enjoyed it a lot.
The first few chapters the writing is so fast paced I almost ran out of breath reading it, but it settled. A good, fun Connie Willis story which also says some pointed things about social media and society.
(Someone described Genevive Cogman’s Invisible Library as Jim C. Hines’ Libriomancer crossed with Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog. Guess what’s on my to-read list this coming year.)
Anne Bishop, Marked in Flesh;
Robin Hobb, Fool’s Quest
Sherylyn read, and loved, both Anne Bishop’s Marked in Flesh and Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Quest. I haven’t read either, as work was super-busy during those months, and any spare time was for book deadlines. I’ve got them both saved up to read when I take leave in March, now.
Other books
Last year we rediscovered Tanya Huff’s Valor series as eBooks, and re-read them. We’ve always liked this series. Highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a light introduction to military fantasy.
Ditto C. J. Cherryh’s Hammerfall and Forge of Heaven.
Note how many of those books were by female authors. Most of them.
We don’t deliberately go out of our way to read books only by women. In fact, there are a couple of books I’m hanging out for. One of them is Curtis Chen’s Waypoint Kangaroo. Which has been out in hardcover for six months now. It’s A$35, which is more than I want to pay, given I can buy three, or more, eBooks for the same price.
In the US you can buy Waypoint Kangaroo as an eBook. Here in Australia we can’t yet. In the last twelve months it seems that rights have changed, or DRM has been tightened. Or maybe publishers are changing the rights they buy, and only buying North American rights for electronic books as well. I’m not sure what, but all I know is I used to be able to buy pretty much anything I wanted as an eBook off Amazon.com (as an Australian, with an Australian ID and address). Now I can’t.
John Scalzi’s Collapsing Empire (a book I want to read when it comes out) is another book I can only buy in hardcover, not as an eBook. Yet I can see from the Barnes and Noble site that there is an eBook version. Here in Australia we can’t buy B&N books.
The weird thing is, the books I can buy seem entirely skewed toward female writers. I can only assume that female writers sell World Rights to their books, while male writers sell North American rights. Or something.
I’m sure there’s a reason, but it’s frustrating to see all these books you want to read, but can’t get hold of except at very high prices, and only as paper. Especially when you know others can get them electronically.
Looking forward to next year
I’ve already mentioned Robin Hobb. Her third book will be out.
Sherylyn’s waiting for Anne Bishop‘s Etched in Bone. It’s on her must-read list.
Waypoint Kangaroo, if I can ever get a copy. I have wanted to read this book ever since Chen posted his query on Janet Reid’s Query Shark. A long, long time ago.
Revenger, by Alistair Reynolds. I like the idea of this one. Sounds like Forerunner* stuff, which obviously we love, given our own stories.
I also heard that the new Anne Leckie is due out this year. I haven’t seen any confirmation of that, but if it is, I’ll be in line.
A new year book resolution
Every year The Qwillery has a debut author challenge, where they challenge you to read a debut author a month. I find a lot of interesting books here, but I don’t tend to read them until a year or two after they’ve been out.
This year I’m going to improve on that. I’m going to read one debut author a month.
* Forerunner, with a nod to Andre Norton, who came up with the term that means rediscovering the advanced technology of ancient (often alien) civilisations.
