I’d never heard of the Science Fiction Theater Company, but a friend who’s not an SF fan emailed me and said I should see The Singularity, because it’s witty and wonderful. So with my wife and daughter I went—and we loved it! The play, by Crystal Jackson, is about Astrid, a woman who’s on her last egg, and who wants a baby so badly she inseminates herself with stolen dark matter and a turkey baster before she loses her chance. It’s hilarious, partly because Astrid is the closest thing to a normal person in the play, and she gets to act the straight man to all the loonies. Kathy-Ann Hart does a wonderful job with the part, as do all the other actors.
Never mind the part about dark matter; it’s just a MacGuffin. Neither the playwright nor the one reviewer I read showed any understanding of what dark matter is. But what the hey, scientists don’t know, either. The title was a mystery to me until the very end—which I should warn you, comes rather abruptly, perhaps a little too abruptly. The reference is not to the transhumanist technological singularity that’s become a central concept in a lot of recent science fiction, but rather to the singularity that might or might not have come before the Big Bang.
Anyway, if you’re in Boston, the show has one more weekend to play. Tickets here.
It was about six weeks ago that I first encountered the family of wild turkeys on the bikepath near our house. I was walking Captain Jack when I came upon them: two adults and four youths, taking their own stroll. They didn’t seem very concerned about us, and Jack didn’t seem terribly interested in them, which struck me as odd. Here they are on August 6.
We’ve run into them probably about once a week, since then. Here they are today, September 17. The young’uns are quite a bit bigger now. I took this picture about ten seconds before Captain Jack pulled the leash out of my hand (I was trying to email the picture) and bolted after them, chasing them into the trees. No one was hurt. No harm, no fowl. Heh.
Panglor was my third novel, one I really enjoyed writing, and one that people seem to like a lot now, although in its original paperback publication from Dell it sank like a stone. Maybe tastes change, or maybe the original release was hampered by a pretty awful cover and the fact that Dell was already thinking about getting out of the SF business at the time. Or maybe it just took people a while to recognize my genius. Yeah, that must be it. And it got even geniuser, I’m sure, when I gave it a good, solid edit for its 1996 reissue from Tor.
In any case, it has a bunch of 5-star reviews from readers on Amazon. I like this one: “Truly GREAT!!” posted by “A Customer.” And this: “I hate Sci-Fi, but I love Carver’s novels!” When it was out in its E-reads edition, it was consistently my best-selling book among the E-reads Nine.
All of this is to say that it’s available once again, this time from Starstream Publications, which is to say, from me. As of today, it’s live at Kindle, Kobo, and Smashwords, and should turn up alive again soon at Nook and iTunes. It’ll launch at Book View Café on October 7. [Edit: It’s up in Nook and iTunes now!]
Here’s the new cover, designed for me by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff:
Wrongly discredited as a space pilot, Panglor Balef is doomed to die in space, if sheer luck doesn’t bring him through. But luck has never been in Panglor’s cards. Bad enough to be coerced into a mission of murder and suicide, he must also contend with Alo—a young woman, stowaway, and impossible companion. Neither of them, nor his empathic ou-ralot, could possibly anticipate the journey through space-time they are about to embark on, through a door to an insane reality from which there is almost certainly no return. It could be the discovery of the millennium, but the only way home is to journey even further into the heart of madness.
The stunning prequel to the famed Star Rigger Universe of Jeffrey A. Carver, Nebula-nominated author of Eternity’s End and The Chaos Chronicles, yada-yada.
At a low, low, introductory price of $3.99 for this unparalled assemblage of shiny new binary digits!
Since I’m always after you to notice my BookBub specials, and to go out and buy books, I thought maybe I should report on the results of the last promo. The results were good! There are now more than 1700 people boasting newly minted copies of From a Changeling Star on their ebook readers! In addition, some of them are going ahead and buying the sequel, Down the Stream of Stars, and more people than before are buying my other books, as well.
Typically, the effects last a couple of weeks, and then things settle back down to normal. But in the meantime, there are that many new readers out there, some of whom have never heard of me before, who will be—I hope—enjoying one of my books. And then—I hope—looking for more.
Just for fun, here’s what the sales graph looks like on Amazon when a book goes on a BookBub special. You can see that the first day is the exciting one.
Watch the bouncing sales ball in the Kindle store!
The red line represents books sold. (The green line is free downloads of Neptune Crossing, my loss leader. There’s a spike in that line, too, because I advertised it one day on Ereader News Today. That’s the book I give away, hoping people will like it enough to buy the sequels. That seems to work, too.)
Thanks, everyone who went for the sale! Please post a review!
Some of us in the book biz worry too much. For a while now, there’s been gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the supposed graying of our audience—in particular, the perception that fewer young people are picking up science fiction books, and leaving it to the aging generation to appreciate the mind-blowing concepts spun out in our novels.
