Two days ago, I mentioned a sale on the new anthology, Extraordinary Visions. Now I’m announcing a sale on another Jules Verne-related anthology—20,000 Leagues Remembered.
Maybe these publishers and book distributors are trying to celebrate Verne’s 195th birthday on February 8, I don’t know.
At the Fussy Librarian,20,000 Leagues Remembered is listed with their Bargain E-books under General Fantasy. That promotion may only last today, Saturday, February 4, but the sales at the other sites will likely remain in effect until Friday, February 10.
20,000 Leagues Remembered, published on the 150th anniversary of Verne’s masterwork, contains 16 stories by modern authors, each inspired by the classic tale of underwater adventure. Read exciting stories by Mike Adamson, Alfred D. Byrd, Demetri Capetanopoulos, J. Woolston Carr, Maya Chhabra, Eric Choi, Corrie Garrett, Andrew Gudgel, Nikoline Kaiser, James J.C. Kelly, M. W. Kelly, Jason J. McCuiston, Gregory L. Norris, Allison Tebo, Stephen R. Wilk, and Michael D. Winkle.
Prices are rising for everything else, but for this book—at least for a while—the price has dropped. When it comes to good deals, it’s hard to beat this one. Everyone likes a bargain, even—
BearManor Media, Inc., the publisher of Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne is letting the book go for 20% off. The sale only runs through February 4, so hurry.
When you order either the hardcover or paperback version, it will show up at full price until you put the book in your shopping cart. Then you’ll see the discount.
As a reminder, the North American Jules Verne Society sponsored their first-ever anthology of stories written by modern authors, each inspired by Verne’s works. Not only does the book contain thirteen wonderful tales, but each story is accompanied by an original illustration from the earliest publications of Jules Verne’s novels. In an appendix in the back, you’ll find a complete listing of all of his writings.
You had this book on your to-read list, but never got around to buying it yet. Now’s your chance to grab it at a discounted price. For the hardcover version, click here, and for the paperback, click here.
Forgot to mention: one of the co-editors of this anthology is—
Writers should read. I’m rather organized about it, maybe bordering on anal. This week marks twenty years since I started keeping a log of my reading.
My spreadsheet started in January 2003. Since then, I’ve read 637 books. Fiction comprised 67% of these. Over those two decades, I’ve averaged 12.6 days per book.
In my spreadsheet, I note the date I finished, the title, author, and whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. For text-type books (print or ebook) I enter the number of pages and compute pages read per day. For audiobooks, I note the number of hours and compute the hours listened per day.
For print and ebooks, I’ve read an average of 16.7 pages per day and averaged 31.6 days to finish a book. The average audiobook took me only 6.9 days to complete, listening for an average 1.5 hours a day.
In an average year, I read 31.9 books, but that varied a lot. One year I only read 8, and another year I read 58.
I’ve consumed books in various formats—178 print books, 21 ebooks, 301 audiobooks on CD, 85 audiobooks on cassette (not many of those lately), and 52 downloaded audiobooks. Therefore, I’ve listened to 69% of the books and read the text of the remaining 31%.
If it sounds like I’m bragging, believe me, I’m not. I’m disappointed I didn’t read much more. This is an admission of failure, not a proud boast.
What sort of books do I read? I don’t note the genres in my spreadsheet, but much of the fiction is scifi. In nonfiction, I’m eclectic—all over the map.
In addition to the log, for the past 9 of those 20 years, I’ve posted reviews on Goodreads and Amazon of the books I read. That totals about 244 reviews. I’m not always kind in my reviews, but I try to be fair, noting strengths and weaknesses of each book. If I support other writers by reviewing their work, perhaps some will return the favor. Any review, whether good or bad, can help sales.
I’ve noticed my reading habits changing over the years. I used to read during my commute to and from work, either reading on the subway or listening to audiobooks in the car. I also read on the plane when traveling for work. Since my retirement, I’ve begun reading before breakfast, and still listen to audiobooks when traveling by car and I read on the plane when I fly.
Do you keep a record of the books you read? If not, should you start? Up to you, of course, but let me caution you first. Human nature is such that you get more of what you measure and less of what you don’t. If you start logging your reading, you will read more, but only at the expense of something else you’ll be doing less.
How does my reading data stack up against the average person? According to Gallup, the average American reads 12.6 books per year, the lowest average in 30 years, down from a high of 18.5 in 1999. The Penn Book Center found CEOs read a great deal, with Bill Gates reading about 50 books a year—a good goal.
