Con Kasterborous ( www.conkasterborous.com ) is a Doctor Who convention in Huntsville, Alabama, which also happens to be the location for the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal.  Con Kasterborous was until this year a rather small local convention where area fans came to groove with other Doctor Who fans after the season was over. But this year marked the first time they had a media guest, Caitlin Blackwood, who played young Amelia Pond during Amy’s and Rory’s time in the TARDIS. Attendance at the convention tripled and they are looking for a larger hotel for 2014. Huntsville fans are no strangers to running conventions because ConStellation has been running yearly since the 1970s, when Your Humble Columnists were young local fans in the area.  This resulted in a new convention with a very well trained staff. They were very organized, had very obvious security personnel (all staff had color-coded shirts according to function, sort of like the brightly- colored Daleks of recent seasons), and worked very hard to make sure the extremely large crowd for the convention space all had a good time while staying safe.

The dealer’s room was fantastic as the local FYE and Books-a-Million stores had ordered extra Doctor Who merchandise and brought it across the parking lot to the hotel. Also there is a local SF shop which has 3 stores in the area and they had brought merchandise as well.  Huntsville’s chain shops have always catered to a very SF-heavy crowd because the newer shopping areas all are located near most of the contractors who work for Marshall and the Arsenal as well as being near an Arsenal gate.  In the 70s and 80s, NASA publications were frequently featured as local interest publications in the bookstores and the SF section of the Waldenbooks then was nearly half the store. Even today the stores have more geeky merchandise than the same stores in other locations.

Caitlin Blackwood is now a charming twelve year old who is already getting her adult height, rather than the nine-year old who filmed the series. She is a dancer and a veteran of several conventions on both sides of the Atlantic, so she handled the crowds and the microphone with grace and charm. On Saturday, the autograph and picture session ran for longer than they had planned in order to get everyone through who was in line when they called a cutoff. Caitlin signed for nearly 2 hours, and was starting to look tired but she is a pro and never complained.

They stopped between signing and pictures to let the poor child have some cake, which she must have been dying for, because all the fans had been getting cupcakes off the table and munching while they waited in line. After 2 hours, any 12-year-old’s patience would be at an end after seeing everyone else in the room having cake, but you couldn’t because no one wants frosting on their autographs.  She didn’t complain, and was very lady-like with her eating, not wearing any afterwards, unlike some fans who had various colors of frosting on them the rest of the day. The Doctor Who-themed cupcakes and TARDIS cake were definitely a hit with everyone, even if some frosting went places it probably shouldn’t have. The fans included many children because of Caitlin’s presence and the fact that many Huntsville fans had got together and made more little fans. Some families had 3 or 4 generations present, which was great to see.

Costumes spanned the generations too, with people from infants to grandparents wearing costumes. It was fun to see many people in store bought costumes, because this is really the first year that any have been widely available in the US. Having chains like Hot Topic, FYE and Books-a-Million carry Doctor Who wear has really changed the clothing choices for DW fans.  Even people without costumes seemed to all have at least one Doctor Who shirt in their weekend wardrobe.

No DW convention is complete without a TARDIS and this convention had two! And a working Dalek!

The Dalek was remotely controlled by a Doctor cosplayer and he had quite a sense of humor, so the Dalek scared several little Doctors who approached not realizing it talked and moved. It even gave some adults a fright when it was still and quiet, and then suddenly would blare out “EXTERMINATE!” or “THE DOCTOR MUST DIE!” when someone walked in front of the gun and sucker. On Sunday he used  a very short version of the Dalek scream to make it sound like the Dalek had done too much partying on Saturday night and was cursed with the burps, which gave us all a laugh, even if the children didn’t get why he was “burping”.

The convention had excellent panels with Caitlin doing a question and answer session, a group of podcasters talking about their work, and artist Kelly Yates talking about working on the IDW Doctor Who comic books. Kelly is a friend from Greensboro, NC but we had never seen him do panels alone before. He did a great job and showed us some great behind the scenes things. Hopefully next year they can plan to connect his tablet to a projector (he has already agreed to return for 2014).

In addition to the convention, we visited the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (www.rocketcenter.com) again. We are members of the museum because we are in Huntsville several times a year. This time in addition to the displays of the Pathfinder shuttle, the Saturn rockets and the IMAX dome, there was a special exhibit on black holes which gave up to date information on theoretical information as well as information gained from astronomical research.  It was interesting and informative. There are two Saturn V rockets at the center, one suspended in sections in the Davidson Center, which is the new building built to house it, and a vertical one in the rocket park outside the Davidson Center.  To someone who saw the Saturn IB become part of the Huntsville’s skyline in 1970, walked under it in amazement as a very small child, then saw modern construction of overpasses and interstates hide it, the vertical Saturn V has returned Huntsville’s skyline to its proper look. It is even protected by law now so no construction can hide the rocket from the skyline. For first time visitors to Huntsville who come in from the airport or Interstate 65, it is quite a sight to see. Caitlin and her mom were quite amazed by it when they first arrived.

In addition to the museum, which is also a visitor center for Marshall Space Flight Center, there are tours of Redstone Arsenal including Marshall Space Flight Center available. Camps are available for all ages through Space Camp, Space Academy, and Aviation Challenge.

The ultimate in geeky weekends away: Con Kasterborous and a trip to the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The next convention will be held in June of 2014, but the location is still being determined due to this year’s large crowd, so watch the website listed at the top of the review!

