PJ Interviews Sarah Hoyt on “Darkship Thieves”

Over at PJ Lifestyle, Patrick Richardson interviews author Sarah Hoyt about her SF novel “Darkship Thieves”, which recently won the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Award for best novel.

What I found particularly interesting about the interview is Hoyt’s experience with other writers and publishers regarding her political leanings. Having grown up with Heinlein, I generally expect science fiction to be a pro-liberty, optimistic genre – even after cancelling my Analog subscription after 25 years because of its ongoing drift towards a “progressive” perspective.

She also makes some good points about the future of publishing, akin to what we have discussed a few times in this blog (prompted by her comments, appropriately enough). Who knows if or how much new science fiction is really being locked out of the market because of the political leanings of the publishing gatekeepers — but with e-books having such easy access and low prices, will it really matter much longer? All that is needed to ensure the circulation of such books now is a means to locate and promote authors and stories with desired points of view.

What I’m thinking of is along the lines of a talent scout crossed with a restaurant critic, where an motivated reader scours the field for new material, finds what he likes, and promotes it to others. If their reviews and recommendations prove useful and informative to a like-minded segment of readers, they can become a trusted source or “brand”. To some degree, I think Glenn Reynolds has happened into a role like this – his own known libertarian leanings give a certain weight to even his trademark “in the mail” references to SF books.

Further evolution of this concept might turn this figurative brand into a literal one – like a small-label music producer, this trusted scout/reviewer might take a more pro-active role, assisting the writers they discover with improving their work and promoting them with a label that unfamiliar readers might associate with quality and an amenable perspective. Hoyt’s publisher Baen Books appears to be reinventing itself along similar lines (albeit on a different foundation and on a different scale). Given the emergence of e-books and blogs, the only barrier to any random reader doing this from scratch would seem to be the time and effort it takes to find and review the material and develop the reputation. This means that rather than one perspective manning the gates to the entire industry (and keeping out unwelcome intruders), there is the opportunity for an enormous diversity of viewpoints to flourish and gain reader attention. These hypothetical “boutique e-publishers” could take up the editorial and marketing roles traditionally performed by the print houses, at lower cost and with better alignment to underserved micro-segments of the science fiction market.

I feel compelled to address at least one of Hoyt’s other points as well, that being the ‘science fiction is entertainment, not preaching’. As anyone who has read In the Shadow of Ares can attest, we do spend some time expanding on certain libertarian ideas. For a novel directed exclusively at adults, I fully agree: nobody likes to be overtly lectured on ideas or principles they already share, and blatant lectures will do little to persuade those who aren’t already like-minded. ITSOA has been criticized by a few readers doing just this, but then, our book is directed at the young adult market. We made the conscious decision to make some of the philosophy in the book a bit more overt than we otherwise might have precisely because we expected to be introducing these ideas to unfamiliar readers. So, if you haven’t yet read the book, be aware that it does include a few expository excursions…

* — The word ‘libertarian’ is used in the broad sense here, not referring to the Libertarian Party but to pro-liberty and small-government political, social, and economic ideals.

Kindle Million-Seller

Well, this certainly puts to rest any qualms I had about e-publishing In the Shadow of AresSelf Publishing Writer Becomes Million Seller:

John Locke, 60, who publishes and promotes his own work, enjoys sales figures close to such literary luminaries as Stieg Larsson, James Patterson and Michael Connelly.

His remarkable achievement is being hailed as a milestone of the internet age and the beginning of a revolution in the way that books are sold.

Instead the DIY novelist has relied on word of mouth and a growing army of fans of his crime and western novellas that he has built up online thanks to a website and twitter account.

But unlike these heavyweights of the writing world, he has achieved it without the help of an agent or publicist – and with virtually no marketing budget.

Interesting. We’ve got about, oh, 999,000 sales to go to catch up, so help spread the word!

Inspiration From Real-Life Experience

Somehow, somewhere, I lost my Blackberry yesterday.

