Filed under: Mars, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, Space | Tags: literature, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, space, writing
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.
And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer’s ancient green lawns.
Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.
Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.
The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land….
Farewell, Mr. Bradbury.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, BoingBoing, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Music, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Violence, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, BoingBoing, care-giving, direct publishing, free, genetics, health, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, literature, memoir, music, predictions, Queen, science, Science Fiction, technology, writing, www youtube
From BoingBoing here’s an embedded video of a long (90 minutes) but *really* fascinating discussion on the topic of why homo sapiens is the sole surviving member of our genus, and what that might tell us about ourselves. What I very much enjoyed was the way the different disciplines brought their own perspective to the question, and how each different perspective tends to reinforce the science of the others.
Today, we’re the only living member of the genus Homo and the only living member of the subtribe Hominina. Along with chimpanzees and bonobos, we’re all that remains of the tribe Hominini.
But the fossil record tells us that wasn’t always the case. There were, for instance, at least eight other species of Homo running around this planet at one time. So what happened to them? What makes us so special that we’re still here?
* * * * * * *
From Chapter 5:
Navarr turned and looked at Jon. “Any indication from the medical report what the genetic changes mean functionally?”
“No, not yet. The way that the genetic manipulation will play out is very difficult to predict, since that is a subtle and complex dance over time. They have simulations running now, and we may have an idea in a few days.”
* * * * * * *
I don’t want to give away too much, but there are other intimations in Communion of Dreams on this topic, since it is one which has long intrigued me. And while I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to get too far into the molecular genetics, the current state of the science is such that there is room for plausible speculation.
And again, without giving too much away, I can say that this is something which will be one of the themes in St. Cybi’s Well.
* * * * * * *
Speaking of giving things away: next Saturday, June 9th, will be a Kindle promotional day for both Communion of Dreams and Her Final Year. As previously, the Kindle edition of each book will be available for free download all day, and you don’t even need to own a Kindle to get & read your free copy, as there is a free emulator app for just about every computer/tablet/mobile device out there.
In addition, I will be offering a signed paperback copy of each book as a prize — details to be announced in a couple of days!
Jim Downey
*of course.
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, direct publishing, Habaneros, health, jim downey, Kindle, literature, lucid dreaming, Science Fiction, writing
There’s a new review up on Amazon.
* * * * * * *
I woke from a *very* strange dream about 2:00 this morning. It was a partially lucid dream, where the awake part of my brain kept trying to re-arrange the dream components to solve a problem.
The problem? How to coordinate and communicate with a very large workforce in the basement of a huge construction site. For whatever reason, the foundation of the building had been put into place, but there were huge piles of random junk all throughout the various compartments of the basement. Each time I tried to come up with a way to make sure that everyone did what they needed to do, and was accounted for (in terms of safety and actually working), the size of the basement grew, as did the piles of junk to be dealt with.
* * * * * * *
I’ve posted a fair number of items to the blog this week, but all of it has been quick links to videos I found of interest, or the sort of simple status updates I like to share about how the book is doing. There are all kinds of reasons why I post this stuff. It’s good to have these benchmarks noted on the blog for archive purposes, and people enjoy the oddball vids I come across. But these sorts of posts don’t require a lot of mental effort on my part, and when I post a string of them it usually indicates that something else is going on.
Sometimes I’m aware of what that “something else” is, sometimes it is only obvious in hindsight.
* * * * * * *
I’ve been fighting a sore throat for more than a week. Nothing too bad, started out as just an ache. I figured at first it was probably just due to allergies and a little drainage. Then I figured I had a mild virus (there’s always something going around). But it persisted. Yesterday morning I took a look in the mirror, and saw that my uvula was just about the size, shape, and color of a very ripe habanero.
Charming.
I had planned to ride out the weekend, then if my throat was still bugging me to see my usual doc sometime. Instead, I popped over to the clinic. Saw the doc on call. She took one look at my throat, prescribed antibiotics, told me to take it easy.
* * * * * * *
I knew that I was just spinning my wheels last week. I didn’t feel all that well. But I was getting some good work done in the bindery, and more or less kept forward momentum going on marketing & promotion, other things.
