Crossroads of Darkover Author Interview: Evey Brett

Coming in May, an all-new Darkover anthology featuring tales of decisions, turning points, love lost and found, all in the beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Stories by Jenna Rhodes, Pat MacEwen, Gabrielle Harbowy, Evey Brett, Rosemary and India Edghill, Diana L. Paxson, and more! Order yours today at: iBook, Kindle, Kobo, Nook. Table of Contents is here.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.


Evey Brett: Back in 2002 when I was just out of college, I got a job working retail at a now-extinct Foley's department store in a mall. There was a Waldenbooks right across from the store, so I'd often go get a book and settle down in a comfy chair somewhere in the mall to eat my lunch and read. One day I was looking for a new book and picked up The Fall of Neskaya, and I was hooked. Fortunately for me (and the bookstore) they had several other Darkover novels as well.


DJR: What about the world drew you in?

EB: I'm a sucker for stories with telepaths and damaged characters. I'd gone through a number of Mercedes Lackey's books, so finding Darkover gave me a whole new world with a sizeable canon to explore. Having just read the back of The Fall of Neskaya, I'd still pick it up to read because it's got everything I want--telepaths, power, gifts, a tormented character with a secret he can't reveal.


DJR: What inspired your story in Crossroads of Darkover? How did you balance writing in someone else’s world and being true to your own creative imagination?

EB: Since I came awfully close to the deadline with my last Darkover story, I kept trying to think of a plot early on. I had a vague idea of someone with a number of gifts but in nearly useless amounts, but when I started writing there wasn’t really room for more than one gift. I did keep thinking of Allart Hastur from Stormqueen!, and how the multiple futures he saw kept getting in his way, so I went with a variation on that gift and figured out a plot from there.

I did ask Deborah what she thought of a couple ideas when I was partway through, and she gave me a couple ideas which helped tremendously, so I was able to finish this story with time to spare. It was also the only complete story I managed to finish in 2017, so I’m glad it was for a world I care so much about.

For me, it's actually easier for me to write stories within the limits of a particular world or theme, and I've been doing far better at selling stories for anthologies than I have at selling stand-alones. Limits, like historical or world-building details, actually seem to force a better story. I like puzzles and problem-solving, so figuring out how to make my own ideas work within certain limits is fun.

Short Book Reviews: A Magical Bookstore Tale from Connie Willis

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, by Connie Willis (Subterranean Press). 

This latest novella from SFWA Grand Master Connie Willis offers a new take on the “magical bookstore” story. Who among us hasn’t dreamed of wandering the aisles of the Library of Alexandria or discovering a manuscript of Shakespeare’s lost Cardenio? Or a store where we can find books so odd, so enchanting, that we can never return unchanged to our mundane lives? (Actually, one could argue that all bookstores and libraries do this.) One of my favorites is Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, in which a boy is taken into a library and allowed to choose “his” book.

In her inimitable fashion, Willis draws us into a magical realm coexisting with the drab life of an author on a book tour in New York City. Tucked among the skyscraper office buildings, he stumbles upon a shop named, oddly, Ozymandias Books. Any student of high school English will recall the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.

Slowly the author is drawn into the store and its mysterious workings, discovering on its shelves more and more obscure works (including the aforementioned play attributed to Shakespeare). Even more puzzling is the way the books are arranged, not by author or subject but by the disaster that destroyed the last remaining copy…except the one he holds in his hands. (Nothing beside remains…)

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land is a delicious treat for readers and collectors, and a love song to those who treasure books.

Today's Moment of Serenity

Hudson River Scene, John Bunyon Bristol (1878-1892)

Crossroads of Darkover Author Interview: Leslie Fish

Coming in May, an all-new Darkover anthology featuring tales of decisions, turning points, love lost and found, all in the beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Stories by Jenna Rhodes, Pat MacEwen, Gabrielle Harbowy, Evey Brett, Rosemary and India Edghill, Diana L. Paxson, and more!  Order yours today at: iBook, Kindle, Kobo, Nook. Table of Contents is here.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover. 

