In Which I Realize that John Scalzi is Not a Very Good Author

Picked up the third book in Scalzi's Old Man's War series: "Last Colony".  It's not good.  I don't mean that in the "it didn't work for me but I can see how others might enjoy it" sense, either.  I mean it in the "wow, this book is not competently structured, paced, or edited" sense.

Example: The book is essentially 3 Acts:

1. Intro, and develop need for new colony planet.
2. Colonize planet with some surprises and complications.
3. Reveal real reason for new colony; resolution and climax.

One of the complications in part 2 is the realization that there is already a sentient species on the planet the newcomers have colonized.  And they are hostile!  And dangerous!  And eat humans!  and have spears!  And move silently! (I don't know if they could Bend Bars and Lift Gates, but I suspect so!)  And they look like...  like... like...

Wait for it...

Werewolves!  Yeah!  Fast, ninja-moving, spear-carrying werewolves that eat people!  And they're right next door!  And they even murder one of the more slightly-interesting secondary characters right in front of us at the end of Act 2!

I'd tell you more, but that's the last time they're ever mentioned in the book, even though a large part of Act 3 takes place on the colony.  I was hoping that they were being deliberately minimalized because there was a way to clumsily shoehorn them into the rather predictable climax at the colony, but no, they were just tossed aside, unresolved and unremarked.

That's just one of the examples, but probably the easiest to describe.  It's a problem that decent writing would not have created and that any competent editor would have redlined, but there it is.

This was my fourth and last Scalzi.  I liked "Old Man's War" and I think I liked the sequel.  I thought "Redshirts" was pretty shitty.  I took a chance on "Last Colony" because I figured his core storyline would be okay.  I was wrong.  I guess Scalzi ended up having one story to tell well.  He wrote it.  I read it.  I liked it.  But now I'm done.

This Is Just Plain Cool

Don't recall how I ended up here, but you should check out this Wikipedia entry on the Voynich Manuscript, a 240-page,14th-century book written in code that nobody can break.

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Here's a quote from wiki: "The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten book thought to have been written in the early 15th century and comprising about 240 vellum pages, most with illustrations. Although many possible authors have been proposed, the author, script and language remain unknown. It has been described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript".

A Cool, Rational Look At The Book Publishing Industry

Some businesses are not dumb at all. Google, for example, is an example of an innovative technology company making oodles of lovely money. You have to dig to find anything dumb in the Googleverse, although Google Sites may be close.

Some businesses seem smart, but when you look into them a little, you find seething pools of dumbness. Selling cars to Americans is a pretty way to get rich, but if you start rooting around, you find the Pontiac Aztek and the GM Job Bank.

Finally, some businesses are dumb right from the first look. Today I'm picking on book publishing.

First of all, book publishers don't test their products on anyone. Ever. In other words, the opinion of the editor and associate editors and the head of the publishing house determines what manuscripts make it into print.

Hollwood does it much the same way, and bungles it most of the time -- Universal passed on Star Wars, essentially turning down a license to print money, and every studio in town except Paramount turned down Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The literary geniuses at Knopf and Little Brown and others compound this error by paying advances to almost all their authors. An author delivers a couple chapters -- or most of a book if they are a first-timer -- and they get paid before the publishing house makes any money, or even knows if they will.

Then the publishing house spends money on editing, typesetting, designing covers, printing, publicity (if there is any) and distribution.This is all very expensive, and explains why fancy cookbooks with full color illustrations cost $9 million each.

The more books you print, the cheaper it gets per copy, but you can run into problems fast by overprinting. Read on.

Book stores must have won a bet or some kind of underground shadow-war against the publishers years ago, because they are allowed to take all the books on consignment. If they don't sell, the publisher has to take them back and refund the money.

If the book does sell and stores need more copies, the publisher has more problems. The second print run is a rush job and therefore costs more per copy. Its also probably smaller the your initial print run, and therefore costs more per copy.

