The Rings Of Earth

A Brief History of Tanusha

Following on from my world-building piece about ‘Sasha’, I thought I’d do something similar for the ‘Cassandra Kresnov Series’.

Obviously there’s a fair few scientific improbabilities in Cassandra’s world, starting with Earthlike planets of roughly similar gravity, atmosphere, etc. My technical excuse is that the primary scientific improbability (faster than light travel) gives humanity such a wide range that even if such worlds are a million to one, humanity now has access to tens of millions of stars, so logically there are quite a few million-to-one shots inside that range. But the real point of a story like Cassandra’s is not to ponder scientific accuracy, it’s to tell a good story. So long as it’s vaguely plausible, science shouldn’t get in the way. Besides which, no one has any real idea how many Earthlike planets there are... maybe there’s plenty, just waiting for us to figure a way to reach and colonise.

Tanusha is one such planet. We never really see the planet because we’re concentrated where most of the people are, in the city of Tanusha. Tanusha has 57 million people at the time of ‘Crossover’, though even by ‘Killswitch’ it’s gone up a million or so. It’s a boomtown, and was planned that way from inception. For one thing, environmentalists have it wrong when they oppose large cities, putting people into big cities keeps them out of the countryside, so all environmentalists should be fans of skyscrapers -- cities that aren’t allowed to grow upward will grow outward instead, eating natural land as they go. Dense cities are also more economically productive, which is not to say farmers are unnecessary (though with futuristic hydroponics, synthetic food replication etc, who knows?) only to say that the more we move into the future, the less significant farming becomes as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product in any economy. That still leaves us with mining, but again with nano-tech and replication technologies, who knows where minerals will be coming from?

Read the rest of it on my blog...

Vintage LotR Cover Art

I used to say 'I have re-read this novel every year since I first read it, when I was 12.' And that used to be true; but then last year, for whatever reason, I didn't get round to my annual re-read. And this year's nearly over. So I've decided to go through it again, before I run out of year.

Now, the point of this post is not to talk about the novel as such, so much as to flag up these beautiful, nay exemplary Pauline Baynes cover illustrations. Let me hear you say 'oooh!' ('oooh!'). Click on them and they should become enlarged.

This was the edition in which I first read LotR (my mother's old edition, I think). When I discovered it again in a charity shop [thrift shops, I believe they're called, Stateside] for the absurd price above indicated I couldn't resist buying it, and adding it to the four (or five; I'm not sure) editions of the title I already own.

But I hope it's not merely rank nostalgia that makes me say: it's a lovely cover. Even the Victorian Playbill title font works. I love the way there's an outer frame of stylised trees (with orcs lurking in the roots) surrounding an inner frame of stylised trees, itself surrounding a vertically stacked perspective of more trees, houses, hills and mountains. The visual idiom is a perfectly pitched Edwardian-Medieval, spot-on for the novel. And there's a canny little visual push-pull about the way the picture invites the eye to run up from the miniature figures at the bottom through the landscape they must traverse to the mountains at the top, at the same time that the words of the title invite the eye to work their way down from 'The' to 'Rings'. Very clever.

The back is lovely too. Those kiln-shaped mountains and towers! Like pottery models. And the sea-blue barrenness of peaks and troughs. I suppose imagery from the cinema versions will, nowadays, tend to overwrite other visual realisations; but for me these pictures will always hold a special place.

For Your Viewing Pleasure: Gardens of the Sun

Gardens of the Sun© Paul McAuley

Cover Illustration © Sparth
Design by Jacqueline Cooke

The Quiet War is over. The city states of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have fallen to the Three Powers Alliance of Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community. A century of enlightenment, rational utopianism and exploration of new ways of being human has fallen dark. Outers are herded into prison camps and forced to collaborate in the systematic plundering of their great archives of scientific and technical knowledge, while Earth's forces loot their cities, settlements and ships, and plan a final solution to the 'Outer problem'. But Earth's victory is fragile, and riven by vicious internal politics. While seeking out and trying to anatomise the strange gardens abandoned in place by Avernus, the Outers' greatest genius, the gene wizard Sri Hong-Owen is embroiled in the plots and counterplots of the family that employs her. The diplomat Loc Ifrahim soon discovers that profiting from victory isn't as easy as he thought. And in Greater Brazil, the Outers' democratic traditions have infected a population eager to escape the tyranny of the great families who rule them. After a conflict fought to contain the expansionist, posthuman ambitions of the Outers, the future is as uncertain as ever. Only one thing is clear. No one can escape the consequences of war - especially the victors. 

Kristine Kathryn Rusch signing at North by Northwest Books and Antiques

COME MEET  KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

LINCOLN CITY’S

BEST KNOWN AUTHOR OF SCIENCE FICTION & MYSTERY

SATURDAY NOV. 21TH

AT 12.00 PM.
KRISTINE
WILL BE READING AND SIGNING
DIVING INTO THE WRECK

THE FIRST BOOK IN A WONDERFUL NEW SCIENCE FICTION SERIES.

STANDS UP TO THE BEST OF ASIMOV AND HEINLEIN

MEET “BOSS”, ONE OF THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION CHARACTERS SINCE LAZARUS LONG

Tense and gripping.... The endlessly enjoyable terror of dark, alien, empty spaces brimming with unknowable danger and impenetrable mystery should keep fans of the genre hooked

North by Northwest Books and Antiques

6334 S.HWY 101 #9
STREET CAR VILLAGE
LINCOLN CITY, OR 97367
541-994-6809
mcarthurca@earthlink.net


REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED
SINK YOUR TEETH INTO SHIPWRECK COOKIES

Publishing 2.0: What Would Apple Do?

Publishing 2.0. What Would Apple Do?

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Sasha: Are We Seeing a Common Theme Here?

"...quite engrossing... this heroic fantasy should please fans of, say, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels." Booklist

"Shepherd has created a court fantasy similar to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire....a good epic fantasy that focuses more on the epic than the fantasy. Sashais excellent reading for fans of character driven stories. I recommend it." Grasping for the Wind

"Sasha was excellent, especially given that this is Joel Shepherd’s first fantasy novel. It offers a huge fantasy world, a fascinating heroine, heart-pounding descriptions of both small-scale sword fights and full-on warfare, several characters that genuinely grow and change, and — maybe most importantly — the hint that this is just the start of what could become a great series. While I wouldn't rank it quite as high as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, I think Sasha will go down very well with fans of that series because it shares some of its characteristics, including its huge scope and cast, its focus on politics and noble intrigue, and (at least in the early novels of ASoIaF) the almost complete absence of magic and mystical creatures. " Fantasy Literature