The best of the novels were The Three-Body Problem – with its unique take on first contact with aliens; A Narrow Road To The Deep North – a harrowing prisoner of war story that reeked of authenticity; The Testaments – Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, which wrapped up all the loose ends; Affirmation – a ride through what is and isn’t reality; Wake – a horror story set under a supernatural dome in a New Zealand seaside township; Embassytown – where language mistakes have bizarre consequences when communicating with aliens; and Lone Wolf World – narrated by a delusional psychopath who is full of wit and dark observations about the world.

Like last year, I aim to read 24 novels this year.

Good reading to you.

 

My course did not stop even for Christmas. I had an online quiz to complete by the end of Christmas Day, and I got the results when it ticked over into Boxing Day.

I am currently doing News and Politics, a journalism subject, through Griffith Uni and Critical Thinking at Macquarie. I am doing well in the latter. For the former, I worry that my latest assignment wasn’t very good.

I did not have an end-of-year “best of” science fiction for last year as it would not have been very comprehensive. I hardly saw any films and I only finished reading one novel. It was a pretty average year for science fiction movies anyway, with Arrival probably being the pick of the bunch. I think the very ordinary last Star Trek movie might end the franchise for a while.

I watched a bit of small-screen science fiction. Westworld was easily the best, with immense production values, multiple plot lines and a Sixth Sense type of revelation at the end of series one. I am surprised more people are not talking about it because, to me, it is science fiction of Battlestar Galactica quality. Other series I enjoyed were Class, Dark Matter, Killjoys, Orphan Black, Wayward Pines, and Mars (a very good doco-drama).

I did very little writing last year, just a few minutes of writing on nearly every day so I could continue to call myself a writer. Currently, I am about a third of the way through the second draft of a novel manuscript, Branded.

So far this year my writing and reading has failed to pick up. Perhaps one day I will write for an hour or so, and that night I will pick up a book and read for half an hour, and then do the same the next day, and the next, until it becomes a habit.

2015 is over. I won’t miss it. It was a year when tiredness had me questioning, more than usual, my writing abilities. I had a bit of a writing breakdown in April when I realised my writing was going nowhere slowly. I simply wasn’t writing enough. I still don’t, but my word count did go up after April, at least until I finished writing the first draft of a novel in October. After that, it was onto redrafting, editing and proofreading.

I wrote about 113,000 words for the year, an average of 300 or so words per day. At the beginning of the year, my goal was to average 500 words a day, and if I had just been writing first drafts and redrafting, I might have come close. I wrote on all but nine days of the year.

I wrote a 6,000-word short story for a Christmas anthology for the Australian Writer’s Forum. If you want to read it, there are links to the free ebook in a previous post.

But my major writing effort was finishing the first draft of a novel called Branded. I originally wrote its first two chapters for a writing for young adults subject in my masters and then put it away for eight years. I pulled it back out for 2014’s National Novel Writing Month, and about 130,000 words later, I finished the first draft in October. I am currently about a quarter of the way through redrafting it, and so far, I have added an extra chapter.

Critiquing.

One of the issues that really concerned me in April was the need for more critiquing of my writing. I did get two and a bit critiques of my short story. No one said they loved it, but that has rarely happened in all the years I have been writing. So either my writing sucks, or my story plots and themes are crap, or my writing fails to connect with the average reader/critiquer. The story I wrote could have a better ending, which I will add if I ever think of one.

I do hang on to the positive responses to a few bits of my writing from lecturers in writing courses. I received one such positive response for the first two chapters of the novel I am working on.

In an effort to find more writers on my wavelength, I joined The Australian Writer’s Forum and rejoined Critters.org, and started critiquing for both. From May, I critiqued 20 stories and a 66,000 word novel for critters.org, and three stories for the anthology for the Australian Writer’s Forum.

Reading.

Did I mention I was tired? I started the year tired, and then, in about August, another dose of one of my various chronic illnesses made me even more tired. From August to the end of this year, I read three-quarters of a novel. Before that, I had read about seven books for the year.

Divine.

In April, grumpy me had a hissy fit when my editor at Divine dared to do her job, and asked for changes to an article so it would conform to government guidelines (Divine is funded by the Office For Disability and hence the Victorian State Government). Fortunately, I pulled my head in and edited the article. After a two-month break, I wrote another four articles for Divine and I and currently working on the first for the new year.

My Writing Goals for 2016.

I need to get more sleep. If I can get on top of my chronic tiredness, the quantity and quality of my writing should improve, as well as my general demeanour. I have been a grumpy bastard all year. And I also am going to spend less time on Facebook and more time writing or learning about writing.

I started
the year thinking I had a couple of chapters to write to finish my novel. Yeah
right. About 24 chapters later, I am finally sure I am writing the last
chapter. In a way, I am glad it has taken so long to get to the end as I was
having problems working out how to bring it thematically to a conclusion. I
always knew how the novel would end plot wise, but it took me until chapter 105
to figure out how to complete the theme or concept of the novel. The manuscript
currently has 213,558 words.

