PSYT: Disconnection, by Laura Nicole

Remember that one time in Star Trek, when that character was just getting ready to unwind and rest and then all of a sudden the comm goes off? It’s happened in so many different shows and in all of the series’ so you have to have seen one episode like that. With all the technology in our daily lives bringing the world closer together, our society has many similarities to that scenario.

Yes, it is nice that our friends from all across the globe can contact us on time that is convenient to them, but at the same time we are so addicted to that connection that disturbs us of the need for things like sleep or social interaction. I am guilty of having the phone by my bed. I check my emails before even getting out of bed, post a comment to the almighty Tome of the Visage (Facebook) and then go into my morning routine. But on the weekends, you usually don’t see very much of me. That’s because I take the time to disconnect.

Our society seems to be forgetting the finer things about life other than playing around online. This is also called networking, but that’s another rant for another time. But think about it. If/when you get out and be with people, you generally don’t check your phone because you are practicing the art of conversation. This can be very beneficial, but I am not a mad scientist so I have only my personal experience to back me up. I feel less stressed because most of the people I would want to be around are already there and I can just tap them on the shoulder if I want to talk to them.

Back to the topic of disconnecting. If you post your entire life on Facebook and don’t actually get out and be with your species, you won’t have anything interesting to post about. Secondly, it is a good idea to make your stalkers work to find you. Posting where you are every moment of the day is just asking for trouble. If you make a scavenger hunt of it, that could be fun and challenging. Hmm, maybe I will do that for Balticon.

For all you creative types, human interaction is essential to your craft. I don’t care if it is design, writing, acting or what have you. Being able to have the human experience gives you more to draw from when you are attempting to evoke it in your craft.

Just think, many captains and beloved characters from the Star Trek franchise took off to Risa to disconnect. Maybe they were on to something…

Semi-regular audio, from semi-crazy participants

The Dice are going to Kill us

Download The Audio Here

• This episode we talk about RPG gaming, and how we, as authors, can get better at building characters and worlds by gaming.
• We also talk a little bit about Balticon for those of us who are going.
• And ask always things get a little weird.

The Cast for this episode was:

Doc Coleman
Laura Nicole
JP Losier
Zach Ricks
Scott Roche
Jeff A. Hite

Tee Morris is an actor, author, and podcaster from the Virginia area. He’s written fiction and non-fiction and I’m absolutely a fan of his style. Pip Ballantine is also an author and a podcaster and has come from New Zealand to live in the states and write full time. I’ve enjoyed many of the things she’s written as well. Together they’ve begun a journey into the world of steampunk (more on what that is here). It started with Phoenix Rising and a series of podcast short stories written by authors from around the world. This book is the sequel to those efforts.

It concerns two agents, Wellington Books and Eliza Braun, who work in a rather passive way as archivists for Great Britain’s Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Think X-files filtered through the sepia lens of Victorian England and you’re on the right track. Notable suffragists have been disappearing under mysterious circumstances and the two agents take it upon themselves, due to some personal relationships, to investigate. Doing so requires secrecy, danger, and no small amount of political maneuvering. They dodge mysterious assassins and their own supervisor’s scrutiny to get to the bottom of the mystery.

So, how was it? I’m an author myself and I can tell you from experience that writing with a partner is hard. I’ve read and reviewed a number of collaborations over the years. Done well, it takes the talents of both authors and creates something greater than the sum of its parts. Done poorly it’s a complete and utter train wreck. This book fails squarely in the former category.

Tee’s ability to create cracking good dialog and action is one of the things I love about his work. Pip’s talent in writing romance and creating lush worlds full of detail is something I appreciate as well. Together they have created quite an enjoyable tale. The thing that impresses me most is, there are no seams that I can see. They have taken their different abilities and points of view and fused them. I’m sure that no small amount of credit for that goes to an editor or two somewhere along the line, but even the best editor can’t create gems from dross, and this is a gem.

If you like high adventure with a mix of humor, romance, and a dash of social commentary, then this is indeed a book for you. If you’re not a fan of steampunk or don’t even know what that is I’d still give this world a shot. Fair warning, it can lead to addiction.

I was surprised as I began to listen to this novel, of course, downloaded from Audible.com. I looked at the cover of the book and it was the 2008 recording of the 75th anniversary edition of the novel. I didn’t think they even had science fiction back then.

This is my second ‘distopian’ novel in a row, and though my word processor draws a squiggly red line below the word, I’ve seen it written enough recently to believe it really does mean the opposite of utopian, when describing a real or fiction society. I have started listening to my third distopian, ‘We’, by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. ‘We’ begins with background about the author and distopian novels. I was impressed to learn this novel appeared first in English, in 1923, more than 60 years before it would be published in its native language, in Russia.

There was much more science fiction in this book, than there was in ‘Nineteen-Eighty-Four’. The whole premise of this book is that much of the unsatisfactory has been removed from peoples lives so that they will always have the opportunity to be happy. To achieve that for everyone, all people are cloned and raised in ‘bottles’. Their embryos are treated with the appropriate chemicals and hormones at the appropriate time to create various levels of intelligence and drive. The children are raised together, giving appropriate educations, play, and unconscious mental programming.

Alphas are at the top with high intelligence and motivation, the gammas are way down low with barely the intelligence to do their menial jobs. But with no great motivation and plenty of the mind numbing recreational drug, ‘Soma’, everyone is happy to do just as they are predestined.