-Sam

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UPCOMING EVENTS, JUNE 2013

14 (Friday) 7 pm — Durham’s The Regulator Bookshop hosts Merrie Haskell for new middle-grade fantasy/adventure Handbook for Dragon Slayers, which “mixes magic, mythical creatures, thrilling action, and a wonderful cast of characters.” More info:
http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/event/merrie-haskell

14 (Friday) 7:00 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts “Fierce Reads Tour” as “Five fantasy and sci-fi authors join us with their new books! ANNA BANKS, Of Poseidon and Of Triton; LEIGH BARDUGO, Shadow & Bone and Siege & Storm; JESSICA BRODY, Unremembered; EMMY LAYBOURNE, Monument 14 and Monument 14:Sky on Fire; and GENNIFER ALBIN,Crewel.” For ages 12+.

15 (Saturday) — Quail Ridge Books hosts fiction author KHALED HOSSEINI – With And The Mountains Echoed.

15 (Saturday) — Free RPG Day at gaming stores worldwide. “Established in 2007, Free RPG Day works with participating hobby game retailers and RPG publishers to bring new and exclusive RPG quickstart rules and adventure modules into the hands of gamers.” More info:
http://www.freerpgday.com/

15 (Saturday) — Ultimate Comics is hosting a “Best of the Triangle” celebration cookout for being voted best comic shop in The Independent Weekly’s yearly poll. Free food, drinks, etc.

27-28 (Thursday and Friday) — A sf-themed even from the NC Symphony: ‘Join George Takei, “Mr. Sulu” of Star Trek fame, as he guides you through the galaxy accompanied by music from E.T., Star Wars, Close Encounters, and,of course, Star Trek.’ Go to
http://ncsymphony.org/events/index.cfm?view=details&viewref=calendar&detailid=1019&eid=1752&sdate=6%2F1%2F2013
for tickets.

27-30 (Thursday to Sunday) — ConTemporal 2013 at the North Raleigh Hilton, beginning with the Thursday evening guest of honor dinner and continuing all weekend, as this Steampunk-themed convention is back for a second year. Guest of honor Ursula Vernon, along with Lee Martindale, Tom Smith, toastmaster Sal Sanfratello, and more. More info:
http://contemporal.org/

28 (Friday) 7 pm — Flyleaf Books hosts Jamil Nasir for his new sf novel Tunnel Out of Death (Tor Books), along with local writer Alex Wilson for the publication of the latest anthology from Writers of the Future, which includes Wilson’s prize-winning story.

29 (Saturday) 6 pm to 9 pm — Chapel Hill Comics will host Lisa Hanawalt on Saturday, June 29, from 6pm until 9pm, when she will sign her new book, My Dirty Dumb Eyes. More info:
http://www.chapelhillcomics.com/content/?p=3158

29 (Saturday) Late to Later — Pittsboro’s Davenport & Winkleperry hosts THE CLOCKWORK BALL: A Steampunk Party.

[See the June newsletter for events further down the line.]

Review of Eight Million Gods by Wen Spencer (Baen hardcover June 4, 2013)

Eight Million Gods is the story about a young adult American author named Nikki Delany, who is on the run from her mother, and she runs to Osaka, Japan where she has friends from the internet. While in Japan she is doing research for her second novel; the book is under contract and she is really stressed about completing it on time, because her muse strikes suddenly and causes her to write in torrents but the multiple scenes of her stories don’t always meet until the end so she stresses out until the story starts to come together.

Things take a turn for the strange when someone starts making her books into reality. At least that’s what Nikki thinks when it happens the first time and she is questioned by the police, but the truth is actually much stranger. It is a tale with Japanese gods, mothers who aren’t what they seem, tanuki, a kitten, a much loved adoptive father, and a scary guy with catlike moves.

Japanese mythological characters are running around on the streets of Japan but aren’t noticed by most people.  Nikki tries to sort out the mess caused by the gods fighting and at the same time change the end of her story so everyone doesn’t die. She meets some really interesting people and makes a good friend along the way. She also discovers her writing is indeed a gift from the gods and with practice is better at controlling the mad urges to write which hit her in times of stress.

For fans of anime, manga or Japanese culture, this book offers a wonderful immersion into that culture. Descriptions of everyday life are very detailed: food, drink, finding a place to live, and the general attitude toward Americans. Nikki is a very quirky but highly detailed character who immediately gets sympathy because of her crazy politician mother who is constantly trying to disrupt Nikki’s life (and who, as it turns out, has some secrets of her own).  There is plenty of action with swords, magic…and blenders.

Eight Million Gods offers a fresh look at urban fantasy without Western ideas of werewolves and vampires in it. As with all Wen Spencer’s work it is easy to read, so if your anime fan doesn’t read then you might get them to try this.

Review of In Thunder Forged Iron Kingdom Chronicles The Fall of Llael: Book One by Ari Marmell

This is the first tie-in book based upon the Warmachine steam-powered fantasy game and the Iron Kingdoms roleplaying game, but that being said, we don’t play either of those but still enjoyed the book. The background is interesting and complex and the politics would probably be more detailed in the game material, but the characters and the plot did not depend on the reader knowing anything ahead of time.