More importantly, I’ve been doing a *lot* of thinking about St. Cybi’s Well, the prequel to Communion of Dreams which I have mentioned often, but for which I have very little to show at this point.
It is hard to explain how this process works sometimes. But the conscious part of my brain recognized what was happening in my dream last night. How even though the foundation of the book may be laid, it is still necessary to get a handle on all the many different elements I need to work together to complete the thing. Oh, some of the details will sort themselves out as you go along — characters will take on ‘life’ and become real, a metaphor will become clear, that sort of thing — but you have to at least get the major elements in place, or you can never hope to build the book.
And just when you think you have things sorted out, you realize that the task before you is even larger than you realized. There are more factors to consider. More characters to understand.
It’s frustrating. And exciting. And exhausting.
* * * * * * *
There’s a new review up on Amazon. Here’s part of it:
I highly recommend this book. It’s exciting, thought provoking, and entertaining. I hope Mr. Downey continues to produce science fiction of such high caliber.
That helps. Thanks.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: Amazon, blogging, direct publishing, free, jim downey, Kindle, literature, reviews, Science Fiction
No, not that 538. Though this does have to do with statistics of a sort: that’s the number of total sales & loans of Communion of Dreams so far this month. (Loans are included, since under the Amazon Prime system I get paid almost as much royalty for a loan as I do for an outright sale of the book).
Everything was plugging along just grand until the end of last week, when sales decided to slow down considerably. Went from about 25 a day to under 10, and the ranking slipped from about 2,000 overall to the current 12,427.
These kinds of fluctuations happen, and I’m not worried about the overall trend — but it would still be nice if we could break 600 total sales for the entire month. So I’m asking for a little help: if you know someone who might enjoy Communion of Dreams, but isn’t usually a science-fiction reader, give the book a plug. Reviews have consistently shown that it has appeal beyond just the genre, and in fact the formal review I linked to earlier this month summed up his recommendation this way: “A solid read that may have greater appeal to individuals who are not fans of the genre than by aficionados.”
Now, if someone’s in a bit of a cash bind, don’t bug them about buying the book. I’ll be running another “free promotion day” for the Kindle edition here in June, and they can get it then. But otherwise, please help spread the word.
Thanks!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Government, movies, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: blogging, Enlightenment, jim downey, literature, MIB, politics, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Surowiecki, Tommy Lee Jones, video, writing, www youtube
This is the third and final part of a series. The first installment can be found here, the second here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last Sunday, I used a quote from Kay:
“Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
I did so to make a point. But it was a little unfair of me to do so, because I cut out the first part of his whole statement:
Catch that? Here’s the first part of his reply: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
I laughed heartily when I first heard that. I still get a good chuckle when I re-watch it. It’s a good bit of writing, delivered perfectly by Tommy Lee Jones.
But I no longer think that it’s right.
No, I’m not talking about “The Wisdom of Crowds.” Not exactly, anyway. Surowiecki makes a good case for his notion that truth (or more accurately, optimization) can be an emergent quality of a large enough group of people. After all, this is the basis for democracy. But this can still lead to gross errors of judgment, in particular mass hysteria of one form or another.
Rather, what I’m talking about is that a *system* of knowledge is critical to avoiding the trap of thinking that you know more than you actually do. This can mean using the ‘wisdom of crowds’ intelligently, ranging from just making sure that you have a large enough group, which has good information on the topic, and that the wisdom is presented in a useable way — think modern polling, with good statistical models and rigorous attention to the elimination of bias.
Another application is brilliantly set forth in the Constitution of the United States, where the competing checks & balances between interest groups and governmental entities helps mitigate the worst aspects of human nature.
And more generally, the development of the scientific method as a tool to understand knowledge – as well as ignorance – has been a great boon for us. Through it we have been able to accomplish much, and to begin to avoid the dangers inherent in thinking that we know more than we actually do.
The elimination of bias, the development of the scientific method, the application of something like logic to philosophy — these are all very characteristic of the Enlightenment, and in as far as we deviate from these things, we slip back into the darkness a little.
Perhaps this will ring a bell:
“That which emerges from darkness gives definition to the light.”
