Thank you, Jane!
Jane is co-author on this one for very good reason—as in she wrote some of it….line by line. When we collaborate, even we don’t know who did what.
CHERNEVOG IS UP!!!
by CJ | May 1, 2012 | Journal | 37 comments
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Traipsing over to Closed Circle now. I see Jane has a short up too.
Yes! I have it! Joy!
I have now shamelessly posted at a few scifi forums to spread the fan love.
Thank you! Every re-post helps. We can’t afford advertising. You guys are our best ambassadors.
CJ, just to let you know that I used part of the profits of selling a few copies of my Ragi Text to buy Rusalka and Chernevog. I am so excited to read the Author’s version rather than the publisher’s.
Looking forward to seeing how this new version is different from the one I read years ago. Downloading now.
Thanks for Chernevog. I was wondering about something. I have bought most of the books at Closed Circle by Cherryh and Fancher and I noticed when I checked the site just now that most of the books have now, wonderful, covers.
So… any chance of getting an “updated” copy of something I already bought? I forget if you’ve written something about that. The covers for the Rusalka trilogy, Heavy Time and Hellburner are especially catching.
Thanks!
ericf
New covers, of course!
ericf
Absolutely there is. Jane has got a button for that. Jane reworked those covers I did for HT and HB and they’re really something. And while I did the original Rusalka cover (with Jane’s paint job) the one we have now is something I just love! I’ll ask her tonight over supper and find out where that button is. MAYBE on her blog site. 😉
Just finished reading “Intruder”, thought it was great, now when’s the next book due out :-)? I have found the whole series fascinating, I will be glad to see your books in epub I have a 3 year old Sony Reader with about 400 books on it (not just SciFi I must admidt), but sadly none of yours as yet, they are all hardbacks.
Peace,
Bill
Well, it’s in. THe name is Protector, and it will probably come out next year. *I* happen to think it’s one of the best stories in the series…. 😉
Not really off topic, and considering the topic, chilling. None of us are free until all of us are free.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/magazine/why-afghan-women-risk-death-to-write-poetry.html?pagewanted=1
The drive to self-expression is primal, I’m convinced. If it weren’t, it couldn’t drive people to such extremes. It’s why I’ve always wondered at people who avoid books, and art, and music. I mean, I’m deaf to rhythm, can’t even *feel* dance, except on the ice, where it makes thorough sense to me—but if I can’t read, or write, I go berserk. I really feel for men in our own culture, who grow up in a culture of ‘you’re not a man if you dance or read or draw or anything of the sort.’ So we have some housecleaning of our own to do, and quit trying to kill the desire to create and express.
Have you noticed that art and music and dance and books are one of the first things attacked by all sorts of groups who don’t want their followers to get out of a narrow train of thought? Brad Sinor, friend of mine, had a short story come to him while waiting for a wrecker, and he had no paper. He wrote it down on a guard rail. When I had to give up my room to visiting grandparents when I was a kid, I’d take my notebook into the bathroom, turn on the water, sit down on the floor against the door and write my stories… while to outward appearances I was taking the world’s longest baths.
And there is a hot spot in Hell for adults who make a kid feel ashamed to dance or create or sing because it’s not appropriate to their gender, social station, or whatever. Back in the 1860’s they encouraged girls to draw and paint. In the 1910’s they decided women couldn’t do art. In the 1920’s they declared nobody could do art, so they taught ‘art appreciation’ courses, but ordinary people, particularly women, were told their perceptions weren’t fine enough and they should never attempt it. In the 1930’s women were told they couldn’t do sports or fly planes. In the 1940’s they ferried combat planes across the ocean—after building them. In the 1950’s we were back to telling men they couldn’t paint and women they couldn’t drive or fly. In the year 2000 we decided women could go into combat and men couldn’t sing, draw, cook (except on a grill), dance, or play certain musical instruments.
There are an ungodly lot of ungodly people in the world who want to stop all sorts of people from doing what satisfies their soul and telling them they’re damned and doomed if they have the desire to.
I agree with you. None of us are free until all of us are free. Somewhere we’re constantly breeding another pool of people who want to stop ‘that sort of thing’ to save us from freedom.
Thanks CJ for your perspective on the history of the cultural changes. That’s what I find so interesting about the Foreigner series. That, and the weather. Today is the 13th anniversary of the Moore twister. I still remember your description in your early blogs. Besides the books, thank you for sharing your thoughts through the blog.
>ungodly people in the world who want to stop all sorts of people from doing what
>satisfies their soul and telling them they’re damned and doomed if they have the
>desire to.
In my experience it’s more often the ones professing to believe in God that are doing the telling. At least us atheists aren’t likely to threaten anyone with eternal damnation. This particular atheist says you should live for this world, not out of fear or hope for the next one.
I don’t care what anyone does unless it impacts me. The tricky bit is deciding how much one person’s actions impact another.