If it doesn't get to the bookstores in time, the fickle reading public forgets all about you, and your chance for a bestseller evaporates. Just like the first print run, unsold books go back and the money is refunded.

Essentially, publishing houses take a royal asspounding from every single entity they do business with from the author to the bookstores to the printer. No wonder they depend on the big stars like James Patterson, Tom Clancy and Stephen King to subsidize all the other books and authors.

I suppose there are some reasons for optimism. The Amazon Kindle and Sony ebook reader with digital distribution, print on demand and market testing using a multivariant fractional factorial approach have the potential to change the industry, if applied right.

Its significant that the companies developing and distributing these tools and technologies are not book publishers, who could probably teach Luddites a thing or two about hating technology.

Which leaves me predicting that the publishers who got themselves into this mess will not have have the vision to get themselves out.

Dribble, dribble, dribble, shoot, Swish!

"As Goodgulf stepped onto the bridge the passage echoed with an ominous dribble, dribble, and a great crowd of narcs burst forth. In their midst was a towering dark shadow too terrible to describe. In its hand it held a huge black globe and on its chest was written in cruel runes, "Villanova".

"Aiyee," shouted Legolam. "A ballhog!"

Anyone who loves Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and who has even a spark of a sense of humor, should hie them hence and grab a copy of Harvard Lampoon's old chestnut,
Bored of the Rings.

And be prepared to sprain a latissimus laughing. Trust me.

Bobby Kennedy: Hippie Traitor

Next time some wingnut pins you to the wall at some cocktail party and sprays onion dip all over you while he relates a conspiracy theory involving the CIA or the Trilateral Comission or the Federal Reserve and the dastardly slaughter of our own citizens, you'd like to tell him that there is NO WAY an American politician would deliberately kill innocent civilians as part of some plot.

But you can't.

And this is why. In his new book on the Cuban missile crisis, One Minute to Midnight (pages 16-17), historian Michael Dobbs relates these events: On August 8, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a memo suggesting ways in which the USA might justify attacking the weaker nation. The focus was on a list of potential 'staged provocations that included:

• We could blow up a U.S. Ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.

• We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.

• It is possible to arrange an incident that will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civilian airliner.

On Tuesday, October 16th 1962 at about 6:30pm, JFK met with his advisers. He had just learned that the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba.

During the meeting, Bobby Kenney argued for an "aggressive response to Moscow." Apparently thinking of the explosion of the American battleship Maine in Havana Harbor -- the incident that provided the US with an excuse to declare war on Spain in 1898 -- Bobby mused that perhaps "there is some other way we can involved in this. You know, sink the Maine again or something."

How do we know he said this? JFK recorded all the meetings. The book doesn't say what kind of reaction the president or the other advisors had to this suggestion, but the meeting continued with discussions of sabotage operations against Castro's regime, so it doesn't sound like there was outraged horror.

I wonder what the reaction would have been had Bobby proposed blowing up a US Navy ship to Dwight D. Eisenhower. I hope Ike would have punched him in the face.

Really Really Good Books.

Here is a list of the books I esteem. I will update this post from time to time with new entries.

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire This is one of the finest histories I have ever read. If you've ever been curious about the final days of the war in the Pacific, or the decision to drop the A-Bomb on Japan, you should read this. The amount of research that went into this volume is astounding and the writing is really excellent.

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Kruschev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. Did you know that at one point during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro was asking Kruschev to launch a nuclear attack on the USA? I didn't either. There's a lot of fascinating stuff like that in here. It reads like a thriller, and like Downfall is impressively researched.

Washington's Crossing This book is about so much more than Washington's winter attack on the Hessian garrison at Trenton. It illustrates the characters of the men in the two opposing armies. You'll be astonished at the misery that Washington's men endured, and the brilliant strokes he achieved with his often shoeless, freezing army.

Charlie Wilson's War During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the USA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to the Afghan freedom fighters -- the mujihadeen. Now that we are fighting some of the same men who we supplied with weapons, training and support, this book is exceptionally relevant, and a fantastic story.

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