* * * * * * *
I’ve said many times that Communion of Dreams was intended to ‘work’ on multiple levels. At the risk of sounding too much like a graduate writing instructor, or perhaps simply coming across that I think I’m smart, this is one good example of that: the whole book can be understood as an extended metaphor on the subject of a system of knowledge, of progress.
Human knowledge, that is.
[Mild spoiler alert.]
From the very end of Communion of Dreams, this exchange between the main protagonist and his daughter sums it up:
“What did you learn from seeing it?”
Her brow furrowed a moment. “You mean from just looking at the [Rosetta] stone? Nothing.”
“Then why is it important?”
“Because it gave us a clue to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs.”
“Right. But that clue was only worthwhile to people who knew what the other languages said, right?”
She gave him a bit of a dirty look. “You didn’t know anything about the artifact, or healing, or any of those things before you touched it.”
“True,” he agreed. “But think how much more people will be able to understand, be able to do, when they have learned those things.”
“Oh.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Charlie Stross, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, New Horizons, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Singularity, Society, Steampunk, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Charlie Stross, jim downey, literature, predictions, reviews, Science Fiction, space, technology, writing
I’ve mentioned Charlie Stross several times here. As I’ve said previously: smart guy, good writer. I disagree with his belief in mundane science fiction, because I think that it is too limited in imagination. Which leads almost inevitably to this formulation on his blog today (and yes, you should go read the whole thing):
We people of the SF-reading ghetto have stumbled blinking into the future, and our dirty little secret is that we don’t much like it. And so we retreat into the comfort zones of brass goggles and zeppelins (hey, weren’t airships big in the 1910s-1930s? Why, then, are they such a powerful signifier for Victorian-era alternate fictions?), of sexy vampire-run nightclubs and starship-riding knights-errant. Opening the pages of a modern near-future SF novel now invites a neck-chillingly cold draft of wind from the world we’re trying to escape, rather than a warm narcotic vision of a better place and time.
And so I conclude: we will not inspire anyone with grand visions of a viable future through the medium of escapism. If we want to write inspirational literature with grand visions we need to dive into to the literary mainstream (which is finally rediscovering fabulism) and, adding a light admixture of Enlightenment ideology along the way, start writing the equivalent of those earnest and plausible hyper-realistic tales of Progress through cotton-planting on the shores of the Aral sea.
But do you really want us to do that? I don’t think so. In fact, the traditional response of traditional-minded SF readers to the rigorous exercise of extrapolative vision tends to be denial, disorientation, and distaste. So let me pose for you a different question, which has been exercising me for some time: If SF’s core message (to the extent that it ever had one) is obsolete, what do we do next?
Well, I dunno about Charlie, but I plan on writing a couple of prequels to Communion of Dreams, which I understand have touched something of a nerve in people precisely *because* it is hopeful in the face of a harsh reality.
Jim Downey
(PS: sometime today we should break through the level of 500 total sales/loans of CoD so far this month. Which is almost twice the previous month’s tally. Thanks for affirming my vision, folks!)
Filed under: General Musings, Mark Twain, movies, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, jim downey, literature, Mark Twain, MIB, Science Fiction, Will Rogers, writing, Zen
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” – Mark Twain.
* * * * * * *
I have a secret I’d like to share. It’s something that almost everyone thinks they know. But it is something which we all think doesn’t apply to us.
The secret? Just nine words: You’re not as smart as you think you are.
* * * * * * *
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you; it’s what you think you know that ain’t so.” -Will Rogers
* * * * * * *
I don’t care who you are. We’re all prone to making this mistake. To ignoring this thing we know – which has been common wisdom for millenia, and across almost all human cultures as far as I can tell.
Why do we do this?
* * * * * * *
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” *
* * * * * * *
I think that we do it because we have to. Trusting our knowledge, our experience, is the only thing that allows us to make sense of the world.
It starts with the most basic things. Breath. Life. Light.
Then it grows upon those, builds with knowledge accumulated and shared.
* * * * * * *
“Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” Kay
* * * * * * *
“That which emerges from darkness gives definition to the light.”