There’s an app called Basmo that will log your reading for you. I’ve never tried it, but it looks easy to use, and it does all the spreadsheet calculating stuff. Using that app might inspire you to read more.
Without much effort, and with the aid of a log or logging app, you should be able to read much more than—
What’s the best way to learn how to write stories? Should you just start writing a lot and work to improve? Or should you study the works of the best writers and understand their techniques before setting fingers to keyboard yourself? Or a combination of the two?
Image from Picjumbo
A writer friend enrolled in a literary master’s degree program and took a short story workshop class. The instructor told the students to dissect a literary work and analyze it. My friend discovered the entire workshop would consist of these analyses, and suggested to the instructor that students wouldn’t actually learn to write stories that way.
Picking a good metaphor, my friend said you can’t learn to build a house by taking apart other houses and studying them. You have to learn by doing.
The instructor disagreed, leaving my friend dissatisfied with that conclusion to the argument.
Let’s call the instructor’s way the ‘analytical approach’ and my friend’s way the ‘practice approach.’ (Note: I don’t mean to imply my friend only wrote and never read—this student objected to the 100% analytical approach imposed by the instructor.)
Who’s right? Both approaches seen to hold some merit, unless taken to extremes. A person who just analyzes famous writer’s works may develop expertise in analysis but never write a story of value. A writer who never reads seems equally unlikely to produce enjoyable prose.
I envision an experiment performed in two classrooms of second or third graders. One class simply writes stories without prompts. The other spends a year studying high quality children’s literature and discussing those books, and then the students write a story at the end. Which classroom’s students would end up crafting the best stories?
Imagine a line, a spectrum, with the pure ‘analytical approach’ at one end and the pure ‘practice approach’ at the other. My guess is, few of the great authors cluster at either end. They learned to write classic stories by some combination of approaches—by analysis and by practice. Perhaps an optimum exists on that curve, and I suspect it’s past the midpoint, toward the ‘practice approach’ end.
We might gain further insight on this by considering the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT. You may ask this chatbot to write a short story, and even prompt it with a subject, setting, mood, and style. The program will produce a short story for you in minutes.
How does ChapGPT do that? From what I’ve read, ChatGPT’s developers gave the chatbot many, many such prompts, graded the results, and provided feedback to the program regarding the grades. This seems analogous to the practice approach.
To produce a short story for you, ChatGPT scours the internet for information about the words in your prompt (for example, the subject, setting, mood, style, or other parameters you provided). That research seems analogous to the analytical approach.
Thus it appears ChatGPT learned to write short stories by some combination of approaches, someplace between the ends of the spectrum.
Note: ChatGPT does much more than write short stories. I don’t mean to sell it short. It also writes poems, essays, the answers to questions, and accomplishes many other tasks involving text.
In the end, my friend learned little about how to write a short story from the course. The analysis of classic short stories seemed, to my friend, better suited to undergraduate or even high school level, rather than a master’s degree course.
When learning to build a house, examining other houses helps, but so does building one yourself, and that’s similar to learning to write.
An appropriate mix of the analytical and practice approaches seems the best choice, at least for—
Few events excite us as much as a race, a competition of speed. Sports fans love racing. Readers love to read about races, and writers rush to fill that need.
For this post, I use the term ‘race’ to mean a contest of speed, not a means of differentiating people based on physical characteristics.
In fiction, a race allows a writer to introduce thrills and tension, to reveal a character’s traits, and to heighten conflict. Races often pit the protagonist against either an antagonist or against the steady ticking of a clock, which becomes a sort of inanimate antagonist.
Often, fictional racers compete for high stakes—a prize of some sort, or defeat of an internal demon, or even the character’s life.
A quick search revealed many books featuring a race, a tiny sampling. I’ll list the ones I found by category.
Footrace (Flanagan’s Run by Tom McNab, The Running Man by Richard Bachman/Stephen King)
Boat (Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne)
Auto (Thunder Road by William Campbell Gault, Return to Daytona by W.E. Butterworth, The Twelve-Cylinder Screamer by James McM. Douglas, Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly)
Bicycle (Bad to the Bone by James Waddington, The Rider by Tim Krabbé)
Horse Racing (Iliad by Homer [chariot racing], Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, Thinking Racehorse by Jimmy Tudeski
Swimming (Swimming by Nicola Keegan, The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin, Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas)
Techniques used in fictional race stories may include:
competitors sizing each other up before the start;
a large crowd, including characters of importance to the protagonist;
lead changes during the race;
emotional swings as the protagonist experiences sadness or dread at the thought of losing, and exhilaration and joy about the likelihood of winning;
a breakdown or falter by the protagonist, perhaps caused by the antagonist;
a redoubling of effort by the protagonist near the end, digging deep, going beyond previously assumed capabilities;
a close, disputed finish;
an overturning of the race results based on a rule violation or some other plot contrivance; and
the protagonist winning or losing the race, and learning something valuable.
