I yearn, bereft of
juicy pork bits and parsley.
My stomach rumbles.

So, I’m on the hunt for a slab of smoked pork and a bunch of parsley, goddammit! It’s almost three weeks and no luck. This part of the world doesn’t use parsley as a matter of course. Coriander is the ubiquitous herb around. And I like coriander. But not in my pesto, or other pasta sauce.

As for the smoked pork, well Malaysia is predominantly Muslim. That’s not to say there are no Chinese shops selling porky goodness, because there are. But we have the same problem as we did in Singapore and that is, Chinese have a dreadful habit of putting sugar in EVERYTHING! It’s like honey-roasted pork with a coating of sugar syrup. If there are any Chinese out there reading this blog (and I’ll be asking my Chinese friends the same question), could you please let me know the name of the person who told you that sweetening and perfuming pork sausage (and I’m particularly thinking of lap cheong here) was a good idea? I mean, a little sugar with the spice is sometimes a nice thing, but in moderation, people! Sweet ham, sweet bacon, sweet sausage, sweet sandwich bread. I will never diss an olive again for as long as I live.

The only spot of brightness on the horizon is the realisation that Carrefour is opening a store here in a month’s time. It will be about a 20-minute drive from our house. Can I say that I doubt there has been a grocery shop opening that was looked upon with such anticipation? I even go there every now and then, and watch the delivery trucks arriving, just to make sure it’s actually happening. For all you non-Carrefour readers, Carrefour is a French chain of supermarkets. Cheese! Dairy! Pork! Parsley! Countless varieties of mustard! My sanity is saved … sometime in August.

So, while I wait for the weeks to tick away on feet of lead (Salsify! Escargots! Salmon!), Chapter Nine of War Games is now up at my site, regardless of what the home page may say. There is a confrontation between Rumis and Koul at the Nineteen’s HQ, subsequent to Cheloi’s capture by the rebels. Cheloi/Laisen has a discussion with Copan that he’s not happy with. And she remembers the love of her life, Eys.

FAVOURITE QUOTES FROM CHAPTER NINE

“Speaking of replacement, I think your assumption of command is just a little premature, Colonel.”
“As is your grasp of reality, Major.”

“I’ve always valued our talks, Doctor. I just wanted to make sure that I told you that.”

Her parents loved Eys. Hell, everybody loved Eys. People panted and trailed after her like puppies. Men and women, it made no difference. But she was Laisen’s. Only Laisen’s.

Chapter Seven should have hit the pixels the day before yesterday and I’m following it up today with Chapter Eight. TW had a nightmare and I couldn’t get back to sleep, which explains why the chapter posting is extra early this morning!

What happened in Chapter Seven: Koul Grakal-Ski finds leverage against Garza and uses it to his advantage. He has a plan to eliminate Cheloi and gain command of Territory Fifteen, but he needs Garza’s cooperation to do it. Will she agree?

What is in Chapter Eight: While on a rendezvous with one of her more unconventional sector commanders, Cheloi and Garza are captured by rebel forces, and Cheloi gets to meet their notorious leader, Drel, face to face.

Go here to the War Games page, where you can catch up on anything you’ve missed.

Um, just wondering … how is everyone finding the serialisation? With the past couple of weeks to one side, is one chapter a week a good pace? Are you enjoying it? Not? Like to share?

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, I should have died at the age of 8.9. Here’s the proof, in case you were wondering:

This is part of a Greenhouse calculator in the children’s “Planet Slayer” section of the website. Actually, when I first ran the quiz, I found out I was going to live forever. The next time I ran it, I tried to pick a carbon footprint that was a little bigger than the Average Australian (Pig) to see what would happen. And it told me to commit seppuku at 8.9 years of age.

