What are you reading?

Oerwinde · January 20, 2014

Well, The Sword of Destiny is done. I really liked it. I still haven't finished The Witcher 2 because I didn't like the combat. This book has still managed to make me excited for The Witcher 3. I hope some of the things from the book would make it into the third game, but I doubt it.

Thinking of ordering The Mistborn books. I'll have to read them in English since they aren't translated to Swedish as far as I know.

That explains why I was confused. In English, Blood of Elves is the 2nd witcher book.

Blarghagh · January 20, 2014

Probably going to read John Dies At the End by David Wong soon.

The humor is a bit too referential at times and it's a bit loosely plotted (by virtue of being a serialized blog in print) but this is the only book that made me go from uncontrollable laughter to pure existential horror in the space of two pages, so I consider it time well spent.

Labadal · January 20, 2014

Well, The Sword of Destiny is done. I really liked it. I still haven't finished The Witcher 2 because I didn't like the combat. This book has still managed to make me excited for The Witcher 3. I hope some of the things from the book would make it into the third game, but I doubt it.

Thinking of ordering The Mistborn books. I'll have to read them in English since they aren't translated to Swedish as far as I know.

That explains why I was confused. In English, Blood of Elves is the 2nd witcher book.

Yeah, it was localized after the second book.

Woldan · January 30, 2014

My mother gave me a strange book as a gift, its has 350 pages packed with all sorts of hard riddles but written and designed in 15th century style. Even the riddles have a medieval-theme. I absolutely love riddles, I already spent hours on solving only a handful those. I wish my brain had a forget-it button so I can solve them all over again, unfortunately I always forget the wrong things.

Now I really hope PE is going to have lots of riddles and enigmas.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Woldan

Guard Dog · January 30, 2014

Just finished "Red Sniper" by Josef Pilyushin. He was a Red Army sniper during the siege of Leningrad. It's a great book that shows a lot of what the day to day life of a WWII Russian soldier was like.

Now reading Rin Tin Tin by Susan Orlean about all the dogs that have played the role and how they were trained. Also re-reading 1984 for the third or fourth time. The parallels are really scaring me.

Tale · February 17, 2014

Riiiiiiiiiise

So I started The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I'd heard how important influential the work was and my only personal familiarity was wiki summaries. Well, I'm not far into it and I have to say that I have trouble taking seriously any work that counts psychoanalysis among its influences. I'm hoping this changes when we get deeper into the comparative analysis, but if he's going to continue with the idea that these myths are commonly rooted in Oedipal complexes and makes use of dream analysis, I might have to put it down.

Hiro Protagonist · February 20, 2014

Decided to go back read some Forgotten Realms novels. Really enjoyed them back in the early 90s and still find them enjoyable.

ShadySands · February 21, 2014

Started the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne and read the first book last night. I loves me some urban fantasy.

BruceVC · February 21, 2014

I'm reading a book called "Springboks on the Somme" which is about the South African military contribution during World War One. I have just read the chapter on Delville Wood, its evocative and haunting when you hear about the conditions and sacrifice during the 5 days of the battle. I can't imagine the mental and physical fortitude to survive something like that...and what makes it worse is the survivors still participated in other brutal battle like Passchendaele

Raithe · February 21, 2014

VonnegutsShapelyArchetypes_zps91d2db75.p

Hurlshort · February 21, 2014

Started the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne and read the first book last night. I loves me some urban fantasy.

Picked this up because of you mentioning it. So far so good, I needed something fun.

Serrano · February 22, 2014

I just finished the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, they're absolutely perfect.

Oerwinde · February 22, 2014

Decided to go back read some Forgotten Realms novels. Really enjoyed them back in the early 90s and still find them enjoyable.

The FR books are my staple. I really wish someone would get off their arse and adapt some of them to TV or movies, would love to see some of the characters on screen.

