Joe Vasicek

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

I first picked up this book two and a half years ago, when I was still trying to read a novel a week. I’ve got to be honest; this was the book that made me break that new years resolution. It is freaking huge, and some points are more interesting than others.

That said, this is an awesome piece of hard science fiction. Lots of people have written about Mars, but very few have done it believably. Kim Stanley Robinson does an job here–you can tell that he put in a ton of research, both into Martian geography (areology?) and feasible technology.

When I read science fiction, however, that’s not what I generally read for. I’m more interested in characters, conflict, and thematic elements–in other words, the stuff that makes for a good story. As far as that stuff goes, my opinion of Red Mars is somewhat mixed.

For example, the first chapter starts out with a murder, as seen from the point of view of the murderer. Right away, I’ve got a reason not to sympathize with the main viewpoint character. When we get into his mind and I see his motivations for killing the character, I like him even less–and he’s one of the main, driving characters.

Some of the characters are more sympathetic, and I enjoyed the sections in their point of view. Others, however, were just plain boring–I neither loved them nor despised them. Because of this, a lot of the character drama early in the novel didn’t engage me much; stuff was happening, but I didn’t really care.

When it comes to setting, Red Mars is also somewhat mixed. Robinson goes to great depths to describe the Martian landscape, and several of his setting descriptions were quite interesting and wonderful. At the same time, he explains everything in a very clinical, scientific way–his imagery is never as poetic and captivating as Ray Bradbury’s, or Ursula K. Le Guin’s, or George R. R. Martin’s. I came away with a lot more knowledge about Mars, but not quite as much of a sense of wonder.

Things did get interesting once the political tensions started to come into play. Robinson’s portrayal of the colonization of Mars raises a lot of interesting questions about the political relationship between Earth and Mars once those colonies start to become self-sufficient. He follows things through right to the war for independence, and the implications of the conflict are quite interesting. I finished the last hundred pages or so at a sprint.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you’re already a fan of hard science fiction. Like most hard sf, character and conflict plays second string to scientific plausibility. Within its sub-genre, however, Red Mars is awesome. Let’s just put it this way: even though I got bored with it the first time, I knew I would one day pick it up and finish it. I don’t regret that I did.

When life gets in the way

Just a quick post before I go to bed. Things are coming along well with the revision of Mercenary Savior–I fully expect to be finished by next week (hopefully by Tuesday).

That said, these past couple of days have been very unproductive, and it’s been very frustrating. I feel as if tons of little things have been getting in the way.

Work is from 3:00 to 6:00, which can be nice but breaks the day in half, and donating plasma always seems to suck up a ton of time. Besides that, I’ve been applying for work, and THAT certainly takes up quite a bit of time mental space.

The main problem, though, is the urge to procrastinate. These little things wouldn’t pop up all the time if I 1) were unusually excited about this book, or 2) had the iron discipline to buckle down and just do it. I’m working on both of those, but in the meantime, it’s frustrating.

Still, I am producing. I wrote about 1.5k words yesterday, and 2.3k today. Nowhere near the 4k+/day I was hoping to write, but not bad. Things are progressing.

Part of it may be the fact that my only computer right now is a netbook. Netbooks are nice for traveling (I carry mine literally everywhere), but they aren’t great as primary machines. Also, they tend to break down faster than regular laptops. Mine’s probably got another year left, but the wear and tear is starting to show.

To remedy that, I’m thinking very seriously of building my own computer. Tomorrow, BYU is having a surplus sale, and I’m hoping to pick out a decent LCD monitor or two, plus a keyboard and mouse. I’ve picked out all the other parts online (I’ll blog about that later), but I’ll probably hold off until the end of the month to buy them all. I want to prove to myself that I can make more money in a month than I spend.

I know that a new computer won’t solve my writing problems, but it will be really cool, and it is something that I need–if not this very second, then at least before my netbook breaks down. Plus, I’m hoping to learn a lot from the experience of building it from parts.

Other than that, things are good. I will definitely finish Mercenary Savior by next week before CONduit, and the revision is significantly better than the old draft. Before long, inshallah, I’ll have another manuscript to float around with editors/agents.

Book Festival and other updates

So last Friday, there was a book fair at the Provo Library. I only heard about it the night before from Facebook, but there were almost twenty authors on the guest list, so I figured it would be a good place to go to meet other writers. I wasn’t mistaken!

I biked up to the library just as Brandon Sanderson was walking in. We chatted for a while, caught up on stuff since the last time I took his class. I almost got to walk into the author’s only lounge with him, but one of the staff stopped me. One of these days, though…one of these days!

