Sean Williams

The second and final instalment of my piece on Geodesica has been posted at the Voyager blog. Part One talked about where the ideas for the series came from, the original titles, and so on. Today is more concerned with how to get those ideas across through real people with real problems--ever a challenge when writing space opera.

I'm remiss for not posting much about writerly stuff lately, so here are some reviews of Saturn Returns that have been accumulating over recent weeks:

Colin Steele neatly summed it up for the Canberra Times--"Saturn Returns probes the nature of what it is to be human against the wider backdrop of the rise and fall of civilizations"--while Brooke Walker of Good Reading thought it "A breathtaking piece of space opera!"

Dirk Flinthart liked it in the pages of ASIM: "Saturn Returns is a fine book. It’s better than fine...a very entertaining read. Williams’ prose is sharp as ever, with vivid characters, imaginative techno-splashy stuff, and a satisfying dash of dry, sly humour tucked up around the edges."

Keith Stevenson very kindly raved in Aurealis: "In Saturn Returns, I felt a new assuredness, a strength of voice that was compellingly entertaining and thought-provoking. Saturn Returns is Sean’s best yet—go out and buy it."

My favourite review of all, though, was in Locus. Russell Letson describes it as a "Jacobean revenge melodrama" featuring "a mysterious, memory-damaged, morally-ambiguous but militarily potent hero; even-more-mysterious masked opponents; a gang of companions evincing varying degrees of loyalty, sympathy, and resentment; wildly various, extra-large-scale, magical-technology-filled environments; murky pasts, secret histories, hidden agendas, sudden reversals, murky and shifting alliances; plus the usual amusements of chases, captures, escapes, kidnappings, rescues, befriendings, betrayals, and blowing stuff up."

As if that wasn't enough, he goes on to add "malcontents, tainted protagonists, secret and shifting alliances, and convoluted plotlines in pursuit of revelation or revolution or simple payback--mixed motives; love-hate relationships; unholy alliances, affections, and obsessions; amnesiac heroes, masked enemies, and wheels within wheels. And again the setting, in which every kind of scale is exaggerated and the sheer weight of millennia of history (and characters' lifetimes) and millions of cubic lightyears of space, dwarfs even the extravagant foreground action."

Exactly the kind of book I like!

And lastly, while on the topic of reviews, David Conyers in Albedo One had this to say: "Geodesica Ascent and Geodesica Decent have some great ideas, clever characters, and present a convincingly imagined world. These two novels are amongst the best Australian science fiction written in the last few years." For which I am very grateful.

New Scientist ran an article in its March 24 edition describing a new space propulsion system that uses nanoparticles for reaction mass instead of hot gases or charged Xenon atoms. Each engine is "about the size of a bacterium" and their designer, Brian Gilchrist, "envisions arrays of many millions of them being bolted onto a space vehicle". The article's penultimate sentence finishes: "within a decade or so, we'll know whether nanotechnology holds the key to space exploration".

I agree. In fact, I don't think Gilchrist is going far enough.

Geodesica featured vessels relying on a similar principle to the one outlined in New Scientist. To quote the book:

"Unlike craft with single engines, single life support systems, and control systems bearing only the most basic redundancy designs, Palmer Cells owed their considerable flexibility to a single, simple design concept. The work of all their systems was spread across the entire Cell, performed by millions of machines on the micro- or nanoscale. Every cubic centimeter of the Cell contained hundreds of components dedicated to air purification, water reclamation, field effect generation, VOID maintenance, and so on."

Not just engines, then, but every aspect of spacecraft design.

This made putting my characters in jeopardy difficult at times, since ships like this couldn't break down unless every single one of its millions, perhaps billions, of pieces failed. But it opened up possibilities too.

"Every cubic centimeter was, in a sense, a reflection of the Cell as a whole--in the same way a fragment of a hologram contained an image of the entire hologram in miniature. A Cell could take any shape, any size, and still contain all the elements it needed to be a functioning, human-bearing space vessel."

So you could whittle an entire ship down to a coffin-sized lump and it could still, theoretically, work.

NASA is funding Gilchrist's research, so I don't think we'll have to wait a decade to know if we're on the right track. Fingers crossed, anyway.

I've talked elsewhere about my thoughts on privacy--that it's an over-rated, artificial concept our culture clings to without real analysis. And Geodesica: Descent features a society in which privacy is actually illegal. (Surprise, surprise: in my mind, it's not dystopian at all.)

So here's an interesting article by Emily Nussbaum on this very topic, pointing out what may be a fundamental societal shift happening right before our eyes.

