All posts by Carl V. Anderson

Home

Twas the Night

22 Comments


(Image credit)

One of the reasons that the Christmas season is filled with warmth and comfort is because of the presence of traditions. Whether they be societal traditions, ones handed down from generation to generation, or those we’ve created for ourselves, traditions enrich our lives by tying present events to past, allowing us the dual pleasures of living in the moment while embracing feelings of nostalgia.

For the past several years Kailana has been hosting the Virtual Advent, a holiday themed blogging event where various bloggers sign up to post about the season beginning December 1st up through Christmas Eve. And every year Kailana and I share the final day (her post is here), often posting something necessitating a visit to each of our sites.

This year I came up with the idea of posting that traditional seasonal poem, Twas the Night Before Christmas, accompanied by images we would find online. Time has gotten away from me and while I had a much more elaborate plan of finding pictures that actually synched up with the stanzas of the poem, I’ve had to abandon that plan for something a little different. Between the poem’s lines you’ll find various science fiction and fantasy related images that give me a holiday feeling. Some images match the words in my own warped imagination, others do not. I apologize ahead of time.

Continue reading Twas the Night →

book news

A Firm Foundation

39 Comments


(Cover for Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, image by Michael Whelan)

I first experienced the concept of the ‘group read’ as it exists in the blogging community earlier this summer when a group reading of Frank Herbert’s Dune was just the spark I needed to finally read this excellent novel for myself. Outside of required school readings I had never participated in this kind of question-directed, structured discussion of a novel. I enjoyed it a great deal and it made a nice contrast to the also enjoyable free-form discussions of books that takes place on the Classic Science Fiction Book Club site as well as across the blogosphere. I promptly hosted and/or participated in several more during the autumn months.

After a two-month hiatus, I am happy to be returning to the group read format by hosting a group read of Isaac Asimov’s seminal work, Foundation.

If you are interested, please make the leap.

Continue reading A Firm Foundation →

Challenges

The 2012 Science Fiction Experience

151 Comments


(Image by Vincent di Fate, used with permission)

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty,
but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

~Vincent Van Gogh

——————

“In space no one can hear you scream”

~tagline from Alien

True, but if you were startled from your slumber last night with the echoes of a scream ringing in your ears, that just might have been me: I decided it was time to post about the 2012 Science Fiction Experience!

The sight of the stars makes me dream as well, and has done so for as far back as I can remember. The phrase “littered with stars” was inadequate to describe what my young eyes experienced as I gazed upwards on dark Nebraska nights, the sky untainted by the pollution of city lights. America’s space program was in its glory days and my young imagination was fueled by the reality of space travel as well as the fantastical imagery of shows like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica. It is little wonder that science fiction became my first love and that my younger years were spent lost between the pages of books by Harry Harrison, Larry Niven, Brian Daley and Alan Dean Foster, dreaming of the days when I too would be “boldly going”.

Though that dream remains unrealized for so many kids who went before me and have come after, my love for science fiction has not diminished and the places it takes me continue to delight. A few years back I decided I would like to invite other readers to spend time together to:

a) Continue their love affair with science fiction
b) Return to science fiction after an absence, or
c) Experience for the first time just how exhilarating science fiction can be.

This event was not to be a challenge. It was not a dare nor was it a contest. It was meant to be an experience, a word I did not choose at random. The very best connections with books are more than just a detached reading, they are an experience–an immersive, engaging interaction between the reader and the characters and events between the covers. It is that tangible joy I feel when reading science fiction that I wanted to share with like readers, while at the same time creating an open, embracing forum for those to participate who have either not read science fiction in the past or have had less than successful experiences with the genre.

And so the Science Fiction Experience, or Sci-Fi Experience, was born.

I have never been able to ascertain a logical explanation for why the arrival of old man Winter causes me to go nearly mad with a desire to read science fiction, but as that is the case the logical time for me to host this non-challenge was the months of January and February.

And so I officially welcome you to The 2012 Science Fiction Experience, which runs from January 1st, 2012 through February 29th, 2012. That’s right, we get an extra day this year! Woo-hoo!

Continue reading The 2012 Science Fiction Experience →

book news

“Why don’t you come up sometime ‘n see me?”

44 Comments

2011 is coming to a close and as part of the wind down we recently discussed the authors that we have not yet read, but would like to if all the stars were to align correctly in 2012. In the comments section of that post, Jeff suggested that we look at the other side of that coin.

Who are the authors that you would like to revisit in 2012? It may be that there are books by said author(s) that you have not read, or perhaps you long for the familiar embrace of one of their works that you have visited before.

There is a particular excitement about reading new (to you) work by an author you’ve connected with. And there is a comfort that comes from revisiting cherished books that can only be truly understood by those who have experienced it for themselves.

What follows is my far-from-exhaustive list.

Continue reading “Why don’t you come up sometime ‘n see me?” →

Book Reviews, Science Fiction

Dreadnought ~Cherie Priest

23 Comments


“The nurse would play the moment over and over in her head, on an infinite loop that would surprise her sometimes, startling her out of a reverie or out of her sleep, for the rest of her life.

And she would listen to it, watch it, scrutinize it through the windowpane of her memory and wonder if it mattered. Surely it didn’t matter who fired the first shot, or what small event caused the action to begin. But merely knowing that it might not matter did not make it bother her any less, not at the time and certainly not in retrospect, and it did not keep that moment out of her waking nightmares.

Her terrified and very human reaction was to duck down, to dodge, to lie on the floor and pray.”


Dreadnought ~Cherie Priest

2010, Tor Books
400 pages
8/10

In her Locus award winning novel, Boneshaker, author Cherie Priest unveiled The Clockwork Century, her alternate history universe in which:

“The Civil War is still underway, drawn out by English interference, a different transportation infrastructure, and a powerful Republic of Texas that discovered oil at Spindletop some fifty years sooner than real life allowed.

The competition of war has led to technological progress and horrors unimaginable, and many people have fled the combating states, hoping for an easier life out west.”

Her steampunk-infused tale expertly wove together two alternating story lines: those of a teenage boy whose adolescent bravado and curiosity about his birth leads him into the plague-ravaged underbelly of Seattle, Washington, a city walled in to prevent both the escape of poisonous gases and the decaying post-humans who occupy its streets, and the desperate mother who will brave all for his safe return.

In her follow up novel, Dreadnought, Priest turns the focus on Mercy Lynch, a Southern nurse tending the wounded in a Richmond, VA hospital. Lynch is propelled on a cross-country journey when she is confronted with the news that her husband has died in a POW camp and that her estranged father is on his death-bed in Seattle, Washington. With a small store of cash, two pistols and the supplies in her Red Cross bag, nurse Lynch undertakes a lone journey by airship and locomotive across the very active war torn front, not knowing what, or who, she will find at journey’s end.

Though her nursing experiences have prepared her for the horrors of war, Mercy Lynch will learn that there are far worse terrors yet to be revealed.

Continue reading Dreadnought ~Cherie Priest →