Now, I don’t consider myself a particularly warm and squishy, Care Bear type. But telling CHILDREN that they should die at a particular age because they’re emittingresponsible for too many greenhouse gases is a bit … um … perverted? Also, although the way Planet Slayer is set out is geared towards kids, the questions are obviously aimed at adults. I mean, how many children you know travel by air on business? Or spend x thousand dollars a year? Or divide their annual expenditure according to “ordinary stuff”, “stuff that’s better for the environment” and — get this — “ethical investments”?

Not only, in my opinion, is this questionnaire in utter bad taste but it also commits a bigger crime of tarring all leftist types with the broad brush of lunacy. Even across the equatorial line, I can almost hear conservatives in Australia decrying the project using the usual tired lament: “Look at what these PC socialists are doing with public money! How irresponsible! They want our children to kill themselves, the immoral, godless, tree-hugging do-gooders!”. And, once more, people like me are lumped in with emotionally immature types that think A Message gives them permission to trample all over other people’s sensitivities.

“But I think that Greenhouse Calculator is entirely the wrong way to approach the subject,” I decry.
“But you think we should all be more sustainable, don’t you?” Conservative Superior snarls.
“Well, yes,” I splutter, “but not, not like thi–”
“You bloody greenie, bleeding hearts are all the same, using taxpayer’s money to come up with that drivel. You lot should be jailed.”

How can a sane socialist win? Here’s the article in the New York Post if you’re interested. The Creative Director, Bernie Hobbs, says: “We wanted to put the important things in perspective, and have a laugh along the way.” You chuckling yet?

For my slice of Internet bandwidth, I think The Three Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree handles another controversial subject in a much better manner that is more entertaining and educational than an exploding pig.

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And, as a footnote, Chapter Six of War Games is up.THE STORY SO FAR: Cheloi can’t fight the attraction she feels for her driver, but her lust is tempered by the knowledge that her entire mission could unravel if she is discovered. After four nights of stolen passion, she knows that — for her own and Garza’s sakes — she has to end the affair.

THE STORY SO FAR: There is a strong attraction flaring between Cheloi Sie and her driver, Garza Yinalña . But after their first heated kiss, Garza flees, aghast at how she has succumbed to her passion for her superior officer. Besides, it wasn’t in her mission plan to find Cheloi a sympathetic character; not the person known as the Butcher of Sab-Iqur.

In Chapter Five of War Games, we find out a little more of Cheloi’s history. And, of course, while Garza may have escaped the Colonel once before, as her driver and aide, it’s inevitable that they talk alone again. After that first embrace, who will now say what to whom?

FAVOURITE CHAPTER QUOTES:

Cheloi: “There isn’t a military structure anywhere in the universe that’s airtight. They leak news, gossip and classified orders the way an antique spacesuit leaks atmosphere.”

Cheloi & Copan:
She looked at Copan. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you? Getting me to think of someone else besides Rumis.”
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
“Then, in that case, yes. I am trying to distract you.”
His face was serious, but his eyes twinkled.

Garza: Garza cleared her throat. In one hand she held the Colonel’s uniform, recently laundered. In the other, she held the late afternoon’s despatches. In both, she held her nervously beating heart.

I was waiting on confirmation of this, because there’s nothing worse than people ranting on about a dead author when s/he isn’t. But it appears that Robert Asprin is dead.

Asprin wrote the Myth (comedy fantasy) series of books, as well as the Phule (comedy military space opera, if you can believe it) series, and began the Myth books well before Terry Pratchett burst onto the scene. I think I’ve got them all. Asprin also wrote the shiniest, best EVER parody of EE ‘Doc’ Smith. I get a smile on my face even when thinking about it, and I last read that piece over a decade ago.

With his wife, he started up the Thieves’ World universe, in which various writers concoct stories within the universe. I’ll admit, I wasn’t a huge fan and much preferred his comedy work, but it was a new idea for its time and deserves recognition as such.

RIP Robert Asprin. You’ll be sorely missed.

Wow, has it been another week already? Chapter Four of War Games is now up at my site.