I also ran into Dan Wells, who remembered me from World Fantasy and gave me a very nice compliment: he said I was very good at approaching people, especially at conventions. Talked about the different cons this year; according to Dan, Dragoncon is going to be huge this year, since Worldcon is in Australia and World Fantasy is in Ohio. I have a friend in Atlanta–I’ll have to look into attending that.

Brandon Sanderson, Clint Johnson, Mette Ivie Harrison, and J. Scott Savage did a panel on writing fantasy. Fortunately, I had my mp3 player on me and was able to record it. If you would like to listen to it, you can find it here:

Fantasy Panel, Provo Children’s Book Festival (15 May 2010)

Clint had some interesting advice for me after the panel; he asked about the books I’ve written and said I should submit them to YA agents/editors as well as mainstream adult agents/editors. Apparently, Genesis Earth and Mercenary Savior could work as YA, since 1) they’re about (relatively) young protagonists having coming-of-age experiences and learning how they want to live their lives, and 2) they don’t have the sense of nostalgia that adults often have when they think about their childhood.

So that was the Provo Children’s Book Festival. Let me just say, this is one of the reasons why I love Utah: the writing scene for fantasy/sf/YA is HUGE. Tons of writers, tons of readers, local writing events all the time–it’s great.

In other updates, I got a personalized rejection from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show! It was a pretty long one, too. The assistant editor said the writing was pretty good, but it felt too much like a novel. Hehe…confession, it was part of a novel. But that’s awesome that he thought the writing was good!

Besides that, he gave a lot of suggestions as to formatting, referring me to this site for detailed ms instructions. I didn’t think most editors would mind Times New Roman, but if it’s an issue even for a few of them, I should probably just switch to Courier–no editor is going to fault me for using Courier.

Besides all that, I’m well on my way to finishing Mercenary Savior 3.0 before CONduit. My goal right now is to finish it next Tuesday and spend Wednesday and Thursday sending it out. After CONduit, I plan on starting Hero in Exile (except the name will change), and I have a TON of great ideas for it. Funny how sometimes in order to finish a book, you need to write another one first.

Untitled

Man, I don’t write for this blog as much as I should.

Life is going well. I just recently got a part time job doing telephone surveys; hopefully, it will help tide things over until I can get something better. Between that and donating plasma, I should be able to pay the bills for the next couple of months.

I’ve also been writing quite a bit, hitting between 2k and 4k words per day. At this rate, Mercenary Savior 3.0 should be finished by the end of next week. That’s good, because I’m excited to start submitting it. I’ve already got Genesis Earth making the rounds, but the sooner I can get another project out there, the better.

For my next project after , I want to recycle Hero in Exile (ugh, it needs a new title) and turn that into a complete novel. I have a lot of ideas for it, but it will require some research, which may delay the actual start date.

For example, the main character (who I’m going to rename) has this major conflict where he’s trying to go home. As a young boy, his parents put him in an escape pod that crash landed on the planet, where he was raised by the locals. As the writer, I’m going to need to know about adoptions, know a handful o f adoption stories to pattern things off of, and maybe read a couple of essays on the meaning of “home.”

As another example, one of the major themes I want to get across is the struggle to maintain personal moral integrity in a morally corrupt world. I probably won’t have to look too far for that–being Mormon has given me lots of opportunities for research there–but I need to do a lot more to be aware of that particular conflict. When you’re slogging away, it’s very easy to focus too much on plot and no enough on the rest.

Probably the biggest preparation is going to be working through the character motivations, and that inevitably means building a background, since motivations grow out of the character’s history and background. But that’s going to involve a fair degree of pre-writing, which I may or may not be able to do before I start page one.

And that’s another scene; I’ve got to completely revamp the beginning. What I have now involves the main character staring out over the desert just before a sandstorm. Picturesque, but essentially navel gazing with little real character development. Instead, I want to show him thinking or doing something that reveals the central, most important aspect of his character, the way Brandon Sanderson did it in Elantris.

So anyways, lots of work to look forward to, in terms of writing that is. Other kinds of work…well, it’s good to have a sense of security. Even though I’ve been producing a lot, I’m sure I could have been producing more (upwards of 6k or 8k per day) if I’d had that sense of security provided.

Anyways, there is more that I could say, but I’m going to go to bed because it’s freaking 2:22 AM. Night.

Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin

Worlorn is a planet without a sun, wandering on the fringes of the galaxy where the skies are starless. Though it came to life briefly as it passed the red giant Fat Satan, those days are over, and the world is slowly dying.