Races form a central part of the plot in two of my stories.
In “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” two triremes race each other, one powered by rowers and the other by steam. An alternate history (or more accurately, a ‘secret history’) tale, it imagines the Roman inventor Heron converting his steam-powered ‘wind-sphere’ toy into a means of propelling a ship.
My story 80 Hours pits a protagonist against the clock. She accepts a TV game show challenge to travel around the world in eighty hours for a prize of $3 Million.
If you’re a writer stuck for an idea, consider a story about a race of some sort. Feel your adrenaline flowing. Step up to the line. On your mark. Get set. Go! See if you can outrace—
Though I’ve tried and failed to predict future science fiction trends before, practice makes…well, better. I used the wrong techniques, that’s all. It’s obvious to me now—you can’t see the future in crystal balls, tea leaves, tarot cards, or astrology charts.
You need to read palms. Chiromancy—that’s the foolproof way. My hands have touched so many science fiction books during my life, it should have been obvious to look there for what’s coming in 2023. I had it all along, right in the palm of my hand.
As I gaze at the length and curvature of the lines and the fleshiness of the seven mounts on my hands, it all becomes clear. Some of my predictions repeat those of previous years, but that only means a trend continues or re-emerges in 2023. Here are the types of science fiction books you can expect next year:
Artificial Intelligence. A continuing trend, yes, but in 2023, we’ll see a twist. Authors will get past the Frankenstein reruns and the cute-robot-is-nobler-than-humans plot. Novels will show us more sophisticated AI, computers with a different order of intelligence, one alien to us.
Classics redone in LGBTQ. Authors will explore the contours of the LGBTQ realm by rewriting classic tales, but repopulating them with LGBTQ characters.
Climate Fiction. CliFi hasn’t run its course yet. Readers want it, and authors will supply it.
Mars. The Red Planet is in again. We’ll see books featuring the fourth rock from the sun.
Private Space Flight. I jumped the gun, er, rocket, in predicting this for 2022. 2023 is the year we’ll see spaceships funded by billionaires without government involvement, for better or worse.
Solarpunk. I’m seeing more novels in the coming year with this motif, bringing us sustainable, renewable energy and diverging from capitalism and a colonial mindset.
Terraforming. Once seen as an extension of man’s dominion over Earth, terraforming will show its warts in 2023. We’ll see stories of botched terraforming, opposed terraforming, and weaponized terraforming.
There they are—rock solid predictions you can take to the bank. Or, more correctly, the bookstore. As you peruse the New Releases section of bookselling websites or stores, seeing novels on those topics, you’ll say “I’ve really got to hand it to—
In the last several Decembers, I’ve used various techniques to predict the sort of science fiction books to be published in the upcoming year. Last year, I used an astrological chart. Let’s see if my predictions came true.
Prediction: Games and Virtual Reality. This recent trend will continue in 2022 as authors explore the landscape of these settings. Moreover, readers will enjoy the escapism aspect of these stories.
Assessment: I nailed it. Here are two examples–Unanimity by Alexandra Almeida involves a simulated reality, and Rabbits by Terry Miles concerns a secret, dangerous and sometimes fatal underground game.
Prediction: UFOs/UAPs. As the government promises to release data on UFOs or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, scifi authors will capitalize on the public’s interest in these sightings.
Assessment: My astrological chart worked on this one, too. Light Years From Home by Mike Chen involves alien abductions, and Beyond the Burn Line by Paul McAuley gives readers alien spacecraft coming to Earth after humanity’s extinction.
Prediction: Pandemic. 2022 will be the year for pandemic scifi. Expect bizarre diseases with weird symptoms.
Assessment: Success in this prediction, as well. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu concerns a plague released from a preserved corpse. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel involves three separate people connected by a plague.
Prediction: Post-pandemic. As we emerge from the COVID-19 Pandemic, scifi writers will give us tales of humanity returning to normal after devastating pandemic diseases.