It is a steam-tech fantasy wartime adventure but it is from the viewpoint of different individuals, not from a group or unit, when a unit is dealt with it is from the sergeant’s point of view.  There is cloak and dagger espionage as well as battles in the book. It is an interesting take on steampunk because the world’s tech is steam power but the world is very magic heavy so technology combines the two.  War robots are steam and magic powered.  Alchemy is also used to good effect. There are even mages whose only magic is done on guns or ammunition so they can’t miss and shots sometimes have special effects.

The character at the focus of the espionage scenes is Garland, a bright, charming female who uses all her gifts to get what she wants. She also makes interesting use of all the layers of clothing common in fancy female dress.  Sergeant Bracewell is in charge of a small unit of soldiers; bravely leading by example, she is devoted to her troops and will do anything to keep them safe.

When Garland and Bracewell team up with the assistance of female knight Lieutenant Laddermore on behalf of Cygnar, it results in great amounts of gunfire, explosions and running.  The bad guys (section three of Khador) are led by another strong female character named Vorona. Vorona and Garland keep trying to blow each other up but neither is successful. Both sides want the alchemical formula needed for a new weapon.  All this makes for some complex characters who interact with others from their side and the opposite ones in interesting ways.

Hopefully other volumes of the Iron Kingdom Chronicles will feature some of these characters. Most tie-in books are badly written and are aimed at a demographic who wants sexist depictions of women so it was a pleasant surprise to find a well written one with strong female characters who wear clothing appropriate for their professions.

Review of Earth Afire : The First Formic War Volume 2 of the Formic Wars by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston (Tor hardback, June 4, 2013)

This book is part of a newer series in the Ender’s Game universe which looks at the Formic Wars. It is the story of Captain Mazer Rackham of the New Zealand Special Air Services from the time before his appearance as a major character in Ender’s Game.

While everyone is denying the validity of images of alien attacks which have been posted to the web, Mazer is sent to China to train their pilots to operate the new planes their government has purchased. While he is there the Formics blow up some news shuttles and a UN ship on their approach to earth.  This sets everyone on high alert as the Formic send down landers into southeast China.  The Chinese lock down all access to their satellites so Rackham and his team can’t get any intelligence.  They steal one of the planes and go to the countryside where there is no jamming and land.

There are two narrative threads, one of a boy named Bingwen and his family and friends who are in the Formic landing zone in southeast China which starts as a separate thread but merges with the Mazer Rackham thread and then a thread which is set off of earth and follows the people who are trying to do something about the Formics, Lem and Rena. Their thread is not complete in this volume, but they manage to get in the same place and start to plan, so volume three will probably see action against the Formics from them.

Mazer helps rescue the Chinese peasants and then a little later they return the favor. As Mazer travels to the alien lander, he tries to get Bingwen to safety since he is alone now, but Bingwen won’t go. The interplay and discussion of war between them gets Mazer thinking about children and war, some of his thoughts give a clue as to where the idea for Battle School came from.

Mazer and Bingwen are both very interesting characters. You can see Bingwen is sort of like Ender but his upbringing makes him have a slightly different view of things. This time period shaped much of the Mazer we see in Ender’s Game so it is interesting to see the events which changed him. Most of Earth’s governments and the off-planetary government entities are made to look like idiots as a result of the Formic War, so some major changes will be coming. At the time of Ender’s Game, society infrastructure has completely changed in attitude, so it will be interesting to watch things change over later volumes.

The book is a well written adventure story but it is more of a war on the ground version of events than other things we have seen in this universe. It will be interesting to see if this view continues or if we will get more overall or off-earth views of the war in later volumes. The off-earth views in this volume are not of people at war yet, but they are trying to get new technology on-line to get rid of the Formics so they will be more important later. If you are an Ender’s Game fan, then this is a good read. Note that while the book is not marketed at teens, it is a safe read as the war scenes are not graphic and major portions of it have child characters.

Review of ConCarolinas May 31-June2, 2013

The Charlotte Hilton University Place hotel used for the convention is in a good location to reach it from the interstates (I-85 and I-40) and the surrounding area has both fast food restaurants and sit-down restaurants within walking distance. The hotel also has a catering area setup to feed some people on site, but the food is only adequate so unless you are in a rush, I would definitely go elsewhere.  The temperature in the meeting spaces was fine, but there were many reports of hotel rooms being too hot, so definitely pack for the heat. June can be pleasant in NC but it can also get quite hot quite quickly so it is best to be prepared.  Also, it can be quite rainy this time of year, and because so many people drive to the convention the journey from the parking lot can become a bit of a hike for those not staying at the hotel.

This is a very writing-oriented convention with at least two writer panels going on in most time slots. The Magical Words blog participants are out in force, both as guests and as attendees. Their panels were completely full all weekend. The scheduling for the panels for this convention is good with enough time in between panels to run to the restroom, travel from one side of the hotel to another or to arrive very early in order to camp in a seat (a requirement for some of the more popular panels).  The panels can run quite late, and the topics of late night panels are not always strictly adult, which can sometimes be a problem for very young con-goers, but the convention uses all the available hotel spaces and so has to run late panels in order to fit them all in the schedule. The panels were all very well attended until about 9 p.m. when things dropped off.  The writing panels we attended were quite good, with participants being prepared and the audience members asking intelligent questions.  The panel topics ranged widely from ones for more experienced writers about marketing and social media to ones for new writers about the mechanics of writing.  Writers of any level could find something to take home from the panels.