Yes, of course, I did all the usual things to try to find it: searched high and low, called it using the land line, rooted around under the seat in the car. But it was no use, it went missing somewhere between Conifer and Five Points (north of downtown Denver) and isn’t coming back. When I mentioned this to Carl, it prompted us to wonder what would happen if someone similarly misplaced their MA? How might we use this as a story element, if a character had a habit of doing so?

In our fictional universe, MAs are vital pieces of personal equipment. More important than a mere cellphone and more powerful than even today’s smartphones, they serve a number of communications, information access, computation, organization, navigation, and safety functions. To someone who had grown up using an MA and had woven instant access to these functions into his daily routine, losing his MA would be akin to losing a part of his brain. It would be much more disruptive than what we experience today when (as also happened to me about two weeks ago) we lose internet service for a few days – in such instances we find other things to do, or other ways to accomplish what we would have done on the internet. But forty years from now, when our lives will be still more integrated with our information systems, this may be difficult or impossible. Loss of connectivity will be much more disruptive.

And not only disruptive, but potentially dangerous. If one loses his MA entirely (not merely its connection to information infrastructure), he loses the safety features built into it. On our Mars of 2051, this means that he may have no knowledge of current air composition or radiation conditions, for example, information which could have life-or-death importance at any time. As we showed in In the Shadow of Ares, this isn’t an idle concern. Amber and Grantham face the inconveniences and dangers associated with losing connectivity and with losing their MAs at different points in the story.

This is an issue you may see arise in the sequels…

A Look Back at Themes

I was dusting off some files from the early development of In the Shadow of Ares, and in a way it was like flipping through baby pictures.  Included was a summary of themes we were aiming to include in the book, classified as “General” and “Exploration”, and I think we achieved our goals:

General:

  • Positive future
  • Technology is good
  • Capitalism is good
  • Realism
  • Reason wins
  • We need a frontier

Exploration:

  • Exploration is not without risk
  • Simpler is better
  • Live off the land
  • Exploration and settlement go together
  • Settlement and the role of property rights

We’ve been asked if the sequels will share the “pioneer” theme of the first book, which I suppose is included in the above.  The sequel picks up two years later, and will include more cosmopolitan settings than the first book, but it’ll still be a new, untamed world.  Several of the other familiar themes will be present (though perhaps de-emphasized because they are less critical to the story), plus a few yet-to-be-revealed.

Concrete-Forming Robots for Mars

It may not be intended for use on Mars, but this is what we had in mind when we wrote about teleoperated “formers” building the foundations for the Green’s agricultural domes.

Well, not exactly for Mars, but this is what we had in mind when we wrote about teleoperated “formers” building the foundations for the Green’s agricultural domes – Buildings Made with a Printer:

Some areas would have strong, dense concrete, but in areas of low stress, the concrete could be extremely porous and light, serving only as a barrier to the elements while saving material and reducing the weight of the structure. In these non-load bearing areas, it could also be possible to print concrete that’s so porous that light can penetrate, or to mix the concrete gradually with transparent materials. Such designs could save energy by increasing the amount of daylight inside a building and reducing the need for artificial lighting. Eventually, it may be possible to print efficient insulation and ventilation at the same time. The structure can be complex, since it costs no more to print elaborate patterns than simple ones.

Other researchers are developing technology to print walls and other large structures. Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of industrial and systems engineering and civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, has built a system that can deposit concrete walls without the need for forms to contain the concrete. Oxman’s work would take this another step, adding the ability to vary the properties of the concrete, and eventually work with multiple materials.

We devised a similar idea for In the Shadow of Ares as a means of building large structures on Mars without the need for a large construction crew and the sorts of construction equipment, specialized forms, etc. used to cast concrete on Earth. In our case, it was a reasonable application of the speculative technology already established in the novel (specifically the simulacrum intelligence used in MAs and the robotics employed in diggers).