Monte Carlo · February 22, 2014

I'm reading some fantasy - The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley. It's OK, maybe a bit too epic for my tastes but has some cool stuff in it. I've also read another Joe Abercrombie wannabe whose name I forget.

I can't help but think too many fantasy writers are staggering about in GRR Martin's shadow, in much the same way as they did in Tolkien's back in the 70s and 80s. Every book needs to be the start of 'an epic trilogy of an epic cycle of an epic trilogical cycle.' GoT is just out there, everyone digs it, its gone mainstream. if you aren't offering an omni-generational saga of feuding nobility then... feh.

I know fantasy readers expect 120,000 words and their next fix double-quick, but still. IMO modern fantasy seems to write for the market too much.

Also read Marko Kloos's new military sci-fi novel, Lines of Departure. This is good stuff, enjoyed it a lot and it has a nice twist about sixty per cent of the way through that changes the series in an interesting new direction. Edit: can I just say I think Marko is playing with certain sci-fi tropes in a not dissimilar way to Abercrombie. He just dumped a massive tribute to Battlestar Galactica in the middle of his book while giving the original the finger.

Am re-reading Tim Willocks's The Religion. For the love of God go out and get this book. It is tremendous on every level. It is barrelling its way into my top ten favourite books, ever. The siege of Malta and the last hurrah of the Crusader Orders versus the Grande Turk. An ex-Janissary protagonist, now a cynical merchant with a barbaric English henchman. More combat and siegecraft that you could shake a stick at. A love story with a twist. A mystic-macho examination of the profession of violence. Sweeping, dense, confident prose. And action. Lots of action. Imagine Sam Peckinpah meets Akira Kurosawa.

Like I say, get it now.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Monte Carlo

Hurlshort · February 22, 2014

I read "The Religion" as well, I picked it up for a buck at a bookstore that was going out of business, and it was a delightful surprise.

Serrano · February 22, 2014

Decided to go back read some Forgotten Realms novels. Really enjoyed them back in the early 90s and still find them enjoyable.

The FR books are my staple. I really wish someone would get off their arse and adapt some of them to TV or movies, would love to see some of the characters on screen.

On a somewhat related note, can you believe how badly they botched the DragonLance Chronicles movie?

Leferd · February 22, 2014

The Religion definitely sounds like something I would like.

Malcador · February 22, 2014

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Oerwinde · February 22, 2014

Decided to go back read some Forgotten Realms novels. Really enjoyed them back in the early 90s and still find them enjoyable.

The FR books are my staple. I really wish someone would get off their arse and adapt some of them to TV or movies, would love to see some of the characters on screen.

On a somewhat related note, can you believe how badly they botched the DragonLance Chronicles movie?

It was painful. And one thing the comics and the movie got wrog that pissed me off was Fistandantilus's bright red spellbooks. Its a smal detail, but they refer to them as night blue like 1000 times throughout the series, its not something anyone should have gotten wrong. Its not the worst thing about it, but the one thing that sticks with me. Edited February 22, 2014 by Oerwinde

ManifestedISO · February 22, 2014

Decided to go back read some Forgotten Realms novels. Really enjoyed them back in the early 90s and still find them enjoyable.
The FR books are my staple. I really wish someone would get off their arse and adapt some of them to TV or movies, would love to see some of the characters on screen.
On a somewhat related note, can you believe how badly they botched the DragonLance Chronicles movie?
It was painful. And one thing the comics and the movie got wrog that pissed me off was Fistandantilus's bright red spellbooks. Its a smal detail, but they refer to them as night blue like 1000 times throughout the series, its not something anyone should have gotten wrong. Its not the worst thing about it, but the one thing that sticks with me.

Uh oh, well I'm sorta glad I haven't seen the movie, then. I would hate for the version in my head to be tainted. "Night-blue" and "freezing to the touch" were mentioned often. Might as well depict Raistlin with normal eyes and oatmeal-colored robes.