Dirk T’Larien never thought he would find himself on such a forsaken world. But when his onetime lover, Gwen Delvano, sends him a plea for help, he realizes that more than anything, he wants to have her back.

It will not be easy, however. Gwen is betheyn to two men: Jaantony Vikary, whom she loves, and Garse Janacek, whom she hates. Both are from Kavalar, a warlike planet where offworlders are considered subhuman. And even though Worlorn is slowly dying, a colony of extremist Kavalars has taken root, planning to bring back the old ways when offworlders were hunted like beasts.

I picked up this book at Pioneer Books a couple weeks ago; I saw that it was by George R. R. Martin and decided to give it a try. I was very much impressed. For the last hundred pages, I couldn’t put it down, and the story haunted me for a couple days after I’d finished it.

The strongest element of the story was definitely the setting. The story may be set in a grand galactic empire with spaceships and alien worlds, but make no mistake, this beautiful piece of space opera reads more like fantasy than science fiction. There’s even a thirty page glossary of terms in the back, for ease of reference.

The effect of Martin’s grandiose worldbuilding is a haunting sense of wonder that keeps you, as the reader, hooked. The more you read, the more you immerse yourself in the world; and the more you immerse yourself, the more you want to read. After the story ends, you still find yourself thinking about the fantastic worlds, as if you’ve actually been there. It’s awesome.

Another thing that kept me hooked was the basic premise of the plot. The main character, Dirk T’Larien, is trying to win back the affection of an ex-girlfriend and get back together. That’s something with which I can definitely relate–the ex even has the same name (roughly) as a girl I once chased after (quite unrequitedly, may I add). Because of this, I was drawn into the story right away.

Martin is known for his plot twists, however, and though the story began as a basic love triangle, it very quickly became… something else. I’m not entirely sure how to describe it without giving major spoilers, but I will say that I found it impossible to predict how this story would end. I found that a lot more annoying than enjoyable, however–just when I thought things were headed in a certain direction, something happened to nullify everyone’s efforts and turn things completely around.

Despite this, however, the story…worked. I don’t know quite how to describe it. The basic markers were all there, even though they were jumbled in unpredictable patterns. No death was meaningless, no success was insignificant; there was no excess baggage in the story that didn’t somehow belong.

All around, it was a very good book. Kind of dark, but not nearly as edgy as I was expecting. This is definitely the kind of science fiction that a fantasy reader would go for–and probably most science fiction readers as well.

The time sink

Man, life is different outside of school. So much time, so little structure. I find that I either write a lot, or I get distracted on some side project and write almost nothing.

For example, my bike broke down last week. Since that’s currently my only form of transportation besides walking, I spent a good amount of time this week fixing it. In fact…I took it apart and completely rebuilt it on a new frame. It was fun, educational, satisfying, and a good way to meet girls, but it took a lot of time away from writing.

Job hunting is another example. I signed up with a temp agency this past week, but haven’t seen any work yet, so I’m still somewhat antsy. It’s not easy watching money leave when you have no way to replenish it. But when your mind is on getting a job, it’s very hard to think about anything else.

I dunno. Maybe I’m just very bad at multitasking. But tonight, for the first time in a few days, I put all that aside and completely submersed myself in the act of writing. Boy, it sucked up a lot of time…but at the end, it felt so good. So satisfying.

I need more of that, if I’m going to make this writing thing take off. Got to outline a space for every necessary thing (including writing) and be careful about not overfilling that space. Looking for work is good, but thinking about it so much that I don’t have time for other things, that’s not good.

In the meantime, I’ll try to find some balance and update this blog more often. It’s my only active blog now, so I figure I should write more frequently. One thing I want to do with this free time is read more; I read a George R. R. Martin book last week, and I’m finishing up Dave Wolverton’s On My Way To Paradise for the second time right now. Expect some book reviews in the near future.

(hmm…I wonder if I could find a way to review books and get paid for it?)

Life in the Real World

So it’s been a week since I graduated, and life in the “real world” is very different from academia. In some ways, it’s scary, but in other ways, it’s actually kind of fun.

Freedom from schoolwork is HUGE. Seriously, I had no idea how much day-to-day stress came from school until now. Without this or that assignment hanging over my head, I feel incredibly liberated. I can go wherever I want, or do whatever I feel like doing, and the only restrictions on my time are the ones I set for myself.

Of course, life isn’t stress free–far from it. Employment is definitely a problem. I need to find a job and start making some kind of an income. That’s the main stressor right now–how am I going to sustain myself?