I seemed
to be always too tired to read at night, so I should be happy that I actually
managed to read 11 books. But I ain’t.

A post on
Google asked the question: Why do you write? They wanted an answer in one
sentence.  With a less than impressive
year of writing and reading, I asked myself that question. Here’s why I write:

I write stories I would like to read
about the challenges I expect people will face in the future.

There you
go. How about you?

  

Once I
write the last 1000 words of my novel, this year is going to be one of
redrafting and editing. I have the second drafts of two novel manuscripts and
one novella to keep me busy. I also want to get back into critiquing, including
critiquing a few novels. 

And, most
importantly, I finished the year with a Klout of 50.

Once again,
I did not read many books this year, but the ones I read were nearly all very
good science-fiction. As two books were from the same series, you would expect
one of them to be my favourite book, and it was: Wool by Hugh Howey. This is
the first time a self-published ebook has been my favourite book of the year.

I also
read Wools’ prequel, Shift,
published by Random House. As I noted in my review of Shift, I thought it better written than Wool. I wonder if this is due to the input of an editor at Random
House or just Hugh Howey becoming a better writer, or a combination of both. Wool and Shift are both a series of novellas set in a huge underground silo.
Wool is the better due to its introducing the claustrophobic and paranoid world
of the silo, and its stories are slightly more interesting than Shifts. I loved
the tension and flawed characters in both books.

The equally
brilliant The Twelve, by Justin Cronin, is thus relegated to the third
best book I read this year. The Twelve
is a sequel to The Passage. It is about
a group of survivors in a future US, where genetically engineered vampire like
monsters have wiped out most of humanity.  

I
purposely avoided some science-fiction movies this year like Pacific
Rim. I am sick of comic book good versus evil movies. I want to see
science-fiction that explores themes and challenges my brain. So I am
disappointed that Europa Report hasn’t had a theatrical release in Australia and won’t
be released on DVD here until April 2014.

I was
disappointed with Elysium. It started with promise, commenting on refugees and the
growing gap between the mega-rich and the rest of us, but then the movie turned
into a good versus bad action movie. I had hoped for more from its director
Neill Blomkamp, especially after his magnificent District 9.

I enjoyed
the spectacle of Gravity, but it really was just a story of human survival. And Star
Trek Into Darkness was just another quickly forgotten good versus bad action
movie.

My
favourite science-fiction movie this year was Oblivion. It is set in
the near future after the Earth has been attacked by aliens and humanity nearly
wiped out. Those who survived abandoned earth and live in orbit around it. But
they need more water before they can travel to another planet, so a pair of
technicians is left on earth to maintain pumps that are extracting the water.   

(Warning
spoilers) Tom Cruise haters really don’t want to see this one, as more than one
Tom Cruise appears on the screen at once many times during the film. The film
explores what would happen if a clone could remember the past of its original.
The plot is complex and has a few twists too. It is a very good science-fiction
thriller that demands thought on the part of the viewer.

Due to multiple
viewing platforms it is getting hard to review television series in a way that
is relevant to other readers of this blog. It is no longer the case that
everyone in Australia or the US has access to the same shows, as they can now
watch series on apps, cable and websites as well as DVD’s and commercial television.
What I had access to and watched is drastically different from what other
science fiction fans watched.

This year
I watched the following science fiction:

·        
Eureka (series 4)

·        
Stargate Universe (series 2)

·        
Doctor Who (series 7 part 2)

·        
Misfits (series 2)

·        
Warehouse 13 (series 4)

·        
Revolution (series 1 and part of series 2)

·        
Continuum (series 1 and part of series 2)

·        
Falling Skies (series 2)

·        
Under the Dome

·        
Utopia

·        
Defiance (the first 3 episodes).

There
really is a dearth of serious science-fiction series being made at the moment,
so I was not a happy to see Stargate Universe end the way it
did. I did not think much of the watered down Under the Dome. They
should have turned it into a mini-series that more closely followed the book,
instead of trying to stretch it out.

Due to it
only recently being screened on television in Australia, I have not watched
this year’s season of Fringe, which going on past seasons
might have been my favourite science-fiction show of the year.

I recently
discovered Utopia on SBS On Demand (only for the next three days). A six-part
English series that is as violent as anything made by Quentin Tarantino. It is
set in the near future where a group of fans of a comic book called Utopia, get their hands on notes and
drawings for its sequel. They are unaware that those notes and drawings contain
the answer to a conspiracy that is set to devastate the world, and they are
pursued by spy agencies and merciless killers. It is consistently tense, full
of stunning visuals and has a really groovy soundtrack. It is my favourite
science fiction show of this year, just edging out Misfits.

Misfits is also set in Britain and is about a
group of young wrong-doers who are doing community service and, after a meteor
shower, end up with super powers that reflect their personalities. Unlike an
American version, they don’t have ambitions to go out and save the world or
become super-criminals. They keep their abilities secret and only use them by
accident or when forced too. It is more a comedy drama, and I very much
appreciate its originality and unpredictability.  

