Kindle Daily Post

What, Exactly, Is Space Opera?

Decades ago the writing of E.E. Smith paved the way for a new kind of sci-fi adventure: the space opera. The subgenre continues to thrive to this day but what, exactly, is a space opera? For insight we put out a call to some noted science fiction authors and asked them to finish this sentence: "At its best, space opera is..." Read their responses below. 

"Apocalyptic. Sweeping. Intense. Human. Dramatic. Funny. Above all apocalyptic." --John Ringo, author of the Troy Rising trilogy

"A breathtaking epic that takes readers across the galaxy and universe in a way that not only entertains, but also fires the imagination and makes us want nothing more than to pack our bags and just go. Go outward, beyond the normal, beyond the human, to whatever it is that awaits us all just past the protection of our blue-white cradle." --Evan Currie, author of the Odyssey One series (Into the Black and Heart of Matter)

"Frantic, frivolous, fast-paced fun; thought-provoking; tender; and romantic." --Sharon Lee, co-author of the Liaden Universe novels

"An over-the-top romp of adventure and ideas, bowing to the sense of wonder that marks all good SF." --Steve Miller, co-author of the Liaden Universe novels

"Allows people to dream of possible futures and surmount possible problems." --Sarah A. Hoyt, author of A Few Good Men and Darkship Thieves

 "At its best, space opera is rollicking. Merriam-Webster defines rollicking as boisterously carefree, joyful, or high-spirited, and that to me captures the feeling found in early space operas. They described a new frontier with endless horizons ahead -- and while there were dangers to be faced, there was always the feeling there might be something wondrous on the next planet over." --John Jackson Miller, author of Overdraft

How would you fill in the blank?

 

Guest Bloggers Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkornon on "Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity"

In Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity,
Siegel and Etzkorn show us how having empathy, striving for clarity, and distilling your message can reduce the distance between company and customer, hospital and patient, government and citizen-and increase your bottom line.

Every day there is a headline about overwhelming complexity and resulting consumer confusion.  One day the thorn is a college financial aid letter—without a standard format, students and their parents can’t compare the full cost of different schools. The next day, a survey shows that 83% of Americans want laws and regulations simplified to be more understandable.  Even recreation and entertainment can be overwhelming with hundreds of thousands of apps for smartphones and hundreds of choices on a restaurant menu. And when we are at our most vulnerable, we confront tens of thousands of codes on hospital bills.

Confusion is a very uncomfortable state of mind; understanding on the other hand is appealing, inviting, confidence-building.  Simplicity increases understanding. Simplicity levels the playing field and shortens the distance between company and consumer, government and citizen, hospital and patient. Clear, timely communication through useful products and services, without hidden fees, traps and arcane provisions, is good for business and government. We believe in simplicity as a philosophy, a guiding principle and a way of life.

That’s why we wrote, Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity. Our society has reached a point where a decision must be made. We either relinquish the power to understand and control what affects us, or we fight for a better, simpler way to conduct our daily affairs. Our book explains the wide-ranging applications of simplicity, how it works and why it benefits us. But it also serves as a call to action: the spark for a movement to reduce societal, government and corporate complexity. When we give up the shackles of “learned helplessness,” we invigorate our economy and empower consumers.

Analyzing hundreds of interactions across a wide variety of industries and circumstances, we realized that only three actions are needed to achieve simplicity:  empathize, distill and clarify. Empathizing with the needs, concerns and capabilities of customers ensures that you fulfill a need, at a timely moment, through an appropriate channel and with relevant content. Distilling your message to its essence increases impact and memorability. Clarifying across all touch points ensures that your message is both consistent and understandable. Understanding engenders trust; trust increases customer loyalty. Simplicity creates a virtuous circle; complexity forms mazes.

We don’t view complexity as a necessary evil. We see it as a thief that must be apprehended. As for simplicity, we think of it as the essence of the golden rule. Everyone wants to understand what is being offered to or expected of them, and simplicity helps make that clear. It indicates that we’ve taken time to move the complexity of something out of the way so that the recipient of an object, deed, gesture or letter understands what we mean. So, be on the lookout for transactions that delight you with unexpected clarity, transparency and responsiveness.  Tweet about hassle-free refunds; letters that tell you how and when to reply; one-page contracts you can sign without a bevy of lawyers. The more simplicity is cherished, touted and praised, the faster we will break the curse of complexity.