I think the author hit it right on. He wanted a society which would have no family relationships. The word ‘father’ was bad, but the word ‘mother’ was obscene. To create this absense of affection for a single spouse the children are encouraged to experiment with erotic play from a very early age. The natural bond which develops between married partners in a monogamous relationship from sexual interaction with the single partner is completely lost to dilution from the countless experiences in their childhood and adolescence. While some are attracted to others because of mild differences in personality or appearance, the idea to partner with a single person regularly is considered abnormal.

It is in this environment that two of our main characters take a trip to New Mexico, from England, to observe ‘The Savages’ on a reservation. They fly in a ‘Rocket Plane’; jets hadn’t been developed when the story was written. This couple finds a woman, who became lost on the reservation many years before, and the son she raised there. The woman and her son are brought back to London to create conflict and contrast for the novel’s theme.

That’s all the plot I’ll tell, other than, once the savage is introduced to the modern society, it sometimes had the feel of, “Stranger in a Strange Land”.

This is a classic and well worthy of being considered such. It’s well written, consistent, and absorbing. There is a part at the beginning where multiple activities are going on at the same time and you get two or three lines from each conversation or activity. It is probably easier to understand what is happening if you read this, instead of listen, as I did.
Philip ‘Norvaljoe’ Carroll is a staff editor at Flying Island Press. He usually tries to says something clever in his byline but was up all night with a sick child and is too tired to think of anything creative.

Subscribers, watch your e-mail inbox for the download links.

I saw this tweet this morning. I saw that the person had changed their name from a previous presumption of grandiose importance to one even more self absorbed. I thought to myself, “I should skip it. Reading his/her tweets usually makes me mad.” I read it anyway. As I remember it, this is what it said;

“Don’t you love it when you’re bummed out and people tell you clever things. I know I sure do. #sarcasm.”

This was by a writer whom I respected a long time ago, but over time have felt less of a kinship. This tweet topped it. I hit “Unfollow”.

This is how I interpret the tweet.

“Dear people who have follow me on twitter, I don’t expect you to respond to my comments. I don’t want you to try and cheer me up when I’m ‘bummed out’. I don’t want you to act like me, and try to say clever things, you’re not as clever as I am, anyway. Not only do I find your input unimportant, I believe you are too stupid to know when I am using sarcasm, which, if you’ll listen to my podcast, is at least half of the time.”

I know that most people are unconcerned about the people who follow them. You can tell, easily, when they have 7000 followers and only follow a couple hundred. Twitter is a marketing tool. We want people to follow us and retweet our important announcements of what we have to sell them. A real relationship with interaction is undesirable. Really. How many books can you sell to a friend. They probably want you to give it to them for free; that’s what a friend would do.

So, my concern is that I may someday become so popular that I lose interest in what my followers think. Of course, I have to get some followers first. No one really listens to me anyway, so right now, I can say anything I want.

I think no matter who we are, when we’ve done enough good stuff to get people to like us, we need to be loyal to them as well. I remember when I started reading the Piers Anthony books, (Yes. It was in the dark ages. ‘Ogre, ogre’ was hot off the printing presses), waiting eagerly for the next Xanth book to come out. At the end of most of those books was an afterward where he started including who had suggested some of the puns he had used in the book. He was keeping in contact and being loyal to his fan base. Not just the really cool people who would make him look good, but the little people who bought his paper back books in the used book store.

In closing, Mom, and any other fans that may actually exist, I hope that if you ever try to cheer me up, no matter how lamely, ineffectively, or self promotingly, that I will be grateful and gracious for your friendship. #sincere.
Philip ‘Norvaljoe’ Carroll is a staff editor at Flying Island Press and an increasingly old man, who’s mother is happy that he is trying to write entertaining things. He’s grateful to his wife, daughter, son-in-law and Jeff Hite, who have read his stories and given him feedback. And if you want to follow him on twitter he’s @PhilipCarroll and he will alway follow people who are writers, musicians, or others who are concerned about helping people in need. (If you’re a personal networking guru, coach, developer or other illuminary, he probably won’t follow you, unless you tell him something funny.)

This issue includes:

Meddling – Margaret Karmazin
Brother’s Keeper – Kathleen Williamson
Wide Awake – Emerian Rich
Therapy – Jackie Kingon
Special – Gerry Huntman
Doors – Scott Roche
The Thorns of Life = Philippa Ballantine
Stonebriar Casefile 182: Bad Alchemy – Laura Nicole
The Gift – T. A. Marquette
Adeste Fideles – Ken Staley
Man Behind the Free – Mark Rapacz
Second Flight – Meera Jhala
Carbon Steel – by Philip Carroll

Buy your copy here
- $2.99 US in ePub, mobi, and PDF.

All proceeds are donated to Central Valley Walk Now for Autism Speaks.

Semi-regular audio, from semi-crazy participants

This Episode we talk about religion in fiction, how it can be done right and how it can be done wrong, with our special Guest Sarah Reinhard

Listen to Episode 64

On the cast this week:
Sarah Reinhard
Doc Coleman
Laura Nicole
JP Losier
Zach Ricks
Scott Roche
Jeff A. Hite

Plus our weekly random question. Comment and let us know your random answer