Leslie Fish: I've been a Sci-Fi fan since I was a little kid.  I started on comic books, and learned early to recognize the difference the characteristic drawing styles of Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, and Jack Davis.  I visited our local corner drugs/convenience/comics store at least once a week, and noticed when they started including magazines and then paperback books.  One day I picked up an Ace Double paperback with The Planet Savers on one side and The Sword of Aldones on the other -- and finished them both in a single week, and was forever hooked.

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

LF: The fascinating ecology and resulting society: at least 5 different intelligent species -- not counting the two immigration-waves of humans -- and how they interact, the politics of a psychic society, the endless mysteries of its history and future.  Wow!  Yes, you could spend a lifetime studying this intricate world.

DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover? How has its readership changed over the decades? What book would you recommend for someone new to Darkover?

LF: I can see fans and authors exploring the details and mysteries of Darkover until...well, until we're out in the stars ourselves.  

The Darkover audience was originally romantic/adventuresome teenagers;  over the years it's grown to include not-just-young adults, and more thought-provoking tales than only romance and adventure;  people are exploring more widely the details and remote corners of this whole fascinating world, it's widely assorted peoples, and its history -- and future. 

I'd recommend that a beginner begin where I began -- with The Sword of Aldones, in whatever incarnation it's reached now.  I still think that's the core story of Darkover, and everything else branches out from there.   

Detecting Fake Social Media, the Origin of the Dinosaurs, and Other Cool Science News

Algorithm to locate fake users on many social networks

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer-Sheva, Israel) and University of Washington (Seattle) researchers have developed a new generic method to detect fake accounts on most types of social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. According to a new study in Social Network Analysis and Mining, the new method is based on the assumption that fake accounts tend to establish improbable links to other users in the networks.The algorithm consists of two main iterations based on machine-learning algorithms. The first constructs a link prediction classifier that can estimate, with high accuracy, the probability of a link existing between two users. The second iteration generates a new set of meta-features based on the features created by the link prediction classifier. Lastly, the researchers used these meta-features and constructed a generic classifier that can detect fake profiles in a variety of online social networks.

Dinosaurs ended -- and originated -- with a bang!

Lead author Dr Massimo Bernardi, Curator at MUSE and Research associate at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "We were excited to see that the footprints and skeletons told the same story. We had been studying the footprints in the Dolomites for some time, and it's amazing how clear cut the change from 'no dinosaurs' to 'all dinosaurs' was."
The point of explosion of dinosaurs matches the end of the Carnian Pluvial Episode, a time when climates shuttled from dry to humid and back to dry again. There were massive eruptions in western Canada, represented today by the great Wrangellia basalts -- these drove bursts of global warming, acid rain, and killing on land and in the oceans.

Seasons of Snow Cover in the West

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured this photo while flying over the western United States. The wide field of view stretches from the Sierra Nevada of California to the Columbia Plateau of Oregon and the Snake River Valley of Idaho.

Short Book Reviews: Two Delights from Kevin Hearne

In which I review two quite different pieces by versatile author Kevin Hearne

The Squirrel on the Train, by Kevin Hearne (Subterranean Press)

My introduction to Kevin Hearne’s work was Iron Druid, so I was delighted to discover that the dogs belonging to Druid Atticus O’Sullivan, or perhaps the other way around, he belonging to them, have their own adventures. This one begins with a train trip to Portland, during which the dogs are terribly upset because there is a squirrel (die, evil squirrel!) on top of the train. Atticus explains that the wind shear will cause the squirrel to jump off and when they arrive, squirrel in place, of course the dogs conclude that all natural order, including the laws of physics, will now be overturned. Their fears are confirmed when an Atticus look-alike is murdered, and so the chase is afoot. A-four paws, that is.