--Alan Siegel, Irene Etzkorn

Guest Blogger: Robert Lyndon, author of "Hawk Quest"

Robert Lyndon has been a falconer since boyhood. A keen student of history, he was intrigued by accounts of hawks being used as ransoms during the Middle Ages. Some of the scenes in Hawk Quest were inspired by Lyndon's own experiences as a falconer, climber and traveller in remote places.

Hawk Quest was born out of a long involvement with falconry, a love of wild places and a weakness for epic tales of historical adventure. One book that definitely inspired me was Frans G Bengtsson’s classic The Long Ships, a reworking of the Norse sagas which I read at about the same time I trained my first hawk.

Falcons in the Middle Ages were used not only for hunting, but also as royal gifts, a form of taxation, and as ransoms. At the end of the 14^th century, for example, the Ottoman sultan Beyazid turned down the Duke of Burgundy’s offer of 200,000 gold ducats as ransom payment for the duke’s crusader son. Instead, the sultan offered to free his prisoner in exchange for a dozen white gyrfalcons.

Hawk Quest is set three centuries earlier and tells the story of a band of adventurers who travel to the ends of the known world in search of four falcons demanded as ransom for a Norman knight captured by the Turks. The journey lasts a year and takes them to Iceland and Greenland, the White Sea and Rus, and down the River Dnieper to the Black Sea and Anatolia.

Writing the book took me ten times longer than that journey. I wrote it in stages, laying it aside for months on end while I scraped a living doing everything from driving a truck to teaching creative writing. The research probably took as much time as the writing. Initially I planned to retrace part of my characters’ route, but soon discovered that the medieval word in which they travelled had changed beyond recognition. The Dnieper, a major route used by Viking raiders and traders, is now one of the most polluted rivers in Europe, and its legendary rapids, with names like the ‘Gulper’ and the ‘Insatiable’, were drowned under a hydroelectric scheme in the 1920s.

I’ve just finished the sequel to Hawk Quest. Imperial Fire involves another epic journey – this time from Constantinople to China. It was a lot easier to write, my main difficulty being how to do justice to four rather than three Point of View characters. Now I have to decide whether to complete a trilogy or allow my characters to slip back into the mists of history.

--Robert Lyndon

SF and Fantasy Awards Season Heats Up; Hugo and Nebula Awards Still to Come

From roughly April through early November, the science fiction and fantasy world speculates on the outcome of several different prominent awards -- ultimately rejoicing or raging at the announcement of the finalist and winners. (Milder emotions are not permitted.) So where are we right now? How is it all trending?

As Omnivoracious previously reported, the Tiptree Award for feminist SF went to The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Ancient, Ancient by Kiini Ibura Salaam. Last month, Brian Francis Slattery won the Philip K. Dick Award for best SF paperback published in North America for Lost Everything. Just this past week, in what must be considered an upset, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, for excellence in science fiction published in the U.K., was awarded to Chris Beckett for Dark Eden. Beckett’s novel beat out favorites like Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker and Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312.

The Nebula Award and Hugo Award finalists also were announced in the last couple of months. The 2013 Hugo Award ballot for excellence in science fiction was voted on by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention. The winners will be revealed at the World SF Convention, Lonestar Con, in early September. The finalists for best novel are:

 

2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
Blackout, Mira Grant (Orbit)
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, John Scalzi (Tor)
Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed (DAW)

By contrast, the Nebula Awards are voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a writers’ organization. The Nebula winners will be announced in mid-May at a special banquet in San Francisco hosted by SFWA. Their novel ballot looks like this:

Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed (DAW; Gollancz ’13)
Ironskin, Tina Connolly (Tor)
The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Guest Blogger: Peggy Riley, author of "Amity & Sorrow"

Peggy Riley is a writer and playwright. She recently won a Highly Commended prize in the 2011 Bridport Prize and was published in their latest anthology. Amity & Sorrow is her first novel.

My 1970s California childhood was filled with violent faiths and death cults, from Charles Manson’s Family of former hippies who committed murder in his name in the Hollywood Hills to Reverend Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, which moved from San Francisco to Guyana, hoping to build Eden.  I will never forget the bodies, strewn across the jungle floor lying flat and embracing, all having drunk his poison punch, or the fiery siege at Waco that killed the Branch Davidians, praying inside their church.  In America’s history of handmade faiths are charismatic leaders who set out to change the world and the followers they gather, desperate to believe. 