The dealer room was well laid out so there was enough walk space. There was a wide variety of dealers, with wares running the gamut from sweets to toys to books.  The dealer room hours were late enough on Friday that even those people who came after work could get in there to look around and they closed early enough on Saturday that the dealers didn’t miss all the night time panels and events. Note that at this convention authors are given table space to sell books and sign them, only a small space though so guests like Tim Zahn still set-up a dealers table. This does mean that authors have a fair chance of selling enough to recoup their costs, but they need someone to man the table when they are in panels.

Overall this is a very well-run convention with a great deal to offer people interested in gaming (which runs most of the weekend on multiple tables) or writing. Note that for 2014 the headline guests are George R.R. Martin and David Weber so the convention may sell out before the weekend and not sell any on-the-day badges. Check on the website www.concarolinas.org  for updates about 2014.

Vaporware by Richard Dansky
JournalStone, May 2013

—-

By Richard Dansky:

The hardest part of writing Vaporware was knowing where to draw lines.

It’s the subject matter that made things difficult, as well as interesting. Vaporware is set at a video game company, and I am a video game developer by trade. I have been for fourteen years, give or take, with four years in-house at a tabletop game company before that. That’s a lot of years spent making games, a lot of games worked on, and a lot of years hanging out with other people who make games.

And here’s something that probably shouldn’t be a surprise: not every game development cycle goes smoothly. Even the best ones demand long hours, hard work, and sacrifice of personal time. As for the ones that aren’t the best, well, the less said about those, the better. I’ve seen good and I’ve seen bad, and just as importantly, I’ve swapped stories with friends and professional peers. I’ve heard their stories of the good, the bad, the ugly, the really ugly, and the “why did this not produce an armed insurrection?”

All of which is an extremely long-winded and ominous way of saying that I know a fair bit about how video games get made, the people who make them, and what it takes to get a game from “I have an idea! Let’s have the game star a robot ninja Dimetrodon!” to finished product. Not everything, not by a long shot, and I’m constantly aware that different studios have different ways of doing things so that no experience is universal, but it’s something I feel comfortable talking and writing about.

Which is where the notion of lines comes in, and yes, I said “lines”, as in “plural”. Because on this project, there was the creative line that had to be drawn, and there was the professional line, and there was the emotional line.

The creative line took the longest to draw, but in a lot of ways, it was the easiest. Basically, it’s the manifestation of the question: How much accuracy is too much. Sure, there are technothrillers that drown the reader in jargon; that’s part of the appeal to an audience that likes that sort of thing. But there are other audiences that don’t like it, or who get overwhelmed by it, and while the urge to get every last detail juuuuust right was strong, so was the urge to not frighten off readers who don’t necessarily want to internalize data check-in procedures along with their fiction. So a line had to be drawn there, one that delineated how much realism was too much for readers who weren’t subject matter experts, and how little was too little for people to understand what goes on during game development. So one draft had a little too much inside baseball and confused people; another didn’t have enough and genericized the game development aspect of the book too much. It was, as they say, a process.

The professional line that had to be drawn was about what I could or couldn’t say. The book was never intended as a roman a clef about my employer, and I didn’t want it to be taken that way. I also felt I had a professional obligation not to whitewash some of the craziness that happens making games; to do less would be to do a disservice to my peers. But again, the question was “how much is too much” – how much could I include without doing my profession a disservice, or creating misapprehensions about what I was trying to do.

Then there was the personal line – how much of myself was I willing to put out there before it was too much. Vaporware was in many places a difficult book to write, dredging up some old memories and rough patches. And when you’re writing material you’re intimately familiar with, what goes in may not be what you intended. I don’t view the book as autobiographical, and I don’t view the protagonist – who is not, in my opinion, a hero – as a stand in for yours truly. But in writing him, in watching the behaviors that he exhibited, it was easy to see echoes of my own in there, or of places I could have gone. Self-examination was unavoidable and, to be honest, not particularly pleasant.

In the end, I think it was worth it to wrestle long and hard with the question of how much to show – of the biz, of the details, of myself. It wasn’t fun, and it wasn’t easy. But if you wanted to hear about the easiest part of writing the book, well, that’s a whole other piece.

—-

Briefly known as the world’s greatest living authority on Denebian Slime Devils (a true fact), Richard Dansky works as the Central Clancy Writer for Red Storm/Ubisoft. In 2009 he was named one of the Top 20 Videogame Writers by Gamasutra, and his numerous credits include the acclaimed Splinter Cell: Conviction, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six: Black Arrow. A prolific fiction author as well, Richard has published five novels and a short fiction collection, Snowbird Gothic. His latest novel, Vaporware, was released in May by JournalStone, and he writes regularly for magazines such as Bull Spec and Green Man Review.

Review of Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 edited by Catherine Asaro (Pyr, May 14, 2013)

This volume showcases those works published in 2011 that were on the 2011 Nebula ballot.  All the stories were enjoyable and it was convenient to get them in one volume. Many of the items appearing on the Nebula ballot are not from places the average reader would be able to access after the ballot is out because the magazine volumes in which they appeared have long since left the bookstore shelves.  If you miss issues of the print magazines, it can be difficult to find the missing ones without resorting to a used magazine dealer online and for most people the one story they want to read in a single issue would not be worth the trouble.  The showcase is a good way to provide access to all the stories that SFWA members thought were the best of 2011 publications.