Quote: "It’s been a long time since there was a true generation gap, perhaps 50 years--you have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when old people still talked about 'jungle rhythms.' ... [I]n the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk."

It's worth a read, and not just for spec fic writers building their version of the 2050s. This is the world we're living in right now, after all. Us oldies just haven't noticed yet.

Another quote: "For anyone over 30, this may be pretty hard to take. Perhaps you smell brimstone in the air, the sense of a devil’s bargain... It’s not as if those fifties squares griping about Elvis were wrong, after all. As Clay Shirky points out, 'All that stuff the elders said about rock and roll? They pretty much nailed it. Miscegenation, teenagers running wild, the end of marriage!'"

If the current generation is actively (if unwittingly) re-writing the rules of privacy and social interaction so wildly, what does that mean in the long-run? I don’t know. These things are so hard to predict in advance. It might usher in an era of two-way transparency, where "Big Brothers" can be spied on just as much as they can spy on us. Or it might have the opposite effect.

Maybe the baby-boomers will keep running the world, but the young folk will be too busy looking at each other to notice.

... for interviews, apparently.

Steve Wilson of Space Archaeology fame has pinned me down on the issues of Geodesica, Saturn Returns and all manner of interesting subjects. His site is fantastic, too, combining as it does two of my personal favourite things (like Haighs dark chocolate almonds). You should check it out while you're there.

And:
While it's always nice to see newer books getting attention, it's wonderful too when old books keep on keeping on. HarperCollins' edition of The Prodigal Sun has just gone into its sixth reprint here in Australia, for which I am extremely grateful.

And and:
Today marks the launch (at which I'll be speaking, briefly) of Adelaide's newest literary festival: the Fringe WORD festival, which will be unleashed upon the world next March, to coincide with the Adelaide Fringe's first year as an annual event. This comes hot on the heels of several other relatively recent gathering points for writers and readers that I've also been involved in, including the Salisbury Writers' Festival, the SA Writers' Festival, and of course the increasingly national Big Book Club/Little Big Book Club events. Perhaps there really is something in the water down here.

(Update: I've now uploaded my speech as a comment to this post.)

So Jonathan Strahan rings me today and tells me that Gary Numan is playing a gig just up the road from the Worldcon hotel the same week we're there. This is a Big Deal for me, and not just because I've recently finished a book that relies significantly on the lyrics of a certain postpunk-then-electro-now-goth legend. Needless to say, I will be buying a ticket.

In newsy stuff: it's been a good week or two. Rob Stephenson published the world's first review ofThe Devoured Earth in aurealisXpress (he liked it; see below). I expect this to be the first of many reviews getting the number of books in that series wrong. :-) Also, Stephen Davenport posted reviews of Geodesica in The Independent and The Program (ditto; and ditto). Being compared to Asimov is, arguably, worth another smiley.

It's also been a good week for finishing mss, with drafts of The Changeling and Saturn Returns in their final-final stages. Both will be delivered early next week so I can get on with the former's sequel. All original thoughts are being pumped into these projects, so I apologise for the blandness of this LJ in recent weeks.

Lastly, some other snippets of good news: both The Blood Debt and Geodesica: Descent have been reprinted by HarperCollins. Also, the wonderful people at Arts SA have generously thrown some cash at the Broken Land series, for which I'm very grateful. And a movie production company has been in touch about one of my older short stories--a possibility I refuse to lose any sleep over, but will report on here in due course...

Reviews:

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"Alas for our beloved genre," says Alexis Gilliland in the Spring 2006 issue of the SFWA Bulletin. "Time travel always was fantasy. Interstellar space travel (with Einstein refuting FTL travel, and now cosmic rays denying even the possibility of a generation ship) has become fantasy."

I think this is an extraordinary statement for a magazine like the Bulletin to publish. Sure, it's one man's opinion and he's entitled to it; I would never begrudge him that. But is this the kind of declaration an organisation such as the SFWA should be broadcasting to its members, who are by definition practitioners of the speculative art? It seems to me that such doom-saying is symptomatic not of scientific rigour (always excellent when applied well) but of failure of the imagination.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the two points Gilliland raises. The unbreakable nature of the speed if light is a big issue for space opera. Normally SF writers wave their hands and invoke space drives with fancy names and even fancier jargon to explain it away. I've done it myself, many times. (My favourite so far is in Geodesica, but I'm proud of all my attempts in this area.) Radiation is also a killer, not just from cosmic rays but as a result of space travel itself. The closer you get to C, the more you'll be fried. It's a cold equation, and an irrefutable one.