In some ways, it’s kind of a game. I’ve got my budget lined up, with projected monthly expenses, and that tells me how much money I need to make to break even. The object of the game is to find creative ways to make that money.

This is what I spend most of my day doing. Some interesting prospects include:

Freelance editing. A roommate of a friend of mine has actually contracted with me to do this for a company he recently started. It isn’t steady work, but $40-$60 per job for basically reworking a piece of fantasy, it isn’t bad either.
Freelance translation. A friend of mine from the FLSR told me all about this. Basically, I just need to set up a free account at proz.com, post my resume, set up paypal, and start taking jobs. Again, it isn’t steady, but it’s promising.
Temp work. As luck would have it, there’s a temp agency across the street from my apartment, and a friend of mine already works there. It’s just filler until I get a real job, but it seems to pay fairly well, though the labor is mostly grunt work. Still, better grunt work than office work.
Working for a teleresearch company down the street. It isn’t the best kind of work, but it’s a job, it’s got flexible openings, and it’s local.
Anything legit on craigslist.
Anything from the Wilk boards (though it’s kind of skimpy right now).
Donating plasma. Hey, $65 a week is better than nothing.

So that’s what I’m thinking about doing to hold me over until I get a real job. My goal for May is to make more money than I spend.

Really, though, I don’t need a job for the money–I’ve got enough cash saved up to last at least through the summer. I need a job for the sense of security. It’s hard to focus on writing when I don’t know how I’m going to support myself.

Another danger with unemployment is the lack of structure. When you don’t have to get up and go to work, you find yourself getting up later and later. If you don’t have to do anything, you generally don’t accomplish very much. It’s hard to stay productive in the face of so much free time.

Still, I’m going to try. I’m keeping up with my writing, doing about 3k-4k words per day on the revision of Mercenary Savior. I’ve got a handful of submissions out on Genesis Earth, and I’m going to keep a steady number of submissions out at any time. I’ve also been submitting my unpublished short stories, so we’ll see where that goes.

In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a day job while I play the game of financial independence. It’s an adventure.

Graduation!

So last week, I graduated from college! That’s right: college is OVER! No more papers, no more homework, no more tests or quizzes or theses or final projects…at least until I decide I miss it all and go back to grad school.

It was a big week, not only because of the ceremonies, but because of all the family that came down for the event. It was great to see all my sisters, baby Jane, a bunch of my cousins who came down for our Italian barbeque (salad, lasagna, and garlic bread on the porch), and everyone else who came.

The ceremonies were interesting too. Elder Christofferson gave the commencement speech, and I was very pleased that he referenced Hugh Nibley. Man, if Nibley were still alive (or maybe if he could come back from the dead), it would be absolutely awesome if he could give the commencement address, but Elder Christofferson was pretty good too.

The convocation Friday was very long, but fortunately I snuck a novel in: Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin. Made some decent headway in it, too. There was a very interesting talk, though. One of the retiring faculty told a story from when she was a student in a wilderness class.

As they were making their way down a river canyon and came to the end of the bank, she thought to herself “it will be alright if I can just keep my boots dry.” As the water became deeper, that changed to “it will be alright if I can keep my pack dry.” Eventually, however, they had to swim, and everything got wet. Still, they made a fire, dried everything out, and had a good time.

The story was meant to illustrate that life in the real world is like that. When you start out, you worry about a lot of things, but when you look back after many years have passed, those small setbacks don’t seem like anything to worry too much about.

Well, that’s where I am right now: unemployed, looking for a plan for the next five years. My plan A is still to break into publishing, but I’m going to need a secondary career or day job to get by in the short to medium term. I have no idea what that entails, but at least I’m graduating debt free, with money in the bank. That helps.

Two years ago, I was terrified of graduating and setting out into the “real world.” A year ago, I realized I had grown out of college life and needed to move on. Now, I have no idea what I’m doing, but life is an adventure and I’m confident things will work out for the best.

Pluggin’ away

Wrote 2,889 words today, bringing the running 7-day total to just under 15,000 words. If I can keep this up for a month without lagging, I should be able to finish Mercenary Savior 3.0 in time for CONduit.

In the meantime, I’m looking for a job. A friend of mine who’s in Egypt right now told me about this interesting online freelance contractor, which looks like a promising source of cash in the short term. Sent in my application, inshallah will hear back soon. Payment is via paypal on a work for hire basis, with most writers / copy editors averaging $20-$25 per hour, so could be useful. No benefits, but what the heck.