Hiro Protagonist · February 23, 2014

Never knew there was a Dragonlance movie. I've seen the three D&D films though.

Hiro Protagonist · February 23, 2014

The FR books are my staple. I really wish someone would get off their arse and adapt some of them to TV or movies, would love to see some of the characters on screen.

I'm a huge fan of stuff from the late 80s and 90s. I've decided to go back and read all my FR and Ravenloft books from that time. It'd be good if they could do some good adaptions with TV shows or movies but it's never translated well. LotR and GoT has shown you can do it.

Guard Dog · February 25, 2014

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption by Jim Gorant. Vick and his "crew" really were a bunch of savages. It really galls me that he is back in the NFL. If we applied his own "training" methods to him then after that game last season where he threw six interceptions he should have been shot, or hung, or drowned, or electrocuted. After all when his dogs lost or wouldn't fight that's what he did to them.

Raithe · February 25, 2014

Hm, on book related news..

The Honor Harrington series is going multi-media..

io9 - The Legendary Harrington - New Adventure Movies

Honor Harrington is one of the all-time great heroes of military science fiction. The star of over a dozen novels by David Weber, she's inspired a real-life army of fans who belong to the Royal Manticoran Navy. And now she's coming to comics, games and eventually movies, from Evergreen Studios. We talked to Weber plus Evergreen CCO Scott Kroopf about the next phase of the Honorverse.

The Honor Harrington series follows a brilliant genetically engineered starship captain, leading her crew on difficult assignments 2,000 years in the future, when the human race has discovered hyperspace travel and has colonized the far corners of the universe. She fights for the Star Kingdom of Manticore, a relatively small empire based in a binary star system.

The new Honor Harrington website, Tales of the Honoverse, goes live tomorrow, and the first issue of her new comic book comes out on March 5. A mobile game is coming out sometime soon after, and meanwhile her first big-screen movie is in the pipeline. But we've got the exclusive first look at artwork, plus the inside scoop about these projects.

Here's what we found out from Weber and Kroopf:

They're doing the game and comic first for a couple of reasons

The movie is "what everybody who is an Honorverse fan is really looking for," says Weber. "The comic books are retelling a story they already know," without "the added visual immersion that a good movie produces."

But Evergreen has decided to do a mobile game and a comic book first for a couple of reasons, says Kroopf.

For one thing, they wanted to try and bring Honor to a new set of fans, while reaching out to her existing fanbase in a new way. "Honorverse fans tend to be very, very loyal, and very much involved, but they tend to be in their own little world," says Weber. "Science fiction is a genre that actually has a relatively small readership compared to other genres, but the readers we have are very, very loyal to the authors they support."

Weber adds:

"One of the things Evergreen helps to accomplish with the graphic novel and the games is to reach out to an audience that hasn't already met Honor through the novels, and give them an easier 'in' to the universe than saying, 'Oh God, you have to read 19 books before you understand what's going on.'"

But also, this gives Evergreen a chance to build up a library of art showing how everything looks in the Honorverse before trying to create a movie. "We could start visualizing what the world was, and really redoing it," says Kroopf. "Because Honor has had a lot of really good book covers and fan-inspired art and all of that, but it's really been done surrounding the publishing of the books."

"I am seeing the comic books as an developmental step in the process, as a place to work out concepts before they actually dive into the movie itself," says Weber. "I think the amount of feedback they are going toget on it may be very useful to them. They have actually established a forum on my website where they are interacting directly with Honorverse fans."

Usually, in the movie business, a studio will concentrate on getting a movie off the ground and maybe then worry about tie-ins like comics and games — so Evergreen's approach of focusing on the game and comic first seems innovative, says Kroopf, who was brought on board in October 2012 to help develop this "multiplatform" strategy.

So what's holding up the movie?