Assessment: I’ll say I got this right, too. The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson takes place in a post-COVID Florida, in 2025, on the cusp of a new and different pandemic.
Prediction: Private space exploration and tourism. In 2022 we’ll read scifi novels featuring billionaire-funded space travel, both for tourism and exploration.
Assessment: Here’s where my chart let me down. I found no examples of this.
Prediction: Humor. We’ll see a welcome surge in funny scifi, just in time to meet the public’s need for a lighter mood.
Assessment: I’ll rate this prediction as borderline, as the humor in my examples tends to be either subtle or dark. Some reviewers have mentioned the humor in How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. Mickey7 by Edward Ashton gives readers some dark humor.
Prediction: CliFi. Many readers and scifi writers share concerns about climate change, which will inspire new novels about how humanity copes.
Assessment: Okay, anybody could have made this prediction, I grant you. Authors delivered. The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton follows a child born out of a hurricane who must handle a changing climate. Imagine 2200: The 2022 Climate Fiction Collection edited by Tory Stephens contains clifi short stories. Extinction Notice edited by David Harten Watson is another such anthology.
Prediction: AI. Artificial Intelligence will continue to prompt the scifi of 2022 as it has for years now. I predict stories involving the whole spectrum of AI, from specialized AI capable of one type of task, to general AI similar to human intelligence, all the way to superintelligence.
Assessment: I’ll give myself partial credit, since I’m not sure the whole spectrum of AI got covered. The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard features a sentient spaceship. A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga is a middle grade novel about a sentient Mars rover. Unanimity by Alexandra Almeida shows AI experts creating a virtual reality. In Roadkill by Dennis E. Taylor, the protagonist has an AI sidekick. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers is a hopepunk journey of human and robot through the wilds of future human civilization.
Personal Predictions
I made two of these, only one of which panned out.
Prediction: My collection of short stories about the future history of seasteading, titled The Seastead Chronicles, will be published in 2022.
Assessment: Got this one right. The anthology got published on December 12 and is available in hardcover and paperback.
I’m getting better at this prediction business. If only my abilities extended to the stock market, the lottery, horse racing, or casino gambling. Stay tuned for my next blogpost, where all the science fiction trends to look for in 2023 will be revealed by—
As the end of the year approaches, this seems a good time to assess writing performance. As with last year, I’m using the Writer’s Performance Review template created by the Book Coach, Jennie Nash.
I scored a bit higher this year than last—a 75 out of a possible 100. Worst scores—goal orientation and strategic thinking. In last year’s assessment I scored low in these two as well, but my score improved in industry knowledge.
Goal orientation means more than writing down a to-do list, which I do. It means assigning numeric, measurable goals for time spent, word count, etc. Although I understand the importance of such metrics, I worry about the dangers of overemphasis. I’ve found I get more of what I measure and less of what I don’t. If that’s true for you, take care in what you choose to measure.
This performance review template defines strategic thinking to include identifying and connecting with ‘ideal readers’ and their influencers. I’ll do more research into this.
This year saw some personal writing successes. My short story “80 Hours” came out in paperback and ebook form. A book I co-edited, Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne, got published. I served as president of my local writing critique group, and got a short story accepted for publication in an upcoming anthology.
Performance assessments bring anxiety, embarrassment, and self-doubt. Now imagine making your assessments public, as I do in these annual posts. You get to see a writer striving to improve, agonizing over failures, and dusting himself off, determined to make next year better.
If my struggles do no more than to inspire you to improve your own writing, then my self-examinations serve a greater purpose than mere assessments of—
This, fellow voyagers, marks the 80th day of Phileas Fogg’s journey around the world, 150 years after the fictional tale. Will Detective Fix finally arrest the bank robber he’s been chasing the whole way around? Will Princess Aouda go on to live with her cousin in Holland? Will Fogg return to the Reform Club in time to win his wager?
In New York, Fogg had missed the departure of the China, and found—from consulting his ‘Bradshaw’—that no other steamer would reach London in time. They stayed overnight at the St. Nicholas Hotel (perhaps a reference to the upcoming Christmas holiday?) on Broadway. In the morning, Fogg found the ship Henrietta about to leave, bound for Bordeaux. The captain never took passengers, but changed his mind when Fogg offered 2000 pounds apiece for the four of them.