This utterly charming novella showcases Hearne’s skill at whimsical humor and his versatility as an author.

A Plague of Giants, by Kevin Hearne (Del Rey, 2017).

At some time in the past of this fantasy world, the balance of trade and power has been overturned through not one but two invasions of oversized warriors; one race being known to the others, quasi-Viking fire-wielders driven from their lands by a volcanic eruption. The second, strangers from over the sea, are mysterious and even more lethal. How these upheavals came about and were responded to is related in the present time through a bardic storyteller who assumes the likeness of various participants along the time line. In the present, we know that the giants have been defeated at a terrible cost, yet wounds remain unhealed and intrigues abound, threatening chaos.

This is a long, slowly-paced book that incorporates the stories of a large cast of characters from different cultures, much of it channeled through the central storyteller, with past and present timelines looping back on themselves. The world-building is amazing in itself, rich and complex, with each culture possessing its own form of magical gift (“kenning”) acquired through near-lethal trials. The individual stories are marvelous, the characters clearly distinct. My favorite is Abhinava Khose, born into a clan of plains hunters and unable to tell his family that not only does he never want to kill animals, but he is gay. He’s sensitive, compassionate, a natural leader, and unexpectedly courageous. The inner conflicts reflect and intensify the outer drama in his tale.

Read at a leisurely pace to savor the adventures of each person, the book is a delight. It’s not a tale to skim for “what happens next.” The ending is already established. However, that slowness, when combined with the length and complexity of the timelines, means it’s easy to get lost in the story of the moment and forget the multitude of details that have come before, to keep track of the cast of thousands and the sheer number of place names, group names, and so forth. In the ebook version I read, there are no maps or helpful lists, but there are series of charming portraits of important characters. Add to this the revelation that A Plague of Giants is only the first in a series means either loving the world so much you never want to leave it, or not experiencing the satisfaction of a complete story arc.

Kevin Hearne is an immensely capable author. A Plague of Giants and its subsequent volumes represents a highly ambitious project that I have no doubt he will carry on in a brilliant fashion. Besides the difficulties presented by the length and complexity of the book, I would have liked to spend more consecutive time with my favorite characters, each of whom surely deserves an entire book of his or her own.

Today's Moment of Art

Harvest Scene, by Charles Copeland (1858 – 1945)

Crossroads of Darkover Author Interview: Pat MacEwen

Coming in May, an all-new Darkover anthology featuring tales of decisions, turning points, love lost and found, all in the beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Stories by Jenna Rhodes, Pat MacEwen, Gabrielle Harbowy, Evey Brett, Rosemary and India Edghill, Diana L. Paxson, and more!  Order yours today at: iBook, Kindle, Kobo, Nook. Table of Contents is here.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.

Pat MacEwen: My introduction to science fiction happened in the back of a station wagon on a cross-country road trip when I was 13. An older cousin took pity on me, and gave me a box full of paperbacks to help me pass the time. That’s where I met up with Asimov, Doc Smith, Poul Anderson, Heinlein and more. Once home again, I began to explore the genre, and was delighted to encounter female authors as well, and books with strong female characters and story lines.

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

PE: Darkover was a rarity then – a complicated world with a long history where women mattered quite as much as men, and which often explored nonbinary questions of sex and gender and family and inheritance, and of course laran. Like most writers, I was something of a misfit in high school, but here was a place where I could see myself fitting in, one way or another. I’m also strongly attracted to moral questions in story-telling and tales of Darkover often focus on intricate problems concerning what’s right and wrong in this setting, compared to Terran mores.

DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover? How has its readership changed over the decades? What book would you recommend for someone new to Darkover?