According to Kroopf, the biggest holdup is getting the screenplay to a place where everybody is happy with it. And Kroopf confesses he was responsible for one major setback for the film script — before Kroopf came on board in late 2012, Evergreen was working on the idea of adapting Weber's first novel, On Basilisk Station, into the movie. But Kroopf wasn't happy with that idea.

"There are several elements in [Basilisk Station] that are a little atypical" of the series as a whole, says Kroopf. "And a lot of things are being set up and put in motion," but the book "doesn't have quite as much action" as some of the later books. "It's a subtler introduction to Honor," he adds.

So Kroopf decided to toss out the screenplay based on Basilisk Station that had already been written, and instead make a movie based on the second book, Honor of the Queen. In that book, Honor goes on a mission to a planet whose ruler doesn't believe that women should command starships. Because Honor is from a society that's totally "gender-blind," she's startled to realize that someone thinks her gender is an impediment to command.

"It felt, to me, that that idea married up more powerfully to the idea of introducing a female starship captain," says Kroopf, who felt this was "a great opportunity." Strong female characters have always been in science fiction, but this conflict "hasn't been pushed forward as much," and he felt this "had some contemporary resonance."

"It just felt like a better starting point," adds Kroopf.

So in the end, Evergreen decided to turn the work they had done on Basilisk Station into their comic book, which is actually based on Weber's first Honor book. And switched the movie to be based on Honor of the Queen.

Weber completely agrees with their decision to film his second book instead of his first. "I actually suggested that," he tells io9. "I love Basilisk Station and it does a huge amount to set the character of Honor in the readers mind and so forth." But so much of the story takes place in "internal viewpoints, to understand what's going on beneath the surface of the crew's actual thoughts and interactions and so on, and on the other hand, so much of the book is involved with Honor's internal struggles with building the crew."

"I think it would make a good movie," adds Weber. "I do not think it would make the best starting movie for the Honorverse. I do think that means Basilisk Station as a standalone movie will never be made." But one option is to film "flashback episodes" from Basilisk Station to build the characters — which could be included in the film, or posted online as webisodes.

And meanwhile, the graphic novel is making Basilisk available to a new audience, as well.

How will they bring the treecat, Nimitz, to life?

Readers of the books will know that Honor Harrington's constant companion is a Sphinxian treecat named Nimitz, a telepathic creature that bonds with few humans. Bringing Nimitz to life on screen is "going to be the hard part," says Weber. "It will probably be marginally harder to do it than to find a 6'3 Eurasian actress who can do martial arts and act."

Nimitz is "going to be on camera so much of the time, and he is so integral a part of Honor that just figuring out how a six-limbed creature moves and generating the muscle movement and limb placement is going to be a real, real challenge," says Weber.

The second challenge will be "creating a Nimitz that works withthe notion that a lot of people think, 'It's a pet,' when they first see him," but this is actually "a critter that can rip your throat out, foiling an assassination attempt."

The version of Nimitz appearing in the first couple issues of the comic book has "very little extra detail," because they still haven't figured out how his musculature works, and then how the "big fluffy coat" looks on top of that. "I have a pretty strong notion of how treecats look, and I think we're going to wind up departing from that in the movie, for reasons that have been explained to me and make sense," says Weber.

He adds:

"What people have to understand when they look at the comic books is, this is the starting point of Nimitz's development, not the end of his development, that is one of the potential potholes for starting with the comic book: a lot of people are going to leap to the conclusion this is the finalized imagery for the film, which it isn't."

"If I'd been thinking from the beginning about a movie being made of these books," says Weber, "Nimitz would have been quadripedal. It would have been a lot easier. The technology is there to do him in a believable, realistic form but it is going to take a lot of work and nailing it is going to be one of the great challenges."

What's the game about?

Basically, it's a space combat game, where you become the captain of a starship "through a set of circumstances the game tells you," says Kroopf. You manage your starship and go through a series of battles, as you work on a larger "story mission, that ties back in with the overall story-world."