Actually, that could still be true. While SF is extremely popular in the media, and youths flock like bats to Comicon and the like, SF in book form doesn’t seem to hold the market that it once did. (Always excepting outliers like The Hunger Games.) But—much as I hate to admit it—science fiction isn’t the only kind of book that matters. So, with that in mind, take heart from this story in the Washington Post, regarding a recent study by the Pew Research people: “Millennials were more likely to have read a book last year than older Americans.”
Let’s repeat that, in case you missed it the first time: “Millennials were more likely to have read a book last year than older Americans.”
Not only that, “62 percent of the under-30 set believes there’s a lot of useful, important information that is not on the Internet.” Which is 9% more than the number of older Americans who said that.
Lexi took off from Boston last night, and I got a text around noon today saying she’d landed in Beruit. She’ll be staying with friends and seeing what I have heard described as one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Why was I never that adventurous?
I hope we get to see some pictures soon! (And, of course, that she will arrive home safe and sound at the appointed time.)
Today marks the start of my latest BookBub sale, this time on my first Starstream novel, From a Changeling Star. For the next week, it costs just $.99 in ebook, 80% off the regular $4.99! (Okay, get ready for the pitch…) Get it while it’s hot! Stock up! It has something for everyone: supernovas, cosmic hyperstring, romance, nanotech, aliens! What else can you want?
Why do I keep doing this? Because it works. The BookBub specials have all brought in extra income, and more importantly, gotten my books into the hands of lots of new readers.
This is a novel that nearly drove me mad when I was writing it, but by the time I was finished, it turned into one of my favorites. Though I had no idea at the time, it connects to The Chaos Chronicles, via the character Jeaves the robot, who first appears in the Chaos books in Sunborn. And the starstream itself is a crucial element in my work in progress, The Reefs of Time, a.k.a. Chaos number 5.
Here’s the blurb, saving you the trouble of reading it when you click through to your favorite store:
Into a dying star…
Deep in the fires of Betelgeuse, scientists anxiously await the one man essential to the greatest engineering project in history. But on Kantano’s World, Willard Ruskin battles invisible agents for control of his life, and even his memories. Drawn into a conflict from which not even death will free him, Ruskin must reach Betelgeuse before his enemies sabotage humanity’s future among the stars.
A stunning blend of hard science fiction with moving characterization, both human and otherwise. From the Nebula-nominated author of Eternity’s End.
Original print publication by Bantam Spectra. A Locus bestseller.
REVIEWS:
“Starts with a bang and keeps getting better. Carver handles not one, but two hot topics, and presents both vividly.” —David Brin, author of Existence and Startide Rising
“Running from the micro to the macro and back again, redefining sentience, space-time, and perhaps humanity along the way, From a Changeling Star is a fast-paced puzzler, rich in invention, and Jeffrey A. Carver’s most ambitious book to date.” —Roger Zelazny
In my first post on Loncon, I mentioned a couple of wardrobe malfunctions that threatened to derail me at the con. No, I didn’t burst out of my bustier. But both stood to be just about as embarrassing.
Scheduled for a signing on Friday afternoon, I went a little early to the green room to have a cup of coffee. Sitting by myself at a table, I was sorting through some of the con literature when I moved my hand in the wrong direction. Oops. Oh frak! I had just spilled the entire cup of coffee across the table, toward me, and into my lap. Yeah, right into the crotch of my pants. Oh shit, what do I do now? I can’t walk around the con like this. And my nearest set of alternative pants is forty-five minutes away by tube. Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn. Fortunately, I was saved by the sun and the wind. The green room, by a miracle, had an open-air balcony! I sidled out quickly, and stood facing the sun and open air. And stood. And stood. Thank God, by the time I needed to go to the signing, I was all (mostly) dried out. With no visible stain. Go solar!
The next day, I was all set to walk through the art show, when I felt something snap against my waist. Looking down, I found my belt loose, and my pants sagging. My belt buckle had chosen that moment to snap clean off, leaving me without any means of holding up my pants except to clutch the waistband in my fists. (My pants were a little loose that day, something I usually feel good about.) My nearest other belt was… well, you know.
I checked the dealers room for anyone selling belts, but the only thing I found was a costume belt for fifty pounds, with crossed, full-sized derringers mounted on the buckle. Uh, no.
Then along came my friend Tom Easton, who apprised the situation and led me off to the art desk. “Let’s see what they’ve got,” he said. What they had was some jumbo binder clips. Could they be used to clip the two ends of my belt together? Not really. “Let’s see what we can fashion,” Tom said. He pried the wire handles out of one of the clips. While I was trying to figure out what to do with them, he had already noticed that they could interlock, if there was a way to attach them to the belt leather. And there was. It wasn’t easy, but together we managed to squeeze the flared, open ends of the wire pieces through holes in the leather and have the handles come together just so:
The fix worked perfectly (though it took me about two hours of fiddling to get the right tightness), and it lasted the rest of the day! I have officially named it the Tom Easton Belt Buckle Mod. And someday I’m going to find a way to use it in a story. Thanks, Tom!