I began to write my first novel, Amity & Sorrow, when I saw a newspaper image--a wooden church on fire, sitting on a barren prairie.  My mind added women to the picture, a group of women in long skirts running through the smoke.  I began to wonder who the women were and why their church was on fire.  I thought of the strength of belief in America’s history, a nation founded by religious radicals in search of freedom, and the fear of outsiders and the government that forces new faiths into isolation and secrecy.  In creating the church at the center of my novel, I knew it would have its roots in the American impulse to build utopia, but that it would be influenced by my own memories of more recent and darker faiths.  Its believers would be women, drawn from a world that had abandoned them, rejected them, leaving them alone, afraid and eager to join a family, at any cost.  Their children would be raised outside the world, in an Eden that was slowly turning to rot.  

Amity and Sorrow are two sisters, run from the fire by their mother--by one of their mothers--for their home is a fundamentalist, polygamous church of one man and his fifty wives.  They drive for days until, frightened and exhausted, they crash onto a farm on the Oklahoma Panhandle.  The girls find themselves in a new and strange world, far from their faith and family, when all their lives they had only been waiting for the world to end.  Will they find a new way to be a family without their faith?  Or will they have to move heaven and earth to get back home?     

--Peggy Riley

Romantic Times Award Winning Books

Award season is here! Romantic Times announced the Reviewers' Choice award winners honoring the best books of 2012. The RT staff of more than 50 reviewers select the nominees and the winners. Below is a list of winners we'd like to give a shout out to. For the full list of awards and winners visit the RT Award Winners and Nominees page.

RT Book of the Year: Riveted by Meljean Brook
A century after a devastating volcanic eruption forced Iceland's inhabitants to abandon its shores, the island has become enshrouded in legend. But the truth behind the legends is mechanical, not magical--and the mystery of the island a matter of life and death for a community of women who once spilled noble blood to secure their freedom... Read more

Contemporary Romance: When Snow Falls by Brenda Novak
After growing up in cheap motels, moving from town to town with her sister and mother, Cheyenne Christensen is grateful to be on her own. She's grateful, too, for the friends she found once her family settled in California. But she's troubled by the mystery of her earliest memories, most of which feature a smiling blonde woman. A woman who isn't her mother... Read more

Erotica: The Siren by Tiffany Reisz
Notorious Nora Sutherlin is famous for her delicious works of erotica, each one more popular with readers than the last. But her latest manuscript is different—more serious, more personal—and she's sure it'll be her breakout book, if it ever sees the light of day. Zachary Easton holds Nora's fate in his well-manicured hands... Read more

Historical Romance: Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt
A masked man, a dangerous woman, and a passion neither could deny. During the day Isabel and Winter engage in a battle of wills. At night their passions are revealed . . . But when little girls start disappearing from St. Giles, Winter must avenge them. For that he might have to sacrifice everything-the Home, Isabel . . . and his life. Read more

Inspirational Romance: The Shadow of the Quilt by Stephanie Grace Whitson
Juliana Sutton’s life looks perfect—from the outside. Until her husband’s untimely death reveals a devastating truth... Cass Gregory is carrying his own dark secrets and feels unworthy to offer comfort to a woman of Juliana’s standing. When circumstances force them together, both Juliana and Cass are wounded and afraid to trust. Read more

Multicultural Romance: Red Hot by Niobia Bryant
Is a real man too hot for a pampered diva to handle?... For Kaitlyn Strong, life has been a fun-filled free ride, all expenses paid by her wealthy father. As for relationships, why would Kaitlyn want to give up the fabulous single life? But after she goes on her most outrageous spending bender yet, she's informed it's time to make her own way. For a shocked Kaitlyn, that means getting a job--and an affordable apartment to go with it. Read more

Romantic Suspense: Sleepwalker by Karen Robards
It’s not that Micayla Lange is afraid of the clinking she hears coming from the first floor of the empty McMansion she’s housesitting for her uncle Nicco. She’s a cop, after all. It’s just that finding out her boyfriend was cheating on her was enough drama for one night. Now she’s alone on New Year’s Eve, wearing flannel pajamas and wielding a Glock 22 as she zeroes in on the unmistakable source of the sound: Uncle Nicco’s private office. Read more

First Series: What Lies Beneath by Andrea Laurence
They say she's Cynthia Dempsey, fiancée of media mogul Will Taylor. But try as she might, she can't recall their high-society life or the man sitting by her hospital bed. Though her body certainly remembers him. Even as she senses the distance between them, the electricity when they touch is undeniable. Read more

John Ross Bowie and Kevin Sussman on "Dark Minions"

John Ross Bowie and Kevin Sussman are part of one of the most famous nerd ensembles in entertainment history -- the cast of the hit series Big Bang Theory (Bowie plays Sheldon’s rival Kripke, and Sussman is comic shop owner Stuart). But they’re not faking their love of sci-fi and superheroes. It’s who they are, and their influences run deeply through Dark Minions, the show they’ve created for Amazon.