THE STORY SO FAR: For the first time since Garza was assigned as Cheloi’s driver, they are to have dinner together. But there are other events to ponder in between the blazing attraction between the two women, such as the recent military exercise that showed Cheloi a side of Garza that was unexpected. As for Garza, all is not as it appears either.

Today also marks the debut release of Touch of Fire, written by my very good friend, Maria. Here’s the cover:

Isn’t it gorgeous? Follow the link to the Samhain page about Maria’s book and go buy it!

I haven’t done one of these grab bags for a long while, so here’s what tickled my fancy this past week.

Firstly, I won second prize at agent Jenny Rappaport’s blog, celebrating the second anniversary of Lit Soup. The idea was to come up with an opening paragraph containing the following words: kerfuffle, whit, lenticular, wimple, and flabbergasted. You can read the three winning entries here. I gets books! And outside the United States, too! Thanks Ms Rappaport. Ah, a lovely start to the day.

Cracked magazine has the top 7 conspiracies that actually happened. It may be a reflection of my general knowledge / conspiracy theory-ness / political breadth / fund of questionable facts that I already know all of them, and assumed other people did too.

This YouTube offering on Hillary Clinton (beware, there’s lots of written profanity), titled “Hillary’s Downfall” is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.

And I wonder what Romancelandia is going to make of the latest research into male and female orgasms that’s currently published in Scientific American (via Boing Boing)? Essentially, neuroscientist Gert Holstege, said that (last sentence of page 3, if you’re reading the article): “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.” Uh-huh. Climaxing robots. T’riffic.

Have a good weekend, all.

Shamelessly self-promotional, I know, but just wanted to let you know that Chapter Three of my free serialised novel, War Games, is up on my site.

Ahem, for anyone who’s interested …

THE STORY SO FAR: Senior Colonel Cheloi Sie is the cool, disciplined commander of Territory Nineteen, a strategic area of land that’s being held by the Perlim Empire in its bid to crush the rebels on its satellite planet of Menon IV. Her fiercest ally is her adjutant, Major Rumis Swonnessy, and her deadliest enemy is her second-in-command, Sub-Colonel Koul Grakal-Ski.

Two months after Cheloi’s driver/aide is killed in an apparent rebel attack, a replacement is found, but all it does is increase Cheloi’s suspicions, because her new driver is attractive and female … and Koul found her. Is she really who she says she is? Is she really who Koul says she is? Despite her reservations, Cheloi finds herself attracted to her aide. As is her adjutant, Rumis.

Read Chapter Three for a twist in the tale…

You remember how I described War Games as my “platypus” of fiction, because it seems to be neither one thing nor the other? Well, Good Morning Silicon Valley (of all places) had a lovely little piece on platypus research a week ago. I can’t improve on John Murrell’s always scintillating prose, so here it is, courtesy of GMSV:

The platypus (in this case named Glennie) has 18,500 genes, 82 percent of which it shares with the human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken. The rest form a record of evolution working to sort out the differences between reptiles and mammals some 160 million years ago. From the reptile side, it has genes for laying eggs and for making the snake venom it stores in its legs. On the mammalian side, it has genes for antibacterial proteins and lactation (though it didn’t get the code for nipples; Nature does love her little jokes). And instead of having just two chromosomes involved in sex determination (like our X and Y), it has 10, and the researchers aren’t sure what the heck to make of that. In scientific terms, said Richard Wilson, director of the genome center at Washington University in St. Louis, all of this makes it ‘a wacky organism.’ ‘There is nothing quite as enigmatic as a platypus,’ said Richard Gibbs, who directs the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. ‘You have got these reptilian repeat patterns and these more recently evolved milk genes and independent evolution of the venom. It all points to how idiosyncratic evolution is.’

For the originating articles go here (full article is not free) and here. If you’re wondering how a lactating animal can feed its young without nipples (and you are, aren’t you?), be aware that the milk oozes from patches of skin on the mother’s belly. No issues with “latching” there!

