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On Basilisk Station by David Weber

The Honorverse is what Star Trek wants to be when it grows up.

That’s the best way I can put it. On Basilisk Station is the first book in the series known as the “Honorverse,” which taken as a whole is David Weber’s best known work. Like Star Trek, the Honorverse is a far-future sprawling space opera epic full of exotic planets, interstellar empires, big starships, and big space battles. Unlike Star Trek, though, the Star Kingdom of Manticore has a military that actually functions like a competent, professional military (most of the time), and doesn’t have stupid rules like the Prime Directive that exist solely for the characters to break them. Also, the technobabble isn’t just babble, and the practical implications of the science fiction technology are fully explored.

The thing I liked most about this book was the political intrigue, though the characters come in as a close second. In fact, the two are intricately connected, as the intrigue grows out directly from the interactions between the characters. Like Ender’s Game, it all comes down to leadership, and like Orson Scott Card, David Weber has a keen grasp on human nature and what it takes to be an effective leader—and an effective follower, for that matter.

But unlike Card, Weber also has a keen grasp on how governments and bureaucracies operate, for better or (more likely) for worse. None of the characters in On Basilisk Station operate in a vacuum; they are all constrained by their loyalties, duties, and responsibilities, and their place in the chain of command. They are also constrained by the organizations and nations to which they belong, which in turn have their own positons and agendas, some of which run contrary to the personal beliefs and convictions of the people within them.

Weber is a master not only at pitting smart, competent characters against each other, but at pitting bureaucracies, parties, and governments against each other in ways that make you root for the little guys caught in the middle of it all. And above all else, Honor Harrington is a character worth rooting for. In a fight between Honor and any Star Trek captain (with the possible exception of Kirk), my money would be on Honor.

On Basilisk Station was an excellent start to what promises to be a highly entertaining series. I look forward to reading more!

New short story goals

In the last few months, as I’ve reworked my business plan, I’ve put a lot of thought into what I want to do with short stories. I’ve written about two dozen of them so far, and while I don’t expect to be known as a short story writer, I do expect that short stories will play an important role in my career, especially with the way that the publishing world is changing.

Objectives

Short stories are a great way for readers to try out new authors, without all the cost in time or money of a novel. It’s also a great way to build a hybrid career, as the professional short story markets have few of the hangups of publishing a longer work with a traditional publisher. It’s not extremely lucrative, though there is money to be made. More than that, it’s a way to gain cache and build your brand, especially if your stories get picked up by a major magazine or anthology in your genre.

So that’s my main objective with short stories: to use them to build my author brand and grow my readership. Self-publishing plays a role in that, but not nearly as much as the professional markets.

Writing

To get picked up by the professional markets, I need to have stories to submit to them, which means that I need to be prolific. Consequently, my goal from here on out is to write a new short story each month. That’s a pace I can maintain that doesn’t interfere too much with my other writing. It can be refreshing to take a WIP break from time to time, and short stories only take a few days at the most.

I know that Dean Wesley Smith says that you should never revise anything, and I’ve been following that advice until now with my short fiction. However, I do feel that it can strengthen my writing significantly to cut the word count by 10%, especially for short fiction where the strongest writing tends to be economical. So I’ll most likely do that to all my stories from now on.

Submitting

In general when submitting, it’s best to start with the top-tier markets and work your way down. This is the order in which I prioritize my submissions:

  1. SFWA qualifying markets
  2. Professional paying markets (6¢ per word or higher)
  3. Semi-pro paying markets (between 1¢ and 5¢ per word)

I’m not sure if I’m going to bother with token paying markets (less than 1¢ per word). Probably not for anything other than reprints. They don’t really put me any closer to my goals. Also, I’m not sure if I actually want to join SFWA, but I do want to qualify for it through my short story sales. Never join a club that would have you as a member, etc etc.

As for non-paying markets, I’ve decided not to submit to them after all. It’s been pointed out to me that giving something away for free after you’ve charged other people money for it is a dick move. Also, there aren’t really any non-paying markets that would bring me closer to my goals. All of the markets with serious cache also pay professional rates, at least in science fiction.