Our favorite short story in this volume was Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie”.  It has a real world setting with just the slightest bit of magic. Because the magic was in childhood toys made by the mother, it makes you feel nostalgic for childhood treasures and you can easily believe those treasures have a bit of magic in them which made them come to life.  Also the issues of the immigrant mother not speaking English reminded us of friends who have a similar problem because their children cannot speak to their grandmother. Immigrants not speaking English is certainly an issue many families and towns are dealing with today. The mother’s lack of English makes her bringing the animals to life using Chinese even more magical because it is something the son and mother shared between themselves and it excluded the father and the boy’s friends. The son did not understand this until the end of the story because as a child he wanted to fit in and stopped talking in Chinese.  The end of the story was very sad because by the time the son understood his mother, she was gone.

The excerpt from Jo Walton’s Among Others was also exceptional. All of Jo’s work is good and we have enjoyed it since her first novel was published, but this work was the first time she had used her childhood in Wales as a resource to produce a fantasy setting.  After reading the excerpt we bought the novel while traveling and read it in a couple of days.  If you have not been to Wales, you have missed a beautiful part of the world. The mountains and coast are so beautiful, it is not hard to believe some of the people living there can do magic. Hidden away from most tourists are areas damaged by mining and quarrying, with buildings abandoned when the resources ran out. These are the areas where protagonist Morwenna goes to play in and that her fairies inhabit. It lends to this suburban fantasy a feel of a mix of the very ancient mixed with the only slightly old (like from our childhoods).  The characters in the story are all interesting, with Morwenna as the viewpoint character giving us a slanted view of many of the adults.  Morwenna had her own ideas about who was a family member and who was not, this did not agree with that of the adults.  It will be interesting to see further work in this universe since Morwenna still has several years of school to get through.

This volume has several excellent short works and excerpts of a few longer ones. If you like some variety to your reading and appreciate a good short story then this volume is for you.

Whew. May was quite a busy month, with: visits from (among others) Mary Robinette Kowal (recap here and Warren Schultz’s video here) and John Scalzi (Calvin Powers posted a video of Scalzi’s reading for those who missed it); Daniel Wallace launched his new book The Kings and Queens of Roam with multiple local events and an interview on WUNC’s The State of Things; comics events with Kelly Sue DeConnick and Lucy Knisley; and the invasion of several hundred cosplayers into downtown Raleigh in the form of Animazement (some photos here). Local comics writer Jeremy Whitley was on WUNC’s The State of Things as well, to talk about the lack of heroic female characters in comics.

Meanwhile, another bumper crop of new books from local authors; whether you are interested in high fantasy, horror/sf/thrillers, a quirky/smart/paranoid take on urban fantasy, or comics collections, you’re pretty much covered:

• Ending (The Laurian Pentology, Book 4) by Danny Birt (Dark Quest Books, May 24) — “Alaris has enacted his continent-spanning plans, and he races against time to get to the ancient tower of mages, Pinnacle, to enact yet more.  But Pinnacle is not his ultimate goal: even mage-kind is but a tool to Alaris.  How much, then, do mere individuals matter to him?”
• Vaporware by Richard Dansky (JournalStone, May 24) — “Video game projects get shut down all the time, but when the one Ryan Colter and his team have poured their hearts into gets cut, something different happens: the game refuses to go away. Now Blue Lightning is alive, and it wants something from Ryan – something only he can give it. And everybody knows how addictive video games can be…”
• The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty (Orbit, May 28) — “Because of the disaster that was her last job, Zoe is searching for a fresh start as a travel book editor in the tourist-centric New York City. After stumbling across a seemingly perfect position though, Zoe is blocked at every turn because of the one thing she can’t take off her resume — human. Not to be put off by anything — especially not her blood drinking boss or death goddess coworker — Zoe delves deep into the monster world. But her job turns deadly when the careful balance between human and monsters starts to crumble — with Zoe right in the middle.”
• And Bull Spec art director Gabriel Dunston has a new e-book collection of “selected comics from the first full year of journal comics from my graduation from ECU to the birth of my daughter” — Funny Thing Happened Today (Book 1)

Some other quick news bits:

• Tickets are now on sale for the Raleigh Browncoats’ “Can’t Stop the Serenity” charity screening of Serenity on July 28th
• From June 12-19, Hillsborough author James Maxey’s superhero novel Nobody Gets the Girl will be promotionally priced at 99 cents on Amazon Kindle, so if you haven’t picked up a copy…
• Local writer (and actor, and…) Alex Wilson is joining the Friday June 28th Jamil Nasir event at Flyleaf, to launch the latest volume of Writers of the Future, which includes his prize-winning story
• Bull Spec poetry editor Dan Campbell has a great non-fiction piece in Interfictions Online, talking Tolkien and Old Norse, on maps and weaving and myths
• Jay Posey writes that he is “excited to be donating portion of proceeds from my novel THREE to Hope For The Warriors®! Deets here.”
• Announcement: author Robert V.S. Redick joins the lineup for the Bull Spec August 3 summer speculative fiction event at Quail Ridge Books

In other Bull Spec news, both The Exploding Spaceship and The Hardest Part web feature series were very active this month, and! the PDF edition of just-released issue #8+9 is also finally out at both Weightless Books ($) and Wizard’s Tower Books (£) — I’m very sorry for not yet getting the PDF issue emailed out to Kickstarter backers, and hope to get to that this weekend. Meanwhile the first review has come in, from Tangent Online.