PE: When I look at the various maps of Darkover, I have to wonder how so many different species of sapient and semi-sapient species developed within what is really very limited space. Then I think about laran, and the ancient strengths of the chieri, and wonder if it was always that way. Whether it will stay that way. Between Terran geoengineering and long-lost arts in controlling laran, what if there are sunken continents or ice-covered regions that were once inhabited and might be rediscovered? What secrets might be hidden by water and ice? Where did the Catmen and the Ya-men really come from? Are the chieri all done with their genetic engineering projects? Are they quietly reshaping humans? Toward what ends? What about those four moons? Are they really moons? All of them? Are there more chieri elsewhere?

As for an introduction to Darkover, my personal favorites are The Shattered Chain and Thendara House, but there’s a lot to be said for Stormqueen too, and Heritage of Hastur, The Alton Gift, and Sharra’s Exile.

DJR: What inspired your story in Crossroads of Darkover? How did you balance writing in someone else’s world and being true to your own creative imagination?

PR: I have a background in forensics and physical anthropology, having worked as a CSI for a California police department, and for the International Criminal Tribunal during war crimes investigations in the Balkans. I do independent research on genocide, and one of the aspects I’ve studied is the occurrence of certain crimes and atrocities during genocidal campaigns that are not expressly forbidden by law. They are acts almost never encountered in the course of “normal” warfare, no matter how savage. They are not committed by ordinary criminals, or even by serial killers. In many cases, they are so rare that no one keeps statistics on their occurrence, making research on the topic rather difficult. We don’t bother to even keep track of these acts because we don’t make laws against the things people simply don’t do. But on Darkover, thanks to laran and certain environmental cues, like the Ghost Wind, there are some kinds of assault and of murder that can be committed, and aren’t on the books. So how do you investigate them? How do you even prove they’ve been committed, let alone who did it? Even when you’ve made your case, how can you obtain justice?

Short Book Reviews: Another Novella Gem from Lois McMaster Bujold

Penric's Fox, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Subterranean Press)

I’ve loved Lois McMaster Bujold’s World of the Five Gods ever since I picked up a copy of The Curse of Chalion. This novella follows the adventures of a sorcerer-scholar (Penric) and his resident chaos demon (Desdemona) as they encounter a murder mystery. In this world, chaos demons bestow various powers upon their hosts and carry the personalities of those hosts as they shift from one to the other when each host dies. 

The mystery centers of the death of a sorceress and the absence of any trace of her demon, since no other human was nearby at the time of her passing. Where has the demon gone? Who killed the woman, and why? Where has the demon gone? (Yes, I know I asked that, but it's really, really important to not have a chaos demon either floating around or destroyed because it can't leap to a new host.)

Throw in a handful of utterly charming shamans, as well as other nicely depicted secondary characters, and the result is a delightful novella, just the right length to both savor the world and move the plot along nicely. When’s the next one coming out?


The usual disclaimer: This review arose from the gift of a complimentary review copy and nobody paid me to love the author's work because I already did. Are you happy, FCC?

Today's Moment of Art

Crossroads of Darkover Author Interviews: Jenna Rhodes

Coming in May, an all-new Darkover anthology featuring tales of decisions, turning points, love lost and found, all in the beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Stories by Jenna Rhodes, Pat MacEwen, Gabrielle Harbowy, Evey Brett, Rosemary and India Edghill, Diana L. Paxson, and more!  Order yours today at: iBook, Kindle, Kobo, Nook. Table of Contents is here.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.

Jenna Rhodes: I met Marion Zimmer Bradley at a Westercon in northern California, while browsing the book dealer room. She indicated a selection of books and I looked them over, saying, “Oh, I don’t know her.” I did buy one or two paperbacks then and found out the next day I had been talking to the author.

DJR: What about the world drew you in?

JR: I always thought of Darkover as a challenging and intriguing world full of possibilities.

DJR: What inspired your story in Crossroads of Darkover?  

JR: I’ve always been curious about the matrixes and how they live/function beyond the holder to which they’ve bonded. My story touches on that a little. How did you balance writing in someone else’s world and being true to your own creative imagination? If you are steeped in the books’ backstory, I think it’s easier to write stories that fill in the empty spots. Researching the canon is the challenge.