When I was in school, back in the Dark Ages, my parents wouldn’t buy me paper to write on and ‘waste.’ So friends at school gave me their extra paper and I happily kept writing away, even when (as always) we moved every few months and I had to find new friends to help me out.
Then I had a teacher tell me that only people who went to college could be published, which made me sad and I gave up that dream. (I had only recently learned Andre Norton was a woman, which gave me incredible hope and joy.) But I didn’t stop writing because I loved the creativity too much. I just wrote for myself afterwards and didn’t consider sharing with more than a passing friend. By the age of 15, I had jobs and could buy my own paper. Oh how I remember those back-to-school sales with piles of spiral bound notebooks and 500 sheet notebook paper stacks. And pens. Glorious pens! My father had decided to start moving on without his family at this point, and I was the only one with a job . . . but no one could tell me I couldn’t have paper to write.
People who are not driven by creativity of some sort don’t understand the need and the joy that has us grinning with delight as we write something clever for our poor, abused characters. Too many people think writing is an extension of English Class, which seemed to be the most boring assignments created by humanity to drive all creativity from our hearts.
I write books. I write books about writing books. I write every single day and have for decades, and while I am not the greatest writer in the world, I have my stories to tell and share. I can’t think of anything I would rather do and I’m lucky I held on to be here.
Zette, I have heard a couple of times before about parents who wouldn’t “waste” money on school supplies, basics like pens, pencils, and paper. That…astonishes me. There were probably kids I went to school with who had that, but I wasn’t really aware of it. — But if a classmate needed paper or a pen or pencil, sure, why not? They could keep them, too.
My mom was a professional artist with a Bachelor’s in English and with math and accounting and business courses besides. (My mom grew up very working class and worked her way through college.) My dad was an engineer and draftsman, designed tools, had worked in the shop making the tools to put himself through college, and was a farm boy with a natural aptitude. Also, my dad never spoke or wrote a grammatical or properly spelled sentence in his life, haha. He loved history and other things, and had served in the Army in Germany after the War. He loved it there, I think. My dad’s parents had little formal schooling, but they taught all their kids to read, write, and do basic math prior to going to school. Learning was important to them.
But because of that, I grew up surrounded by art supplies and school supplies, within reason. My parents were middle class. I didn’t get a lot of the things the other kids got, but mostly, that was a good thing. And most of them didn’t get a whole lot either. So I grew up with parents who supported creativity. Whether I grew up into liberal arts or a technical sci./engr. field, they would be happy knowing they’d tried to give me the most options and a love of learning. That’s one of the best legacies they left.
I remember as a senior when we were within a few weeks of graduation, standing in line to order caps and gowns, talking with friends about future plans. Which college? What job? What city? What major? One of the guys, in “cool mirrored shades,” said he wasn’t going to college, he never would, why bother? He was going to work after school, that was all. What got me about it was the defeatist attitude, the “I’ve already lost, nothing can help it” attitude, right on the verge of graduation. I don’t know his grades or his money situation. But I countered that he could go to junior college and get training for a better job. This did not impress him. I have no idea if he ever did. It stuck with me because it seemed like such a waste. The guy wasn’t the most outstanding student or athlete, but he wasn’t as bad or as hopeless as it sounded to him.
Parents who don’t try to make sure their kids have the best options to get ahead, I don’t understand that mindset at all.
One friend grew up dirt-poor, a farm girl. She was also female and her skin was not the approved light color of the times. So she did not get anything like a good school education, despite a fine mind. She worked like crazy, married, had kids, the guy left, and raised them all herself for years until finally finding a good man and remarrying, and more kids. She was strict, frighteningly so by my standards, with them. But they all graduated high school and several went on to college, and nearly all of their kids are going to college. She raised her kids to value hard work and learning and solving problems, to aspire to something for themselves and their families, despite that the odds were so stacked against them…and still are.
Thank goodness that people have that drive to get themselves out of a bad situation, including getting paper and pens from friends, to write or draw. Creativity’s necessary, as important as food on the table and a roof over your heads. Without that creativity, what are we, really?
Keep on keepin’ on, everyone. — Especially any teens and kids out there who might read here. The urge to create is what brings about progress, real change, and…fun. Despite all obstacles, create something. (And being a scientist or engineer or technical person needs just as much creativity, too.)
I got school supplies, but I wasn’t allowed to use them for my writing.
Now I have whatever I want for writing. LOL. It’s a good life.
The whole myth that women shouldn’t do math or science is a bunch of hoohah as well… I think my daughter got interested in math and science because she heard my mom and I discussing Foreigner and how I thought it was about time that women had characters in books as role models for numeracy (and also powerful and empowered women- Ilsidi and Jago).