“Make no mistake -- we are on Big Bang Theory because we are authentic nerds," Bowie said. “High-functioning nerds -- more Leonards than Sheldons --  but nerds nonetheless. Kevin worked at a comic book shop. I watched all the Star Wars DVDs one New Year’s Eve as an adult.”

Dark Minions is one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM. Viewer response will help determine which of these children’s shows and comedies return with full seasons.

We asked Bowie and Sussman about their show, their inspirations, and what the Big Bang Theory characters might think of Dark Minions.

How do you describe Dark Minions? 

Kevin: It’s about two regular guys, Mel and Andy, who get jobs onboard an evil space station. Maybe in a better time they’d take a principled stand against working there, but Mel’s got alimony and Andy doesn’t have a college degree, so they’re willing to lower their standards just a tad. It’s a workplace comedy that deals with corporate bureaucracy, inter-office politics, and the deluge of paperwork involved in enslaving various alien species.

What made you want to tell this story with these characters, in this world? 

Kevin: We’re fans of the genre. We set out to do a straight up sci-fi thriller, actually, but neither of us could refrain from giving the villains silly names.

Are any of the characters based on real people?

John: Mel and Andy are loosely based on Kevin and I. Before we knew each other, we both worked for huge, rather nefarious companies in the late ‘90s and though a lot of the work that was going on was unsavory -- mass firings, circumventing environmental regulations -- Kevin and I needed the jobs. It was not unlike working for an evil space station.

Guest Blogger: Author Connie Brockway on Southern Romances

Guest post by New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Connie Brockway. She is an eight time finalist for Romance Writers of America prestigious RITA award and a two-time recipient for My Dearest Enemy and The Bridal Season.

I’m in the mood for something steamy and since up here on the tundra, where we are still entrenched in the never-ending winter, preferably something warm weather-related. But if I can’t have that, I’ll settle for the Deep South and a molasses-smooth drawl, humid nights, hot heroes, and Steel Magnolia heroines.

Here’s my selection of old and new treasures guaranteed to sweep you away somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line:

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Long before True Blood hit the HBO airwaves, Charlaine Harris wrote a more genial (if no less blood thirsty) vampire novel called Dead Until Dark. In it, her naive 25-year-old virgin waitress finds true love and an empty mind (you either already know why this is a plus or you’ll just have to read the book!) with super stud vampire Bill. But the real star of this story in Bon Temp, a sleepy bayou stranded town with a plethora of characters both, alive and dead, supernatural and super-odd that will have you turning pages as fast as you can. Here’s a story that goes down as easy as sweet tea on a hot afternoon!

 

Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath

If you love a tortured hero, you’re going to adore Houston Leigh, ravaged body and soul by injuries suffered in the Civil War. Sent to escort his beloved brother’s mail-order bride across the Texas wilderness, Houston falls for southern bell Amelia Carson. What’s a tortured, honorable, desperate man to do, especially when your brother is not some shiftless ne’er do well but a good, hard-working man deserving of the glorious Amelia? Happily, in Lorraine Heath’s expert hands, the answer isn’t left entirely up to Houston. Amelia has survived her own ordeals and emerged stronger, more competent and ready to love. This is a richly satisfying and emotional read that never takes the easy way out. And that setting? I can almost taste the trail dust.

 

Meant to Be by Terri Osburn

Warning, this book is not available until May 21 but it fit in so well with my theme and was so much fun that I couldn’t resist including it. Sweet, disarming Beth Chandler isn’t exactly a mail-order bride but she is willing to take a terrifying voyage (okay, it’s a short hop across a channel on a ferry, but she’s hydrophobic) to meet her future in-laws on idyllic Anchor Island. During the trip she finds a welcome distraction in rugged fellow passenger Joe Dempsey and his dog, Dozer. The animal magnetism (sorry, it was irresistible) is not only doomed by the fact that she’s already engaged, but then she discovers that —yup… you guessed it— Joe is her intended’s brother. Fun, flirty, with an adorable and genuinely likeable heroine and a great supporting cast, watching these two fight their high-octane attraction is pure delight. Hit that pre-order button!