There are several NEW events below, and the weekend gets off to quite a start on Saturday (June 1) with both a multi-author event in the afternoon (John Claude Bemis, Cate Tiernan) and Mur Lafferty’s book launch party at Chapel Hill Comics in the evening. The month ends with quite a bang as well with the second year of ConTemporal, this year at the North Raleigh Hilton; for those closer to the western regions of the Triangle, there are events at Flyleaf Books and Davenport & Winkleperry to close out the month as well. See you out and about!

-Sam

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JUNE 2013

May 31 – June 2 (Friday to Sunday) — ConCarolinas in Charlotte, with writer guest of honor Timothy Zahn. More info:
http://www.concarolinas.org/

NEW: 1 (Saturday) 2 pm — Piedmont Laureate John Claude Bemis hosts a four-author presentation at the Orange County Library in downtown Hillsborough: “A discussion with four of the Triangle’s most exciting children’s book authors: Frances O’Roark Dowell, Cate Tiernan, Clay Carmichael, and Kelly Starling Lyons.  We’ll be talking about our favorite books, how we became authors, stories from our childhoods, and generally sharing lots of inspiration to writers of all stripes.  Come and meet these wonderful local authors who write everything from young adult paranormal romance, to middle-grade mysteries, realistic fiction, and picture books. For more information visit Celebrating Children’s Literature with Local Authors.”

1 (Saturday) 7 to 9 pm — Chapel Hill Comics hosts a launch party for Durham author Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City, forthcoming in late May from Orbit. More info:
http://www.chapelhillcomics.com/content/?p=3107

2 (Sunday) 3:00 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts SUSANNA KEARSLEY, The Firebird. “With a simple touch, she can see an object’s past.  All who have wanted it.  All who have owned it.  All who have stolen it.“

5 (Wednesday) 7:30 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts mystery author WALTER MOSLEY – With Little Green. The book is the latest in Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series; Mosley is also an sf author, most recently with a series of “Crosstown to Oblivion” paired short novels from Tor.

7 (Friday) 8 pm — The NC Symphony hosts “Video Games Live” presenting symphonic performances of video game themes. More info:
http://www.ncsymphony.org/events/index.cfm?view=details&viewref=calendar&detailid=1063&eid=1850

8 (Saturday) 2 to 4 pm — Chapel Hill Comics hosts Tom Batiuk on Saturday, June 8, from 2pm until 4pm, when he will sign The Complete Funky Winkerbean books one and two. More info:
http://www.chapelhillcomics.com/content/?p=3120

NEW: 12 (Wednesday) 7 pm — Durham’s The Regulator Bookshop hosts Claude A. Piantadosi for his new non-fiction book on the past, present, and future of the U.S. space program, Mankind Beyond Earth: The History, Science, and Future of Human Space Exploration. More info:
http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/event/claude-piantadosi

NEW: 14 (Friday) 7 pm — Durham’s The Regulator Bookshop hosts Merrie Haskell for new new middle-grade fantasy/adventure Handbook for Dragon Slayers, which “mixes magic, mythical creatures, thrilling action, and a wonderful cast of characters.” More info:
http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/event/merrie-haskell

14 (Friday) 7:00 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts “Fierce Reads Tour” as “Five fantasy and sci-fi authors join us with their new books! ANNA BANKS, Of Poseidon and Of Triton; LEIGH BARDUGO, Shadow & Bone and Siege & Storm; JESSICA BRODY, Unremembered; EMMY LAYBOURNE, Monument 14 and Monument 14:Sky on Fire; and GENNIFER ALBIN,Crewel.” For ages 12+.

15 (Saturday) — Quail Ridge Books hosts fiction author KHALED HOSSEINI – With And The Mountains Echoed.

15 (Saturday) — Free RPG Day at gaming stores worldwide. “Established in 2007, Free RPG Day works with participating hobby game retailers and RPG publishers to bring new and exclusive RPG quickstart rules and adventure modules into the hands of gamers.” More info:
http://www.freerpgday.com/

27 (Thursday) — A sf-themed even from the NC Symphony: ‘Join George Takei, “Mr. Sulu” of Star Trek fame, as he guides you through the galaxy accompanied by music from E.T., Star Wars, Close Encounters, and,of course, Star Trek.’ Go to
http://ncsymphony.org/events/index.cfm?view=details&viewref=calendar&detailid=1019&eid=1752&sdate=6%2F1%2F2013
for tickets.

27-30 (Thursday to Sunday) — ConTemporal 2013 at the North Raleigh Hilton, beginning with the Thursday evening guest of honor dinner and continuing all weekend, as this Steampunk-themed convention is back for a second year. Guest of honor Ursula Vernon, along with Lee Martindale, Tom Smith, toastmaster Sal Sanfratello, and more. More info:
http://contemporal.org/

NEW: 28 (Friday) 7 pm — Flyleaf Books hosts Jamil Nasir for his new sf novel Tunnel Out of Death (Tor Books), along with local writer Alex Wilson for the publication of the latest anthology from Writers of the Future, which includes Wilson’s prize-winning story.

NEW: 29 (Saturday) 6 pm to 9 pm — Chapel Hill Comics will host Lisa Hanawalt on Saturday, June 29, from 6pm until 9pm, when she will sign her new book, My Dirty Dumb Eyes! More info:
http://www.chapelhillcomics.com/content/?p=3158

NEW: 29 (Saturday) Late to Later — Pittsboro’s Davenport & Winkleperry hosts THE CLOCKWORK BALL: A Steampunk Party.