Short Book Reviews: A New Take on Dorian Gray

Creatures of Will and Temper, by Molly Tanzer, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2017.

Part Victorian Gothic, part sword-swashing adventure, part witchcraft and part romance, this is a thoroughly delightful tale. With a nod here and there to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the story concerns two sisters on a visit with their uncle in London. The older sister, Evadne Gray, loves fencing and the neighbor youth, but the latter has left her heart-broken by announcing his engagement to another. She’s in London as a diversion from her sorrow and also as chaperone for her vivacious, rebellious, artistic younger sister, Dorina Gray. Soon they’ve gone their own ways,  Dorina to the salon of Lady Henrietta Wotton and Evadne to study at a fencing academy. But matters are not all they seem, for in this world of Victorian high society, demons bargain with their human hosts in pacts ranging from benign to bloody.

This was my introduction to the work of Molly Tanzer but it won’t be my last. Besides the supernatural and mysterious, the depiction of a world of privilege and heartache, the story delves with sensitivity and insight into human relationships, thus setting it apart.

Today's Wisdom from Middle Earth

“All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.”

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Crossroads of Darkover Author Interviews: Robin Rowland

Coming in May, an all-new Darkover anthology featuring tales of decisions, turning points, love lost and found, all in the beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Stories by Jenna Rhodes, Pat MacEwen, Gabrielle Harbowy, Evey Brett, Rosemary and India Edghill, Diana L. Paxson, and more!  Order yours today at: iBook, Kindle, Kobo, Nook. Table of Contents is here.

Deborah J. Ross: What about the world of Darkover drew you in?

Robin Rowland: I live in the mountainous coast of British Columbia, where we often experience what I like to call “Darkover weather.” This year winter started early, in mid-November. It started with rain, which changed to freezing rain, to wet snow to snow. One day we had 24 hours of heavy snow, followed again by sleet and then rain, and then another 24 hours of heavy snow. One day, I dug out my driveway four times, the next, the sun came out and it was warm and there was a heavy snow melt underway. Now in mid-January, we have had a lot less snow than usual, but over this weekend we had freezing rain that left layers of ice everywhere.

Many years ago Marion Zimmer Bradley told me in the Darkover Suite at Westercon that she was first inspired by the snow in upstate New York and later, in California, by the Sierras. Every science fiction fan brings their own experience to their enjoyment of stories. I grew up in Kitimat and retired here. In a local First Nations (Native Canadian) language Kitimat means “people of the snow. The valley at the end of an 80 kilometre fjord has a unique micro climate. Four times we’ve had a record one day snowfall for all of Canada. The weather can change to warm to wet in a half hour. Winters can see snow up to the roof of a typical Kitimat 1950s two story ranch style house or sometimes so little snow I only use a half bag of snow melter. Summers can either be dreary, overcast and wet or warm to very hot with the occasional drought. So for me, that unique micro climate of the Kitimat valley is perhaps the closest thing on Terra to Darkover.

DJR: Tell us about your introduction to Darkover.

RR: My family moved to Toronto when I was fifteen. As my only income at the time was an allowance, I haunted a huge used book store in downtown Toronto called “Old Favourites” which had a large science fiction section. I bought Star of Danger, the boys were my own age and the description of Darkover made the planet sound like the home town I had just left. I kept buying Darkover books, first used and then when I got after school jobs, new releases from a variety store near my home which always stocked with a lot of science fiction in the late 1960s. What convinced me that I loved the planet was Darkover Landfall, which again, reminded me of Kitimat.

DJR: What do you see as the future of Darkover? How has its readership changed over the decades? What book would you recommend for someone new to Darkover?

RR: I'd always recommend Darkover Landfall as a starter for any one who wants to get into the series, it is a great introduction.

One factor that is emphasized in today's fiction overall, is that in a diverse society more readers have to see themselves in the stories.