Not every person can be gifted in all the different types of intelligence (arts) that exist, but that doesn’t mean that any individual is precluded from mastering that art just because the parents don’t have or exhibit that type of art. I think rational and artistic thinking are at least partially learned from our environment and what we value as we are growing up. Access to education allowing mastery of an art is the greatest gift we can give our children/society.
Society has this insidious way of devaluing the types of intelligence and artistry exhibited by the majority of it’s people, so that the minority can achieve social power over those who don’t have access to the education necessary to become masters of the most valued arts.
Computer science is largely, but far from exclusively, male. In the 80’s when I was in college (and where) there weren’t too many women in C.S., but they were there, and they were good. It has become a lot more common, but it’s still not near 50/50. (I’m not sure it’s even at 25% yet.) But there’s no reason it shouldn’t be. Males and females do go about solving problems differently, but they both wind up with working solutions. There’s no inherent lack of problem-solving skills that goes along with which set of reproductive organs one has.
About art, music, dance, etc. — I could go on a long time about that, and have, elsewhere.
I could also go on for a long time on how our society stifles boys’ and men’s natural emotions and affection and roles, and limits girls and women in another direction, and lately seems to distrust *anyone* showing affection to each other or to kids. I think it *creates* the very sorts of problems that society fears will happen. Not only that, it squashes, extinguishes human creativity and natural expressions of friendship and love, for no good reasons.
That isn’t just one present-day culture, but many of them. I think ultimately, each of those cultures will have to give up those counter-productive attitudes, patterns of behavior…or those cultures (ours among them) will be radically changed or disappear, because the limits imposed are just not workable, long-term.
The frequency lately of school kids, teenagers, being bullied and then taking their lives…is strong and terrible evidence of that. If you drive smart, smiling, girls and boys next door types so far they’d rather die, something is seriously wrong in the culture. Those teens were often making well above C’s, too, sometimes A students. How senseless it is, and very sad.
:: Climbs down off soapbox. ::
Last night, I started reading Rusalka late, and couldn’t put it down. I’m in various places in a few other books. When I was looking through for my others, I came across my extra of the Faded Sun trilogy too, bought during the move, and hah, it’s now on the shelf too. I haven’t reread it in at least six years, so it was like getting a new book.
Very much enjoying Rusalka, and I’m off to look up how Russian names (and common nicknames) are handled, and give myself a refresher on the Cyrillic alphabet.
Aside: Russian and former Soviet-bloc designers and typographers have really been contributing lately. In part, this is because of the current need for fonts that include more than Latin-based glyphs, to handle *everywhere*, not just North America or Western Europe. It’s resulted in more contact and cross-fertilization, which is good for the worlds of type design and graphic arts design. That’s also been happening for a few decades with Asian and Western animation, between our animation and toons and their manga and anime, to the point the styles are nearly merging. That means, though, there’ll be something else come along to shake things up.
What I’m seeing now for ebooks looks very much like what happened in the record industry, going from big studio publishers, labels, and chain stores, to independent artist/fan/patron arrangements. It is also much like what happened in printing and publishing with Macs and desktop publishing when I first started. It will be h-e-double-hockey-sticks while the seismic shift happens, but it will mean opportunities for those of us who can adapt. It also means a lot of hard work, dog-paddling to keep afloat, during all the storm waves.
Keep your heads up, out there. 🙂
Most Americans are very reluctant and greatly embarrassed to have to admit they are illiterate. But they are much less so to admit, “I’m not very good at math.”
I don’t think most Americans (even in the sciences) are at all hesitant to admit that they aren’t good at math. I suck at math. I know a lot of folks in the same boat and who readily admit to lacking the math-head gene. I can do the basics, but get to the solve-for-x stuff and I glaze over. None of that stuff makes sense to me. But I’m perfectly capable of doing science (my career) without being a math-head. We have mathematicians here at work who excel at turning everything into an equation. We have big laugh fests here at work over that. Guess I’m more of a naturalist than a scientist (shrug). And I don’t THINK I’m illiterate (another shrug).
In chemistry and physics, I could understand the big concepts but in tests, everything had to be turned into a math thing. Ick. My brain turns off because the numbers run around and do nasty tricks.
I don’t consider myself “good” at math, but compared to the general population I am considered to be a mathematician (my government career series). There are so many aspects that I don’t understand, or have never done, BUT, I know if I would just sit down and work through some text books, the concepts are understandable, and can be mastered. I’m just too lazy to work on what I don’t need or enjoy so much. I think that is part of the problem in our society. People don’t need math or science to do their “art” so they don’t put out the effort. It’s not that they can’t, it’s just that there is no incentive to keep working at it. The same with arts of various sorts. I never considered my son to be an artist, until he found something to love, got the education, both higher learning and by effort/study. We encouraged him to do what he was passionate about. Now I recognize his mastery of the “art” of film-making (partly because I studied along with him), and his ability to express himself through that art.