JULY 2013

10 (Wednesday) 7 pm — Flyleaf Books hosts Alex Bledsoe for Wisp of a Thing, book two after The Hum and the Shiver in his new contemporary fantasy series.

11 (Thursday) 7:30 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts STEPHEN KIERNAN for The Curiosity. “The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Michael Crichton in a powerful debut novel about a man frozen in ice for more than a century, who reawakens in the present day.”

28 (Sunday) — The annual NC Browncoats “Can’t Stop the Serenity” charity screening of Serenity at the Raleighwood Cinema Grill. Note that this is a ticketed event and tends to sell out completely in advance. More info:
http://www.ncbrowncoats.com/2013/01/blog-post.html

AUGUST 2013

3 (Saturday) 7 to 9 pm — Quail Ridge Books hosts the annual Bull Spec summer speculative fiction event. This year it is an absolutely fantastic lineup with Karen Lord, Nathan Ballingrud, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Robert V.S. Redick, and Will Hindmarch all coming up from the Shared Worlds Teen Writing Camp at Wofford College, being joined locally by Durham author Mur Lafferty. We had a blast hosting Ann and Jeff back in 2011 and it’s sure to be another great evening. More info:
http://bullspec.com/2013/03/29/announcement-the-third-annual-bull-spec-summer-speculative-fiction-event/

NEW: 24 (Saturday) 2 pm to 3 pm — Flyleaf Books hosts Marisha Pessl reads and signs her new novel Night Film. “An inventive–if brooding, strange and creepy–adventure in literary terror. Think Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King meet Guillermo del Toro as channeled by Klaus Kinski.” (Kirkus) More info:
http://www.flyleafbooks.com/event/marisha-pessl-reads-and-signs-her-new-novel-night-film

27 (Tuesday) 7 pm — The Regulator Bookshop hosts NCSU professor Wilton Barnhardt for his forthcoming historical fiction satire novel Lookaway, Lookaway (St. Martin’s and Macmillan Audio, August 20).

SEPTEMBER 2013

27 (Friday) Flyleaf Books hosts Robin Sloan for the paperback edition of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. 7 pm.

OCTOBER 2013

4-6 (Friday to Sunday) — Second Escapist Expo at the Durham Convention Center. More info:
http://www.escapistexpo.com/

NEW-NEW: 8 (Tuesday) 8 pm — Durham’s Carolina Theatre welcomes Chris Hardwick (The Nerdist, AMC’s Talking Dead) for a standup comedy show. Tickets in person at the Carolina Theatre or via Ticketmaster.

NOVEMBER 2013

9-10 (Saturday and Sunday) — NC Comicon will be returning to the Durham Convention Center. “Twice the space, four times the fun. It’s exponential.”

JANUARY 2014

10-12 (Friday to Sunday) — illogiCon iii: The Search for Schrödington’s Gold at the Embassy Suites Raleigh-Durham/Research Triangle, with author guests of honor Mary Robinette Kowal and Lawrence M. Shoen. More info:
http://www.illogicon.com/

JUNE 2014

(May 30) to June 1 (Friday to Sunday) — ConCarolinas in Charlotte, with guest of honor George R.R. Martin.

JULY 2014

NEW: 11-13 (Friday to Sunday) — ConGregate in downtown Winston-Salem. More info:
http://www.con-gregate.com/

– END –

By Matthew Ross:

At the beginning of W.S. Merwin’s career as a poet, Ezra Pound told the aspiring writer that he couldn’t possibly have enough experience to write about anything at the age of 18. So Pound told Merwin to learn a language and translate. The translation would be the way to learn your own language and practice. And so it has been in our translation of Pierre Grimbert’s Le Secret de Ji.

I say “our” because my translation partner, Eric Lamb, and I equally contributed to the work and it was a completely shared experience. Eric and I have been friends since early college. At the time of our first meeting in 2006, he spoke French fluently, and I had never taken a class. A year later he became my mentor as I began French lessons. Three years later, Eric helped me work through some of the trickier parts of a few Baudelaire translations from Les Fleurs du Mal. Four years later, we were both teaching English in France. The jobs entailed only about 20 hours a week, so Eric took on a translation project of his own, and I followed my friend and mentor by starting a translation of Le Secret de Ji. Finally, when the project solidified, I knew I would need help finishing such a large project, so I asked Eric to join and we have been translating together for two years now. But this partnership isn’t the hardest part, it may be the easiest.

Instead our difficulties translating stem from the growing pains of learning our own language, as Pound noted to Merwin. Of course, there are other difficulties in translating a French fantasy novel, especially French-specific concepts, such as dividing time into periods of tens. A ten-day work week, a ten “hour” day, a hundred “minutes” in an hour, etc. . . In essence these concepts of décade, décan, décille are untranslatable.

They stem from a brief period in France’s history right after the French Revolution when the revolutionaries wanted to abandon all Christian concepts, so they created the time system based on base tens. Of course, in English, we have no concept of this time system, so the concept requires a lot of introduction or abandonment. We went with the former, and many readers have found it alienating and difficult. But this part of the translation is quite exciting and fun. The oulipo, a group of primarily French writers who write with ridiculous constraints such as no e’s in an entire novel, knows the joy and freedom writing within strict constraints can provide. Translating a fantasy novel provides some of these strict constraints, given how important it is to recreate the original author’s world-building effort. So these “untranslatable” terms were not the hardest part.