 

Science
Fiction in 2012.

Science
fiction has not had a great year in television and movies. No Inception or Moon
was released this year. No Torchwood made it on to the small
screen and Doctor Who mainly sucked again. But the lack of quality on the
big and small screen was more than made up for by what I was reading. I read
some great science fiction this year.

On the Idiot Box.

Even
though I have access to the sci-fi channel on Foxtel, I was thinking there was
very little new science fiction on the small screen this year. That was until I
thought about it, it was more a matter of their being anything to rival Torchwood or The X-Files.

This
year I watched:

·        
Alcatraz

·        
Terra Nova

·        
Doctor Who

·        
Warehouse 13

·        
Alphas

·        
Fringe

·        
Revolution

·        
Falling Skies

·        
Caprica

·        
And
a DVD of The Event.

Of
those shows I was impressed by Caprica, Fringe and, surprisingly, Alphas.

Fringe episodes were consistently strong as they
developed a story revolving around a parallel Earth and the attempts to destroy
both Earths. The Fringe department is a near future version of the FBI. A
couple of Aussies occupy two out of the three lead roles. 

 

Alphas has grown on me. It had a strange feel about
it when I started watching it, sort of, this is slightly off skew. It is about
a team of investigators with special, but not super, powers. One can see and hear
electronic signals, another has heightened senses, another can use her telekinesis
type skills to push people into doing what she wants. But all the characters
are troubled by their powers, they find it hard to fit in. And they are lead by
a stuttering psychologist who has no powers. The story lines became stronger
and the characters developed to be more than one dimensional x-men.

Caprica should have been supported by science
fiction fans who like themes to be explored and strong complex plots. But it
wasn’t, and was cancelled long before it could grow into one of the science
fiction greats. Caprica was basically a prequel to Battlestar Galactica. It slowly
explained how the cylons came into being and got religion. Caprica was my
favourite small screen show of the year.

Movies.

I
did not see a lot of science fiction films this year. They ones I saw included:

·        
John Carter

·        
The Dark Knight Rises

·        
Melancholia

·        
Prometheus

·        
Never Let It Go

·        
Looper

·        
Total Recall

Melancholia was a surprise, a completely different end
of the world movie set on a large estate in England at a wedding reception. The
bride lacks enthusiasm for the wedding reception as she knows that the
approaching planet will not miss the Earth like scientists say it will. The
film has no riots, no guns, no religion, no panic, no violence.

I
enjoyed Looper, a time travel-film where a man has to kill his future
self or be killed himself. The film made me think, ie why was he killing all
those kids? But yay for thinking during a film.

Prometheus was easily the best film I saw this year. It
left me with lots of questions and things to speculate on. But I recently
watched it a second time and found it was nowhere near as puzzling as when I
first saw it. The only question I still have is why did the alien kill himself
at the start? Wasn’t there an easier way to blend his DNA into the planet’s
environment? Was he on Earth?

When
I saw Prometheus the first time I had such high expectations, with it being a
prequel to Alien and the greatest series of science fiction movies ever made. I
was expecting more horror too. And I think Charlize Theron was a bit of a
distraction because I expected her to have a greater role in what went on,
instead she was just a peripheral character.

I
found it interesting that the parasitical aliens – who Ripley in the earlier
movies was so keen to stop getting to earth and destroying it – had in fact
saved humanity by infecting the engineer aliens who were intent on depopulating
the Earth.

 Books.

I
did not read a lot of books this year, but what I read was, for the most part,
very good. These are the science fiction books I read:

·        
Machine Man – Max Barry

·        
The Courier’s New Bicycle – Kim Westwood

·        
The Pursuit of Miracles – George Turner

·        
The Dervish House – Ian McDonald

·        
Things we Didn’t See Coming – Steve Amsterdam

·        
The Passage – Justin Cronin

·        
Hydrogen Steel – KA Bedford

·        
How to Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe – Charles Yu

·        
11-22-63 – Stephen King

·        
Light, Touch Paper, Stand Clear – Edited by Edwina
Harvey

·        
The Waterboys – Peter Docker.

Seven
of the eleven science fiction books I read were written by Australians. Only
one was an ebook. The standouts were The
Pursuit of Miracles, Things we Didn’t See Coming and The Passage.

The Pursuit of Miracles is a collection of
eight short stories by Australia’s best ever science fiction writer George
Turner. Three of the short stories were later turned into novels.

Things we Didn’t See Coming is also a set of
short stories, but they are all about the same character and in chronological
order. Each story has an ending or a situation that I didn’t see coming. The
environment is in turmoil throughout the stories as the main character tries to
better his life in a hostile future Australia.

The Passage is about an America devastated by monstrous
genetically engineered vampires. It is a compelling read as the story is told
from multiple viewpoints with flashbacks within flashbacks. Will the surviving
pockets of humanity be overrun by the estimated 63 million vampires in the US? I
will have to wait until I read its sequel The Twelve to find out. 

The
Passage was my favourite novel of 2012. I loved the many complex characters and
the suspense.