In between writing and applying with the online writing place, I submitted Genesis Earth to a couple new places, and sent From the Ice Incarnate to IGMS. I don’t have many short stories, but I really need to send out the few I do have to more markets. Maybe I can pull out the first couple chapters of some of my novels and call them short stories and/or novellas. Wouldn’t hurt.

Graduation is coming up in less than 100 hours. My parents arrived in town about an hour ago, and the rest of the family should be coming shortly. It will be really good to see them–I’m looking forward to it.

That’s about it for now. I’ve got some other thoughts on jobs, dating, future plans, settling down, an article I’m writing for Mormon Artist, and the computer I want to build once I’ve got a job, but I’ll write about that later. Goodnight.

Old story notebook, part 3

Alright, it’s time to finish up with the old story notebook I discovered a couple of weeks ago. These ideas were written down back in 2007, when I was writing the first draft of Ashes of the Starry Sea. Without further ado:

In the future, people live in arcologies, and wars are fought outside by robots. It will be a new system of feudalism: arcologies are like castles or walled towns, and people won’t die in the wars, just change sides.

I’m not sure I knew very much about feudalism as an economic system back then, but the basic idea, I think, was that life would be localized in the arcologies and nationalism as a unifying principle would die out.

In the Middle Ages, warfare was basically a contest between nobles, and though it certainly disrupted the lives of the peasants, they didn’t really care which side they were on because it didn’t make a difference. Napoleon revolutionized the world because he galvanized the peasants through the new concept of nationalism and made them actually care about the outcome of the wars.

An AI falls in love with a CS major, but the CS major loves a real girl.

The Little Mermaid, with a modern twist. And the mermaid AI commits suicide by uploading herself to a trashy old computer that’s on the verge of crashing. The final scene shows the wrecked computer somewhere in rural China, being scrapped for the metal parts in a vat of toxic chemicals. Awesome.

A character who’s an android and sees the world in terms of numbers.

The story should revolve around the question: if math is a language, how do you say “I love you” in numbers?

An election where people can scientifically predict best and worst case scenarios, based on each candidate’s qualities and the world situation.

Political science may not be a hard science, but it is awesome for science fiction.

Voter preferences are normally distributed around a common mean, but parties choose opposing points of view because of an information shortfall about the nature of that mean. What if the information problem were solved?

We would have exactly two parties that are identical in every meaningful way…wait a minute…

Someone discovers a language that is intuitive in all humans and overcomes many barriers of language in describing the world.

Linguistics is good for sf&f, too.

What if galaxies themselves were sentient?

Sounds like something out of a Robert Charles Wilson novel. I love it!

A space colony that, due to information technology, is a pure democracy.

I’m using this idea right now in Mercenary Savior. When I first started planning the novel, I wanted to do a story about the Mongols in space, but I knew it would need more than that, so I thought “what if one of the places they invaded was this pure democracy?” As soon as I combined the two ideas, BAM! I had a story.

An advanced society without public education or health care.

Uggggh, don’t even want to go there. Not until Obama’s out of office.

The Mormon pioneer exodus in space.

I tried to use this idea with Hero in Exile, but for some reason it didn’t work. It was as if the story wanted to go in a completely different direction. Oh well–you win some, you lose some. Besides, it’s not a total loss; it’s always possible to recycle.

A kingdom that will be cursed if ruled by anyone other than a direct heir. What if the direct heir is a child?

An attempt to brainstorm some fantasy.

Robot prostitutes–one who has no feeling or emotion, but develops artificial intelligence. This is what will fuel the development of androids.

Sad, but true.

A spaceship so massive that it generates tides when it enters orbit.

Sounds like something out of Arthur C. Clarke.

A tomagachi becomes sentient and uploads itself to the internet. OR…an AI disguises itself as a tomagachi.

Tomagachis! Whatever happened to them? They were so trendy…for like six months in the 90s.

What if our most deeply held beliefs had the power, under the right circumstances, to turn into monsters–real, literal, fantastic beings of awesome power?

Now there’s an idea with some interesting potential. We could build battle arenas and watch our beliefs duke it out, literally. Which ones would win?

A society that values myths more than facts.

I’m sure that societies like this have actually existed–or may still exist today.

American suicide bombers.

Hey! It could happen.

Ghosts on a spaceship.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide…

A culture where kissing (or any other public display of romantic affection) initiates marriage.

Now THIS I would like to see, or maybe even use someday. It could be interesting.

And that concludes the old story notebook, bringing us to the end of 2008 when I finished Ashes of the Starry Sea and left for the 2008 BYU Jordan study abroad.