Rather it was most difficult to work on recreating a tone, pacing, and feeling in English. This difficulty has nothing to do with our abilities in French, but rather our experience as writers in English. Since my background is primarily in science writing, and Eric had done a very literary translation prior to The Secret of Ji: Six Heirs, we both had a formal, sometimes stilted tone that pervaded much of our initial translations.

I found this stilted part of my writing particularly difficult to fix because it was so embedded in who I am. I have spent the last six years focusing on being a better science writer, and though many of the skills cross over to fiction writing, creating the proper tone for storytelling is not one of them. Furthermore (see that sciencey formalism?), unlike the untranslatable terms, tone cannot be precisely extracted, identified, and reworked to some satisfactory state. It permeates every aspect of the novel and every moment of translation. How do you fix that?

For us, we really worked hard in editing each other’s work, but we still have a lot more to learn and have opened up our second translation of The Secret of Ji (it’s a series!) to more comments and edits from outsiders, namely our partners, Nicole and Cassidy, and our editor Joel Bahr. They see subtle, but easily fixable, moments that create a stilted tone. Like changing “the details were finalized,” to “Together, they finalized the last details.” Though this little change seems minor at first, compounded with hundreds of others it was quite difficult to extract and perfect these kinds of simple moments where we failed to keep an active, exciting tone.

As Merwin has, I hope to use translation as a way to work on my knowledge, not of French, but of English. But this part of writing, for us at least, was one of the hardest and we hope we keep improving as the next Ji book comes out.

—-

About Matthew Ross:

Born in 1987 in Colorado, Matthew Ross grew up in the rapidly suburbanizing rangelands outside of Monument, CO. The youngest member of the family, he first fell in love with the speculative fiction genre when he read Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea on a trip to his parents’ native home of Amarillo, Texas. His mom, a school teacher, always encouraged his sometimes distracting obsession with books, while his dad, a salesman, made sure he got outside and learned something about the actual world we live in. His brother, an avid cyclist and sports enthusiast, still tries to keep him in shape and well-rounded.

As an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he studied Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, which left him yearning for some non-science conversation. He tried to add a major in English, but after an English professor strongly encouraged him to major in some language other than English, he began taking French. From there, he fell in love with the language, moved to France for a year, and began a search for an excellent French Fantasy author. He found Pierre Grimbert and tentatively began translating his novel. After sending out samples to a few publishing companies, he heard nothing back and moved ahead with his plans to start his PhD in ecology at Duke University.

Two months before he started at Duke, Amazon Crossing contacted him and asked if he wanted to translate The Secret of Ji: Six Heirs. Knowing he might need help, he called his close friend and French mentor, Eric Lamb and asked if he wanted to join the project. They have been translating together since.  Eric has been speaking French for ten years and has lived in France for two of those years. Now he is a high-school French teacher, who lives in Carbondale, CO with his fiancée, Cassidy. Ross lives in the Braggtown neighborhood of Durham with his wife, Nicole.

Reblogged from The AudioBookaneers:

Welcome to the third installment of The Shambling Guide to New York City Listen-a-Long, covering both Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 of Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City. As usual, first up a recap of some recent news about the book, starting with last Monday's Orbit Books interview with the author: Mur Lafferty on THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY…

Read more… 1,078 more words

Even before I made it inside the Convention Center doors, Fayetteville Street was awash in Avengers (for a scheduled mass photoshoot on an external stairway) and all manner of other cosplayers:

Inside, most pre-registered attendees had already long since made their way through registration, but there were still some crowds milling about including people coming back from lunch — what must the Krispy Kreme up the street look like this weekend? Naruto and original glazed doughnuts? — and the staggering in of pre-registered people and a line of people buying their passes in person.

Also milling about around registration, I met Faith O’Neil, an associate editor from Maryland-based GeekInsider, down herself from Virginia to cover the event. It was her first time at Animazement, and the Convention Center had already made a good first impression. “It’s an excellent, massive venue, a great place to hold it,” she said. “It’s huge.” GeekInsider is best known for its technology coverage and gadget reviews, and this was also the first time not just covering Animazement, but anime conventions in general; the site has been covering anime under its Lifestyle coverage since April. “It’s our first anime convention,” O’Neil said. “We’re trying to branch out.”

Thanks to Animazement volunteer and recent local college graduate Teresa, I was able to get a quick guided pass through a bit of the convention. “I helped out in the dealer’s room before, but it’s a bit different this year, doing odd errands, that kind of thing,” she said, explaining her role this year. I’d been to the Convention Center for NASFIC in 2010, so the route down to the dealer’s room was not unfamiliar.

The dealer’s room [above, left] is a sprawling space full of booths selling import video games, plushies, t-shirts, films, costumes and accessories, and even a rather large corner booth selling import foods [above, right]. (No sign of any Fruity Oaty Bars, though.) A foothold from the world of books does exist in the form of Chicago Anime [below, left]. Eddie of Chicago Anime explained that the space is “about half manga, half card games” and that the they usually get a “decent amount of interest in the books.”

There’s also an artist’s alley [below, left] and various breakout rooms, along with signings, programming tracks, on and on. On the way back up, Teresa [below, right] asked me if I (a complete anime ignoramus) recognized a particular cosplayer’s outfit. “Sailor Moon?” I hazarded. Apparently I was not even close.

Animazement runs through Sunday at the Raleigh Convention Center.