Self-publishing

Until now, I’ve self-published my short stories either immediately after their first sale, or after I’ve submitted all of the professional markets. My guiding philosophy has been that unless there’s a significant opportunity elsewhere, it’s better to self-publish something than to keep it on your hard drive.

However, self-publishing short stories doesn’t help me get much closer to my objectives. Certainly keeping a bunch of singles up for sale doesn’t help much, and it might actually hurt by cluttering up my book pages. They’re good for the occasional newsletter giveaway, or for first-in-series and other stuff, but that’s about it.

Dean Wesley Smith says to charge $2.99 for individual short stories in order to get the higher royalty rate, but I’ve tried that for the last couple of years and haven’t seen much benefit from it. Unless you’re known as a short story writer, I just don’t think short stories are good for making money. Because of that, and also because I’m going to be using them for giveaways and promotions, I plan to sell all of my short fiction (under 10k words) for a token 99¢.

Considering how it’s rude to give something away for free immediately after selling it, I plan to refrain from self-publishing until both the first-publication and reprint markets have been exhausted. That’s because I plan to make my short stories free when I first self-publish them, at least for the initial few weeks. Again, better to put something out for free and raise the price than it is to charge for it at first and make it free later.

When enough short stories have accumulated to put into a bundle, then I’ll unpublish all but the one or two best-rated or most popular singles, and put a link to the bundle in the back of those. In that way, the short story singles will help to sell the bundles, which make more money anyway, since I plan to charge $4.99 for them. This also helps to clean up the book pages, by replacing singles with bundles over time.

So that’s the plan. Submit until all professional and semi-pro markets have been exhausted, then self-publish as singles until there’s enough to put in a bundle. And hopefully sell a bunch of stories to the major markets.

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold

I love the Vorkosigan books. Miles isn’t in this one, but a bunch of other characters are. It’s the same universe, with the same fascinating history, just with a bunch of new and interesting complications.

Ethan is from a world where women do not exist. The uterine replicator has rendered them obsolete, and a colony of fundamentalist MGTOWs has established a functional society where everyone is male and no one has ever seen or interacted with a dreaded female. But make no mistake, Ethan is not a MGTOW. He’s Athos’s best doctor: professional, responsible, and conscientious to a fault. And that’s why the council of elders has sent him on a mission to acquire female reproductive cultures before the ones on Athos all die out.

Along the way, he gets caught up with the Dendarii mercenaries, specifically one Commander Elli Quinn, and is soon caught up in the machinations of the Cetegandans and House Bharaputra, who are involved in some less-than-ethical bioengineering schemes that have brought the galaxy to the verge of war. If Ethan fails his mission, Athos itself might be nuked back to the stone age. But that is nothing compared to his most difficult task: learning how to work with a woman.

This book was a lot of fun! I have yet to read a bad book by Lois McMaster Bujold, and this one certainly didn’t disappoint. Lots of action and adventure, with dashing, resourceful heroes and frighteninginly comptetent villains. The all-male society of Athos was both fascinating and eminently believable, given the technology, and the interstellar espionage was loads of fun.

This isn’t the best place to start if you’ve never read any Bujold, but if you’ve already read The Warrior’s Apprentice and a couple of other Miles Vorkosigan adventures, you’ll really appreciate this book. Definitely one of the highlights of the series.

Should I submit to non-paying markets?

I’ve recently gotten back into writing and submitting short stories, and this is one of the questions on my mind.

Don’t get me wrong: I still believe in the top-down approach to short stories, where you start with the highest paying markets and work your way down. And I’m not going to write anything specifically for a non-paying market, unless it’s a charity anthology. That just doesn’t make any sense.

But what about a story that you’ve already sold somewhere, already self-published, and the non-paying market only wants non-exclusive reprint rights? I understand the pay-the-writer argument, and that’s certainly one approach, but there’s also the Jonathan Coulton, song-a-day, be prolific and fill the world with your work approach.