There are very few excuses for not mastering some art (dyslexia or other actual physical disabilities may be some of the few true bars to mastery of an art), but I really think we have very little besides our own inate laziness or disinclination that keeps us from mastering something.
CJ, you have frequently said that you dislike math, but you were very quick to (correctly) figure out the tip when we went out to eat. You think rationally, and reason with the best of ’em. You understand the deep connections of physics with the natural world, and are one of the most scientifically literate fiction writers I have ever read. Your inclination requires you to make those connections (Geigi-like). My contention is not that you aren’t good at math, but that the results are not worth your effort. You legitimately don’t like the effort necessary to be a mathemagician, but you are a master of another art that means you don’t have do all the math to keep up your bookkeeping, just afford to hire an accountant. There is so much of a reflection of the atevi in that world view, that your writing appeals to readers whose world view resonates at a deep level.
I guess that means my art is definitely not “Better Housekeeping.”
It’s not so much that I hate math—I’m mathematically dyslexic—I back numbers around and cannot remember a phone number accurately long enough to dial it if at all disturbed or distracted. I figure a tip simply: move the decimal and multiply by 2. But my chemistry final was an embarrassment. I had to run a gas equation…our final consisted of one question; and I simply took scratch paper and started adding 2’s. Adding twos in sets until I got to big numbers, and then adding the sets of two, etc. It took pages. But I got it right. Then I checked not the chemistry—but my math. I figure you can get most anywhere if you can add or subtract 2. What was embarrassing was when we were suddenly required to turn in our scratch paper as well. I think my prof was wondering what the HECK I was doing back there. But he couldn’t deny I’d done that one the honest way. Astrophysics and BIG numbers don’t daunt me: it’s arithmetic that makes me crazy. I had a 2nd grade teacher who used to have us run numbers that she wrote on the board, and she’d stalk the class with a yardstick hitting anyone she saw hesitating in writing down an answer. You’d hear “Whack!” every few seconds. And I think mentally I’m still hearing that when I try to figure. Drives the tables right out of my head. I’ve survived on math ‘tricks’, like subtracting one from any number added to 9 and giving it to the 9, eg 5+9=14. 11+9=20. etc. It’s way to confirm the equation, in a sense, since I can’t rely on my memorization of the tables. I also tended to write numbers backwards. And I hated word problems, because I always saw so many variables—no grocer in his right mind would store apples in with oranges because they don’t spoil at the same rate. 😉
Telling stories is the most basic, most universal human activity there is. I think it is THE thing that makes us human. It requires a brain that can handle the abstract concepts necessary for imagination and the complexities of language, and one that can grasp and manipulate the concept of “story” — narrative = character + plot as well as the concept of the time line: past, present, future. Art, literature and music, our most fundamentally human activities, are all facets of that ability to tell stories. I’m sorry you are “musically challenged,” CJ. I’ve received so much enjoyment and delight from music throughout my life it makes me really sad to think that not everyone has the “knack” to access its wonders.
I have no use for organized religion (sorry if that offends anyone). Organized religion is all about power. Period. The getting of it, the use of it, and the exploitation of it. More hatred, murder, cruelty, pain, suffering, destruction, and just general nastiness has been motivated by “religion” than by any other human institution.
I need to reread the Faded Sun trilogy again, myself. It’s been a long time since I read it. I also need to reread the Chanur books, too. And the Rider at the Gates ones, and the Morgaine ones. . . I’ve just finished rereading the Cyteen ones, and before that the Compact ones.
The Faded Sun trilogy (which I keep trying to call The Faded Sun set, and mentally slap myself) was the first Cherryh I read. I was hooked. I have a picture somewhere of me lying on the sofa with blanket, two cats and the second or third book, I think. I couldn’t put them down!
What a wonderful discovery that was.
It’s funny that I can’t dance on dry land. On the ice, where your movement is constrained by the fact you’re carving a track in ice, and that physics and the curve of your skate blade will whip you about at a startling speed—I love skating to music; I can feel that rhythm. On dry land—nothing. And I play: I play flute and 12-string guitar, the first well enough to have been first chair in a class A band and in an all-state orchestra—the latter only enough for filk. So I do ‘get’ rhythm in my head: it’s, I suspect, the imbalance of my vision, which, when turning, sees space as curved on my right side…I get offbalance really easily, except on ice, where you have physics and momentum and the bite of the skate blades to inform your body (and inner ear) where up and down are. I can’t sing on key to save my life if I don’t have instrumental music with me, hence the guitar—and the reason for the 12-string is the double strings are kinder to your fingers than a 6. I know when something’s off key—American Idol can be downright painful, and I don’t forgive the contestant if they can’t at least end on the right note. But I just don’t ‘listen’ to music much, never have. For me, music is what you ‘do’, rather than listen to, particularly if it doesn’t tell a story.