It’s the central mystery at the heart of Communion of Dreams.
What does it mean?
* * * * * * *
From Communion of Dreams, Chapter 16:
Jon shook his head. “I still don’t see where it really makes that much difference to us.”
“Perhaps not to us. We’re inside the bubble. But to the crew of the Hawking, it made a very big difference. They got on the other side of the bubble.”
There was a moment, a heartbeat, as the implications of this sank in. And then the universe changed. “Sweet Jesus . . . ”
* * * * * * *
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” – Mark Twain.
Actually, it’s just attributed to Twain, thanks to a Reader’s Digest entry from 1939. It sounds like the sort of thing he would have said, but Twain scholars haven’t been able to document it as actually having been his.
Nine words: You’re not as smart as you think you are.
Neither am I. None of us are.
More later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, direct publishing, game theory, jim downey, Kindle, literature, reviews, Science Fiction, writing
Dear Agent-person,
Earlier this year I self-published a book. Said book sold about 100 copies in the first month. About 200 copies the second month. 300 copies last month. It broke that number in the first two weeks of this month. And the rate of increase is still growing. And that’s just with my feeble efforts to promote the book.
People love the thing. The reviews are excellent. Don’t take my word for it – see for yourself.
I’d love to get this book in the hands of a large publisher. With even a half-way decent promotional campaign this book could be a mega-seller. And I’m not talking within the confines of genre-fiction. Please note in those reviews that a number of people have said that they don’t usually read Science Fiction. This has mass-market appeal. This could easily be turned into a blockbuster movie.
There’s nothing that needs to be done to the book – it is finished, popular, and ready to be handed over to a large publisher. If they move fast, they can have the damned thing in stores before the holiday season.
Further, I have at least two more books in this series I want to write, and that people want to read. I can have the first manuscript done in 18 months, perhaps sooner. If I have a decent advance to live on so I can concentrate on writing it.
I’ve thought about doing a Kickstarter to accomplish that. And there’s a chance that sales will just continue to grow on their own accord. But I’d rather not have to mess with all of this, and concentrate on my writing.
Do you see where I’m going with this? I need an agent. Not just any agent. One with the right connections. One who can cut through the crap and land a package deal to turn this book, and then the others in the series, into best-sellers. So I’m contacting you. You’re not the only one I’m contacting. The first one who gets back to me and shows me what they can do for me gets to take their cut of the proceeds.
Don’t delay.
Jim Downey
* * * * * * * *
I must admit, that I’m seriously tempted to send that kind of a query letter out. No, it is not at all my personality to say or do such a thing, but I sold artwork long enough to know that sometimes, it’s all about attitude. Having the hutzpah, the brashness, to claim success long before the race starts.
And what the hell, it’s not like my previous efforts to get the attention of a decent agent were any more successful.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, Feedback, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, jim downey, Kindle, literature, reviews, Science Fiction, Thomas Evans, writing
So, for some time now I’ve been following Thomas Evans’ The Archaeologist’s Guide to the Galaxy. He offers very intelligent, insightful, and sometimes biting reviews of a lot of books – but it was his writing about Science Fiction which caught my eye and got me reading him regularly. I haven’t mentioned it here, for one very simple reason: I wanted him to read, and hopefully review, Communion of Dreams. And I didn’t want there to be any doubt about whether or not my comments biased him.
Well, now that concern is moot. Because he just posted a full, formal review of Communion.
Now, the usual thing would be for me to excerpt some of the things he says about my book, and tout it all over the place. Like the title of this post. Yeah, he basically says that one aspect of my novel is better than one aspect of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I could justifiably paraphrase him to claim that this was the summation of his review. Well, were I a press agent for a big publishing house, I could. Or would, rather, regardless of whether it was actually justified or not.
The actual passage from his review says this:
The topic of possible ancient alien contact is brilliantly handled and to my mind, makes perfect sense (within the context of the book that is). Indeed, it has quite the opposite effect that most such stories have on me, and is one of only two such conclusions that I actually liked. The other was Arthur C. Clark’s 2001, so that is very august company to keep, and to be honest, I thought the way that Downey handled it in this book was superior. I won’t go into any further details, for the question of whether or not there even was contact is one of the most interesting and intentionally downplayed elements of this book. Suffice it to say that the way this book addresses the whole concept of the ‘object’ is well worth the read.