As far as I can tell, here are the pros and cons of publishing a short story with a non-paying market after it’s already been published:

Pros:

  • Improved chances of winning an award
  • Improved chances of appearing in a “best of” anthology
  • Networking opportunities with other publishing professionals
  • More readers will find you
  • More publishing credentials
  • Makes you part of a community

Cons:

  • Could damage author brand if publisher is non-reputable
  • Violates Kant’s categorical imperative
  • Costs too much in time and effort

What sayest thou?

Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

As a general rule, Heinlein novels are either really controversial (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), really meta (The Number of the Beast), really fun (Citizen of the Galaxy), or some combination of all three (Starship Troopers). Farmer in the Sky is one of the really fun ones.

This novel was written before the Apollo 11 moon landing, but it read like something from an alternate reality long after that pioneering era, where the space program never slowed down. For that reason alone, it was a fascinating book. You can really see how it inspired people back in the 50s and 60s to reach for the stars.

More than that, it was really fascinating to get into the knitty gritty of colonizing a world like Ganymede. This is one of Heinlein’s juveniles, so he doesn’t get too technical, but you can definitely tell that he did the research and built a plausible near future world. More than that, it’s the kind of world I’d actually love to live in. Ganymede is the new frontier, and the colonists who settle it are pioneers in every sense of the word. Not everyone makes it, of course, but those who do are rugged, resourceful, and remarkable.

This was a really quick read. There was a lot of little stuff that dates it to the 50s, like gender relations and the prevalence of the Boy Scouts, who are sadly no longer a cultural force in today’s society. None of it bothered me or threw me out of the story. If anything, it added to the novel’s charm.

Heinlein knows his stuff. This was a really fun book. If you’ve never read any Heinlein, Farmer in the Sky is a good place to start.

The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove

As those of you who’ve read my short story “The Gettysburg Paradox” know, I’m a huge fan of both the US Civil War and time travel stories. Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South is, quite possibly, the best combination of the two.

The novel starts just a few weeks after Gettysburg. The Army of Northern Virginia is in disarray, and a defeated Robert E. Lee has been forced to face the truth that the Confederacy has no real hope of winning the war. Then a bunch of time travelers in strangely mottled uniforms show up out of nowhere and supply his army with strange new guns called AK-47s.

Immediately, the tides of war change. Lee soundly defeats Grant at the Battle of Wilderness and presses on to Washington DC, which falls overnight. Triumphant, the South immediately sets about the peace negotiations with their northern neighbor, and prepares for a presidential election which Lee is expected to win. But disagreements about the fate of the new American nation soon arise between Lee and his benefactors, sparking a conflict that is truly out of time.

There’s so much to love about this book. Turtledove’s attention to detail is meticulous, not just in the obvious major ones, but in the little ones that have a disproportionate impact. For example, Lee appreciates the killing power of the  AK-47s, but what impresses him even more are the MREs that the time travelers carry. When the gunmakers in Richmond pick apart the AK-47 in an effort to replicate it, it’s really fascinating to get their take on its functions. It really does read like a bunch of 19th century denizens puzzling over technology that they barely understand.

But what really got to me were the characters. Having read The Killer Angels and Jeff Shaara’s prequel and sequel to that great novel, Robert E. Lee felt like exactly the same character, just in a different book. His genteel sense of propriety, his calm but unshakeable sense of honor, his love of his men and respect for his enemy—it really was the same guy. And the decisions he makes after the war is over, while truly radical, are also eminently believable.

It’s not just Lee, either. Lincoln, Soward, Longstreet, Forrest—all of them feel very much like the people they really were, inhabiting an alternate reality. Turtledove’s research into their characters and personalities was meticulous. And it wasn’t just the big names, either, as all of the 19th century characters, including a prostitute who pretended to be a man in order to join the infantry, are based on real people who actually lived.

Fantastic book—a must-read for anyone with an interest in time travel or the US civil war. Whether those interests intersect for you or not, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this book.

Trying out some pop ups

I just set up a pop up with a subscribe form for my email newsletter. It should only pop up once every two weeks, and only on the first page you visit. If you think it’s too intrusive or have strong opinions on the matter, let me know.

I’ll be experimenting with a few things in the near future, including pop ups. I may also change the layout here to the new WordPress Twenty-Nineteen theme. It looks interesting. Again, if you have opinions, I’d appreciate your feedback!