In his essay "Science Once Again Nudges Science Fiction Towards Fantasy" Gilliland goes to extraordinary lengths to get around the problem of helping humans survive space: short trips in powerful rockets, habitats with extra shielding, etc. He does address the obvious question: why put humans up there in the first place? But the only alternative he offers is the one we have been using for years: satellites and robots that will do the job for us. There is a much more interesting alternative that he doesn't even mention.

If humans are the weak link in interstellar space exploration, why not change the humans? Slowing down an astronaut's metabolic rate so a year feels like an hour puts interstellar travel well within the boundaries of acceptance. Fancy a day-trip to Alpha Centauri? I know I do. And if everyone at home lives at the same tempo--or lives for thousands of years so a lost decade or two between friends won't even be noticed--what does the missing time matter?

The same with radiation. Ask the biosciences to give us better bodies. Is that so unreasonable? I don't think so. No more unreasonable, anyway, than asking for a drive capable of accelerating us to near C and materials that will survive the journey intact.

This kind of future has been imagined before. It's being imagined right now (by me, among others, I'm sure: Astropolis is set in just such a galaxy, with no ftl at all). Scientists are working in innumerable ways to improve us, on many levels. Why ignore all this wonderful hard work and declare that "the future looks a whole lot less promising than it did a half century back"?

On a related note, Colin Steele recently reviewed Geodesica for the Sunday Canberra Times, name-checking Arthur C Clarke's Rama books and Greg Bear's Eon (two major sources of inspiration for me) and declaring that the duology "falls into the genre of speculative human evolution, as the reader takes an intriguing journey into what we might become."

Seems to me that this is what SF is about, not the inch-thick lead shielding we'll have to wear to get there. :-)

Where do stories come from?

Some writers hate having to answer this question, but it's a valid one. If we don't try to analyse the source of our stories, what happens if that source dries up? Not for a moment do I believe that any writers have just one source of inspiration, but sometimes it's easy to trace a story's genesis back to its root. I've pondered this ever since Stephen Donaldson came to Adelaide in the 1980s and told a crowded bookshop that he'd gotten the idea for the ending of the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant from the sight of a spray can in a public toilet (or something like that--it was a long time ago). If something so trivial can inspire such a masterwork, why aren't we inspired to greatness every time we do the shopping?

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A crook neck kept me from attending Supanova last weekend (alas) but my time up north was still fruitful and fun. Conjure rocked. Thanks to everyone for being so patient with their stiff-necked Oz GOH--particularly to the concom for arranging drugs and massages, the panellists on the one program item I was forced to cancel, and my fellow tie-in writers (and the wonderful Marianne de Pierres) for covering me at various functions. All's well that end's well.

At it did end will. The wonderful Gary Kemble covered Conjure for the ABC. See here for a chronological rundown of the entire event. You can also link straight to my GOH speech and an interview. I spent a fair amount of time talking about romance and sex, so be warned. :-)

To top it all off, Geodesica: Ascent picked up the Ditmar Award for Best Novel. I'm still slightly stunned, given the competition. The trophy was made by Gillian Sandrasegar and looks absolutely stunning on my brag shelf.

One last link before getting back to the new book: the Courier Mail in Brisbane recently ran a piece on Philip Pullman. I was asked to give my opinions on the great man (and other writers) along with Sophie Masson, Richard Harland, and Ian Irvine. You can see the article here.

That's it for now. As much as I love visiting Brisbane, it's great to be home. Autumn is a wonderful time in Adelaide. The neck is feeling better and the new book is coming along great. It's all good. (My motto for 2006.)

I'll post another update in a couple of days.

Geodesica: Descent is out in the USA, in two forms: there's the mass market paperback from Ace and the hardcover omnibus (with Geodesica: Ascent) from SF Book Club. Feedback from readers has been terrific. I'm really pleased that it seems to be hitting the mark.

Sci-fi Wire ran an interview with Shane and I last week. See here for the full text.

Meanwhile HarperCollins Australia, which will be publishing Geodesica: Descent in April, has posted an excerpt (and a glimpse of the redesigned cover) to their website here.

And lastly, Geodesica: Ascent may have been pipped at the post at last week's Aurealis Awards, but it has picked up a nomination for the Ditmar Awards to be announced in April, giving me my fifteenth nomination for this award. Fingers crossed.

More good news to come on other fronts. Expect an update in the next day or two!

Sean