See? There’s more nuance there than just a pull-quote.
Just as there is in the entire review. Which is why I like this fellow’s reviews. He’s a SF writer himself, and thoroughly understands the genre. He knows its ins and outs, understands the strengths and weaknesses of a given author or story line, identifies the tropes and traditions. He doesn’t pull punches, has his own quirks and preferences. Above all, he has intelligent reasons for the things he says about books, and explains those reasons.
So I was flattered that he would take the time to read Communion, let alone write such a complete review of the book.
And it is an excellent review. No, not in the sense that he thinks the book is excellent. In the sense that he clearly says what he likes and dislikes about the book, and offers his opinion on to whom it might appeal. Yes, there are a lot of positive things he says about CoD, and that gives me a nice ego-boost. And I don’t agree with some of his criticisms of the book. But those criticisms are honest and fair – he makes a strong case for why he says what he says, and on that basis I have no complaint with his conclusions.
See for yourself. Go read the review. Leave a comment about what you think of it there on his site. Or not. But do yourself a favor and add him to your regular reading list. I have.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Blade Runner, Failure, Feedback, Health, Hospice, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Society, XCOR | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, banking, blogging, care-giving, direct publishing, free, health, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, literature, memoir, Mother's Day, reviews, Science Fiction, TSA, writing
A couple weeks ago I quipped that I was thankful for the TSA, because they are always good fodder for a blog post when things were otherwise slow. Well, likewise, I’m glad that the big multinational banks are around to put my own mistakes in some perspective:
A billion here, a billion there
JPMORGAN, widely considered the best run of all the large banks in America, if not the world, on May 10th provided the kind of news that has become all too common in the financial industry: a $2 billion charge for errant trades. The markets responded within seconds of the opening on May 11th, sending Morgan’s share price down 9%, and its value by $14 billion. Late on May 11th, Standard & Poor’s announced it was downgrading the outlook for the company, and Fitch knocked down its ratings.
* * *
The bluntest criticism of Morgan’s failure came from the bank’s own chief executive, Jamie Dimon. He said the losses were the result of self-inflicted “sloppiness”, “poor judgment” and “stupidity”, for which “we are accountable”.
And the news this morning is that a number of the executives involved in the losses have ‘retired’. No, not in the Blade Runner sense. But in the sense that they’ll not be drawing a salary of more than a million bucks a month. Though I imagine that these people have more than a bit of savings and contractual retirement income to cushion the blow.
Anyway.
Yesterday’s Kindle promotion for Communion of Dreams wasn’t a huge mistake, but it also wasn’t a stunning success. A total of 1,571 copies of the book were downloaded. Chances are it wasn’t what was needed to kick us up to the next orbital level, but neither did it crash & burn.
What *was* surprising was that our care-giving memoir Her Final Year proved to be very successful, with a total of 3,112 downloads. Wow.
I find it hard to explain just how happy this makes me. As I had noted previously, I was very disappointed with the response to Her Final Year. Only recently have I come to understand that it was about more than just simple sales.
See, I have been very pleased with the response to Communion of Dreams. The sales are nice, and the income helps. The reviews and ratings are rewarding. But what really makes me happy is that the book has found an audience, a home in people’s lives, a place in their imaginations.
That Her Final Year hadn’t found such a home was what bugged me. Because I have a lot of faith in the book. Faith that it can help others, if they would just read the damned thing. But that faith had been betrayed by my inability to get any attention for the book. Or, rather, I felt like I had betrayed my faith – and the book – by my inability to promote it.
Now, just because 3,112 people downloaded the book yesterday that doesn’t mean that the book will be read. But it sure as hell is a lot more likely that it’ll be read than just having the thing sit forgotten on Amazon’s servers. We’ll just have to see.
But no longer do I feel like I have betrayed the promise of the book. That gives me a happiness, and a hope, which I haven’t felt for a long time.
Thanks, everyone.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the HFY blog.)
Communion Of Dreams 