I’m proud to associate War Games with such a “wacky” specimen of Earth biology.

Yes, it’s that time again! The first of two scheduled monthly podcasts at Radio Free Bliss. And this time, it’s Carol Lynne at the mic.

I have to say, Carol was a bit of a surprise. She is so down-to-earth and such a reasonable person to talk to. She describes herself as “simple”, but I prefer “uncomplicated” or “unaffected”. Maybe this is my fault because, in my mind, I was expecting a much more flamboyant character but, regardless of my initial assumptions, her passion for what she writes, and her love for her home-state of Kansas, shine through.

Please do go over to the Radio Free Bliss site and have a listen to the interview. Thanks for sharing your time with me, Carol.

One thing I try to do when writing a story is to pitch the technology right. The Fusion has things that the Republic, for example, wouldn’t have. Travel in the Fusion is always FTL (Faster Than Light) and always safe. It’s something the inhabitants take for granted. The Republic, on the other hand, has to rely on a network of ‘creases’ in another dimension they call ‘hyperspace’, and try to deal with the risks and anomalies that arise from using a medium they don’t fully understand.

The Fusion has such wonderful constructs as working dysons and semi-dysons, whereas the Republic can barely get by with limited terraforming and some anarchic asteroid mining communities living in low-grav. What are these societies’ timelines? On reflection, I think of the Republic as being about 400 years into the future, and the Fusion around 900 years (although the Fusion doesn’t even know Earth exists, so they might be very advanced yet contemporaneous). With such future societies, the issue then becomes making the technology advanced yet accessible.

People are fond of saying that if you plunked a person from Victorian England into the world of today, s/he wouldn’t recognise very much of it. They also quote Moore’s Law that posits, by corollary, a phenomenal increase, almost doubling, in the speed and sophistication of digital electronic devices every few years. While the law itself has proven to be true so far, I believe there’s a basic flaw in the surrounding thinking. Technology itself may have advanced, but the wholesale application of technology has not.

What I’m trying to say is, there is still no universal level of technological sophistication in the world. For every Silicon Valley, for example, there are dozens of unpowered villages, where the inhabitants live their lives in much the same way as their forebears did. Furthermore, all it takes to reduce an advanced edifice like the Valley to the level of more primitive villages is just one natural and capricious disaster. Think of any place around the world after a natural disaster, whether earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, or winter storms. Regardless of which country they took place in, the level of the subsequent technology is pretty well equivalent across locations (i.e. almost nil).

We are not as advanced as we like to think, and to say otherwise is, I feel, hubris on the part of those of us who have been exposed, and inured, to much of modern Western civilisation. On balance, if we average out every person’s experience of technology on Earth, I think we’d find that we are much less advanced than we’d hoped.

So what does this have to do with writing a sci-fi romance set four centuries in the future? Well, I try to use familiar terms so the reader can relate to what I’m trying to describe, and I do it for three reasons:

(1) I don’t want unfamiliar words to interfere with the plot,

(2) I want to establish some commonality between the present and my setting to evoke more reader empathy,

and, most importantly for the purposes of this blog,

(3) I really don’t think our applied technologies will advance at a cracking pace.

In a blog I wrote before the end of the year, I mentioned fleetingly that sf writers even 60 years ago were predicting such things as portable nuclear reactors, disposable paper clothing, meals in a pill, and fully functioning artificially intelligent robots to help us with our tedious chores. Also, by now, we were supposed to have mostly self-sufficient human bases on the moon and Mars, and beneath our oceans. It’s a measure of how much of a disconnect there is between technological advances and the human condition (sociology/psychology/politics) that we’re nowhere near there yet, despite our obvious technical and intellectual prowess. And it is that, I feel, that will keep the level of technology for humans rising only slowly and steadily across the world — and I don’t rule out some astounding stumbles — rather than in fantastical leaps and bounds.

In essence, our nature is our own worst enemy.