It seemed like the perfect solution when Allysen found it on Air B&B: Houseboat on the Thames! What could be more charming? Besides, time was growing seriously short, and we really needed a place to stay at worldcon. And it was cheaper than the hotels, which were mostly full, anyway. Besides, it had a double-sized bunk, plus several singles, which was more than enough. Plus, it had a kitchen and a working toilet. What more do you need? Well…
What we got was a charming little sailboat called the Catch-E, which really was a nice boat if you didn’t think of it in terms of B&B, or even houseboat. It did have the requisite number of bunks, but the smell of mildew and strong cleaners in the cabin caused Julia to immediately decide that she was sleeping on the cushioned bench seat in the upper wheelhouse/dining area. And the tiny kitchenette would have been just a tad more useful if it had had refrigeration. And the working toilet? Technically, it did work. But it also pumped straight out into the marina waters, so it wasn’t what you would actually call usable except in extremis. The fact was, we had to hike out to the external bathhouses for toilets and showers. For that purpose, we could choose between the one inside the marina’s gated fence (where the toilets worked but the lights and electricity didn’t), or the fully functional one that required going through two gates with pass-codes in each direction.
Still, it was cozy enough. And camping can be fun. It was pleasant to fall asleep to the rocking of the boat. And it was a very nice hike around the extensive marina area to the nearest supermarket and tube station. It was only a forty-five minute commute to the con, via foot, tube, and automated (driverless) light rail, which wasn’t bad. I had brought several outlet adapters and a power strip to charge our phones and tablets, which would have been great, except that while I had made certain all of our chargers were dual voltage, I forgot to do the same with the power strip. Which fried soundlessly, the instant I plugged it in, popping all the boat’s circuit breakers. Still, we were doing okay, in spite of its being… other… than what we’d expected.
Until the night came when—sometime after midnight—I ducked out in shorts and t-shirt to the bathroom and came back to the fence gate to find that the pass-code no longer worked to let me in.
WTF?!
No, it really didn’t work anymore. I hollered to Julia, who was reading in her bench-seat bed. She came to help, and she couldn’t make it work, either. Finally we were reduced to me walking along the outer fence while she walked the long dock, looking for a boat with a light on inside. (Most of the boats in the marina really were houseboats.) Finally she knocked on a boat window and found a kind soul who lent her his entry fob long enough to blip me in. On returning it, I thanked him and said we hadn’t been told about a change in the pass-code. “The swine,” he said. “They never do.”
The next morning, I got the new code (it changes fortnightly) from the marina manager, who was surprised to learn that we were paying to stay on the boat a few days. “Really,” he said. “Because that’s not allowed here.” He was perfectly genial to me, but it was clear that the owner of the Catch-E was going to have some ‘splainin’ to do.
We were able to laugh about it, most of the time. It certainly was different from your cookie-cutter con hotel room. But when we checked out of it after the con, and into a hotel near Greenwich (thank you, booking.com), we fell with joy upon the spacious beds and gaped with positive wonderment at the included bathroom, complete with shower!
We returned from England a couple of days ago, after going to Loncon 3 at the Excel Center and then spending another five days seeing London, Greenwich, and Nottingham (where lives an old friend of Allysen’s). It was quite an adventure, starting with staying on a sailboat (more on that in another post), and ending with a very nice train ride into Robin Hood country, where we ate at what is reportedly the oldest pub in England. The worldcon was a bit of a wash for me in professional terms, but Allysen and Julia had a fantastic time and I did enjoy myself despite a couple of wardrobe malfunctions that I’ll also save for another post.
Overall, it was a memorable trip, with one major downside. I picked up a nagging cough at the con, and by the time I got home I was pretty nonfunctional with a great, hacking cough and pneumonia. A bit of a setback there. Also, it was kind of a lousy way to celebrate my 65th birthday, which was the 25th. On the other hand, the wonder of still-functional antibiotics was a great way to celebrate my birthday. I’m doing much better now, though I’m still a little sub-par in terms of mental focus and concentration. Not up to writing much yet, but I’m turning into a mean movie-watcher.
There may be a lesson in there, though I can’t be certain. Prior to the trip, I had a bunch of really nasty poison ivy (or something) rashes, which were taking forever to clear up. The dermatologist put me on a short dose of prednisone, which did a remarkable job of clearing up the rashes. But it also may have suppressed my immune system just enough to lay me open to the pneumonia. My take-away from this is, try to avoid travel while taking prednisone.
Also, when in London, have the fish and chips!
London parks are beautiful.
Did you know they have 500 miles of canals in London? I didn’t, either.
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