Fogg ended up paying off the crew to perform a mutiny and they confined Captain Speedy to his quarters, while Fogg ordered a course change toward Liverpool. When the coal gave out, Fogg purchased the ship from Speedy and ordered everything above the waterline burned. On December 21 at 1:00 am, the Henrietta arrived in Queenstown, Ireland. The four travelers took a train to Dublin and a steamer to Liverpool, arriving at 11:40 am. There, Detective Fix arrested Fogg.
Imprisoned in the Custom House, Fogg waited, without apparent emotion. At 2:33 pm, Fix freed him, saying police had arrested the real bank robber three days earlier. Fogg knocked the detective to the floor. He, Aouda, and Passepartout took a train to London, but arrived at 8:50pm, 5 minutes too late to win his wager. Back in his London flat, he had discussions with Aouda the next day, and she proposed marriage to him. If her proposal seems rather sudden, remember that this novel followed the adventure format, not the romance formula.
Fogg accepted and sent a delighted Passepartout to make arrangements with Reverend Samuel Wilson at Marylebone Parish for a wedding the next day, Monday. When Passepartout found out it was only Saturday, he dragged Fogg to a carriage and they made it to the Reform Club just in time to win his wager. By traveling east, he’d gained a day and hadn’t noticed it. He’d covered 24,544 miles in exactly 80 days.
Bradshaw’s Guide, 1882
When Verne had Fogg consult the ‘Bradshaw,’ he referred to Bradshaw’s Guide, a book of railway and steamship timetables, published from 1839 to 1961.
St. Nicholas Hotel on Broadway, 1853
The St. Nicholas Hotel existed, having opened in 1853 as the first NYC building to cost over $1M. It closed in 1884 and luxury condos occupy that site on Broadway today.
The port of Queenstown in Ireland changed its name to Cobh in 1920.
Marylebone Parish
Marylebone Parish existed. An Anglican church, it stands about 1.2 miles NNW of Fogg’s mansion at 7 Saville Row. Fogg asked Passepartout to contact the Reverend Samuel Wilson, but I found no record of that name in connection with that church. Charles Eyre served as its rector from 1857 to 1882.
Fogg’s group required 8 days to travel from New York to London, but today you can fly that route in about 7 hours. Throughout this blogtour, I’ve contrasted Fogg’s trip with modern-day flying times. For the entire circumnavigation, those flight times total 102 hours. If we assume an average layover time of 1.5 hours for each of the 16 stops, the total time is 126 hours, or a bit over 5 days. Of course, if you’re interested in the shortest possible time without mimicking Fogg’s route, that’s a bit over 44 hours, accomplished on commercial flights (including the Concorde) by David Springbett in 1980.
This post completes our blogtour, but need not end your enjoyment of Verne. I recommend almost all of his novels. If you prefer a more modern style, I recommend Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. Just published, it’s the first anthology of fiction ever produced by the North American Jules Verne Society. I also recommend you join that group if you’d like to know more about Verne.
In the end, Phileas Fogg spent about as much money as he won. He’d seen nothing of the world he’d just circumnavigated except the insides of steamships and railway cars, where he’d played countless games of whist. However, he’d won the love of a charming spouse, and Verne asks us to ponder whether we, too, would circle the globe for even less a prize than that. Is love, after all, the greatest adventure?
Thank you for traveling Around the World in Eighty Days with—
At long last, the North American Jules Verne Society has produced its first-ever anthology of new fiction. Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne just got published today. As of today, it’s available from the publisher, BearManor Media, in paperback and hardback, and from Amazon in both versions.
The anthology includes stories by Mike Adamson, Joel Allegretti, Gustavo Bondoni, Demetri Capetanopoulos, Brenda Carre, Eric Choi, Christopher M. Geeson, Kelly A. Harmon, David A. Natale, Alison L. Randall, Janice Rider, Michael Schulkins, and Joseph S. Walker. Credit goes to artist Amanda Bergloff for the splendid cover image.
The stories derive not only from Verne’s better-known novels, but also from the obscure ones many are unfamiliar with. These stories may prompt you to sample Verne’s lesser-known writings.
In addition, an image taken from the original illustrations of Verne’s novels accompanies each story. One appendix lists the sources of these illustrations, and another appendix provides the complete bibliography of Verne’s works.
I’m honored to have served as a co-editor for this volume. I’m proud of the result, and should mention my co-editor, Rev. Matthew T. Hardesty, and the others who served on the anthology team: Dana Eales, Arthur Evans, Alex Kirstukas, Andrew Nash, Reggie Van Stockum, and the Society’s current president, Dennis Kytasaari.