Mars Society Links to “In the Shadow of Ares”

I missed this a couple weeks back, but the Mars Society linked to In the Shadow of Ares. Unfortunately it isn’t a review of the book, so there’s no telling what they thought of it. 

The Mars Society has an important role in bringing about ITSOA. The Ares mission design is of course derived from Mars Direct, MS founder Bob Zubrin’s brainchild. Carl and I know each other through the old Louisiana chapter of the Mars Society, which we helped found back in 2000. And the idea for the book originated from a panel discussion on Mars in science fiction at the 2001 Mars Society Conference at Stanford University.

Fog on Mars

This report on a newly-released analysis of data from the Phoenix lander pretty closely describes what we had in mind for the “yardang” scene…only in reverse.

This report on a newly-released analysis of data from the Phoenix lander pretty closely describes what we had in mind for the “yardang” scene…only in reverse – Martian-Fog Study Finds Thick Haze, “Diamond Dust”:

“Heat from the air is lost to the ground, so the air close to the ground gets colder, and as that pocket of [cold] air gets larger,” more water vapor in the atmosphere condenses into ice crystals, and the fog gets thicker, Moores said.

“The fog starts closer to the ground and rises in height over time, so the cloud gets thicker and thicker and higher and higher as the night goes on,” he added.

Eventually the icy haze begins to shower the ground with a light sprinkling of snowlike particles. The shower is not quite snowfall, the scientists say, but is perhaps more akin to the “diamond dust” that falls from the skies on some cold nights in Earth’s Arctic regions.

Some 0.0001 inch (2.5 micrometers) of frost coats the Martian surface by the time the sun begins to rise in the morning. That icy layer then sublimates—turns directly from a solid to a gas.

In our case, the resulting frost at first sublimates into a fog as sunlight hits it, then rapidly dissipates. It may be a bit of literary license (or not — there’s no saying that what we described doesn’t happen), but it’s not far off from observed reality.

Suits for Mars

They’re not quite skinsuits, but someone is thinking ahead to what sort of suits future Mars settlers will need.

Wikipedia has a useful backgrounder on the skinsuit (aka “mechanical counterpressure suit” or “space activity suit”), which includes the basis for several details of how the concept is applied in In the Shadow of Ares. But if you’re more into a retro-look, Jeff Foust reviews of a new book on the development history of the Apollo lunar spacesuits.

Mars Needs…More Movies

I took the family to see Mars Needs Moms Friday, and for the most part the trepidation I expressed in an earlier post was unwarranted.

Despite some flat/cheesy dialogue I felt the screenplay did a nice job of extending a 700-word book to feature film length.  The movie was reasonably consistent with the book, while the new characters and subplots added depth to the original narrative.  Even the obligatory kid elements (gadgets, colors, slides, etc.) were generally plot-relevant and less annoying than other adaptations I have had to sit through.

Visually, Mars Needs Moms was impressive, though the human characters still suffer from the “dead-eye” that afflicts so much computer animation.  Among the humans, the character Gribble was well animated, but Milo and his Mom left something to be desired.  The Martians were interesting enough, though I have to say I found their lower bodies a bit disturbing to look at.

As for technical accuracy, the movie fared quite well.  Keeping in mind that it was based on a short, illustrated story, I was OK with the filmmakers keeping the imagery in the climactic scene where the characters are wearing helmets and ordinary clothing on the Martian surface.  I felt there was an effort to compensate for that by making the rest of the film more scientifically accurate, including using a wormhole to shorten the months-long Earth-Mars transit, and showing the lower Martian gravity (though as portrayed it looked closer to lunar gravity to me).

The most important critics, my 5, 8 and 10-year-old daughters, loved Mars Needs Moms, as did my wife.  I’d recommend it to anyone with children.  As for me, I enjoyed it though I’m still looking forward to a Mars movie that is simultaneously entertaining and realistic.