SExpand

The hope is this game will teach people the nuts and bolts of running a starship and winning battles, on a very basic level. "One reason the IOS game was chosen is, it's kind of a great vehicle to do that," says Kroopf. "It lets you get your feet wet." Over time, the game can keep developing and building people's knowledge of the Honorverse, and "break some story ground."

"It really is first and foremost a game about running a starship," says Kroopf.

The comic will be somewhat non-linear

Given the wealth of material in the Honorverse, Evergreen didn't want to do a straight-up adaptation of On Basilisk Station in the comics. Instead, the comic starts with an incident from book seven of the series, where Honor has been captured and is being taken to her execution. "We thought this was a great starting point," says Kroopf. "Who is this woman? Why is she going to be executed? As opposed to a more conventional set up where we see her, and this is her first mission."

They hope to explore more of Honor's backstory

The great thing about the Honorverse is, between David's ever-growing series of books and the large number of tie-in stories by other authors, there is a lot of material out there. Any time you need a piece of backstory for someone or something, chances are it's already been developed.

For example, says Kroopf, Honor is the daughter of two doctors, so she's automatically not like any other hero — she has "more complexity and density, and more badassness." Weber wrote "this incredible story about how her mother and father met, and how before he was a doctor, her father was kind of black-ops marine. And suddenly, it all just gets juicier and more fun."

They're trying to be true to the science and the books

Not only does Honor have a large and passionate fanbase, but a lot of them are scientists or military personnel themselves, says Kroopf:

"They are such an incredible resource, because we can bounce ideas off of them and create a really lively debate. What we're looking for is, we're pushing it into a lot of visual mediums where we can make it exciting and thrilling, and look cool. We keep pushing it, and it's nice to have a reality check where they come in and say, 'Oh, that's not really how things work.' And then we argue about, 'That's not how things work in the book, but it's not really visual."

In the end, they usually "find a happy medium, where it looks cool and we get the spirit of the book right."

One of the main debates is over which characters can get screen time in the movie, and who has to be left out or combined for viewpoint purposes, says Weber. "A lot of my fans have favorites among those characters, and in a movie you don't have a lot of choice, unless you plan on making a 12-hour movie." Some characters who don't get into the movie may get their day in the sun in the comics, however.

Weber confesses to being nervous, because "as a writer, I have an unlimited special effects budget," but in movies and games, things are bound to look different. "What I say at conventions for many years is that nobody has ever read a single book that I've written. Everybody who reads one of the books brings to it their own concepts and ideas." The books are always different, depending on who reads them. But "when you look at a movie, you are looking at an authoritative visual presentation, and instead of interactions being colored by the reader, those presentations are right in front of you."

But Weber believes that if the movie and other tie-ins are done well, they can "add a huge amount of texture to the story.... I am looking forward to it, and excited by it, and very pleased by the extent to which it seems to me Evergreen is determined to do the Honorverse, and not just slap the name on it, and very pleased by how they are involving me in the process."

It helps that Mike Devlin, the CEO of Evergreen, is a "big Honor Harrington Fan," adds Weber. "He is adamant that in portraying Honor, the dark side of her character has to be portrayed as well, and when you start talking about the political systems and motivations, it has to be integrated into the spine of the movie to give it continuity and context." At the same time, "Mike is a very hard-headed business man," so in the end he's going to make decisions based on what's going to work.

Adds Weber:

"One thing an author who options a book for movie or TV has to understand is,it is the people who are making the film or TV series or whatever who are running the financial risk in this operation, and that means they have a moral right to deal with the material the way they think it needs to be dealt with. They also have a moral responsibility not toignore the original material, and not to ignore what made the original book successful in the first place. There is a balance out there in the middle."

He learned a lot from working with cover artists — if you try to constrain an artist too much, you don't get his or her best work. Instead, you get something where they're trying to include every detail you insisted on, and it cramps their style. But when a cover artist "decides a character who is Eurasian has blonde hair and blue eyes, then you have a problem," says Weber.