I could go on for a long time about my favorite southern delights but for those of you who want to really sink your teeth into the more over-the-top on that pile, I suggest digging up some of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s titles such as Ashes in the Wind or the seminal Shanna. They’re as lush and rich as praline sauce on bread pudding. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Author Neve Maslakovic Lists Five Favorite Time Travel Novels

  When I embarked on writing The Far Time Incident, I’m not sure I knew where the book would take me. The plan was for my narrator Julia Olsen and her co-workers at fictional, Minnesota-based St. Sunniva University to be marooned in the past by a saboteur. The place, I decided as I drew up an early draft, would be the ancient town of Pompeii. A volcano on the brink of an eruption, Latin, togas, sandals -- what could be a richer and more disorienting setting for the modern time traveler?

Of course, many authors have bent the space-time continuum over the years. Here are five of my favorite time travel novels, whose authors managed to pull off wonderfully unique settings (ordered by publication date):

 A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889): Mark Twain’s classic story, probably the first time travel novel I ever read, features sixth-century England, an engineer named Hank, Camelot, Merlin, and a solar eclipse.

The House on the Strand (1969): Somewhat difficult to track down, Daphne du Maurier’s haunting novel features an addictive time-travel drug, a fourteenth century Cornish manor, lords and ladies, intrigue, and a train accident. 

Time and Again (1970): Jack Finney weaves a rich tale about an advertising sketch artist sent to New York City of 1882, complete with photographs of the era, horse-drawn buses, and the Statue of Liberty’s right arm.

To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997): Connie Willis’s humorous novel involves Oxford University, Coventry Cathedral, World War II, and a piece of Victoriana known as the Bishop’s bird stump. The title is a nod to Jerome K. Jerome’s delightfully funny Three Men in a Boat (there was a dog, too).

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) (Spoiler alert) Perhaps not the first book that comes to mind where time travel is concerned, but Hermione's Time Turner does save the day in the third installment of J.K. Rowling's bestselling series. --Neve Maslakovic

Guest Blogger: Austin Grossman, on "You"

With You, Austin Grossman offers his most daring and most personal novel yet--a thrilling, hilarious, authentic portrait of the world of professional game makers; and the story of how learning to play can save your life.

I wanted to write the Great American Video Game Novel. 

I wanted to write about my time in the game industry in the 1990's, and all the exciting things that were happening there as we competed to invent this thing that was just turning the corner from toy to mass media to art. And I wanted to tell the story of four kids who would do anything to escape their stupid lives, but instead of starting a death-metal band or writing poetry or taking drugs, they decide to make the greatest video game in history.

But there was a problem, a novel-writing problem: Who cares about video games? Technically, I and countless millions of other people do, but to a novelist trying to tell a good story there's a haunting question: Is this just going to be a novel about people staring at computer screens?

I knew the obvious way past this. You just say "There's a video game with a bomb attached to it! And unless our hero gets a perfect score, it's going to blow up, and all - all! - the orphans will die." And that's one way to tell that story - you make video games a mechanism for a plot based on sensible, familiar real-world stakes.

But something in me said "no" to writing that novel. It was the nagging feeling I was underestimating the possibilities of a novel about video games. Making it about the bomb and the orphans was like saying video games don't matter. And people do sometimes play video games even when there aren't innocent lives at stake, don't they? There has to be a way of writing about them that showed why video games are the entertainment medium to beat in the 21st century.

I thought about why I make and play games, and I tried to be honest about it. Sometimes I want to goof around with my friends. Sometimes it's been a long, crappy day and I want to feel like I'm somewhere else for a while, doing something else, being someone else - in fact the way a novel makes me feel.

I first came to video games because they were a way of making friends, and a way of leaving my house and my town, of striking out on my own to a place where parents and teachers couldn't follow, long before I could drive a car. Then as now, I came to games for lots of reasons. I came them angry, I came to them lonely, I came to them curious about who I could be if I tried.

People come to gaming from their own individual histories, and it was putting gameplay into prose that taught me that everyone's got a reason to play a video game, and how they do it speaks volumes. And then I wasn't just writing a novel about video games. I was writing about friendship, about ambition, about grief, about everything the hero of a video game feels - you know the hero I'm talking about, the one at the controller making the choices, taking the risks, losing and winning. The hero, which is to say, you.

--Austin Grossman