My book, Phoenix Afterlife, is now for sale at a couple of book stores in Fort Collins, Colorado. Expect to see more soon. If you live in the area, I recommend patronizing your local book store. Otherwise, you can always buy my book through online retailers, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
My first novel, Phoenix Afterlife, releases October 12, 2015. It will be available from online retailers in both eBook and paperback formats.
For details, see my Phoenix Afterlife page.
The latest book from Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things (Daw, 2014) is a very unusual little book. Consider, for example, the first sentence of the author’s foreword: “You might not want to buy this book.” He goes on to explain here and in the afterword that this story doesn’t do what everyone says a story should do, and he’s right. There’s one character, no dialogue, and very little in the way of plot. There isn’t even any particular character development. Now, you might think I’m about to complain about these faults; many readers have, but I am not one of them. I rated this book 5 stars, so I am compelled to explain my reasons.
Like many fans of The Kingkiller Chronicle (two books so far: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear), I have been waiting quite a while to read the next book in the series. This is not it. It is, however, set in the same world as those books, and it is all about one of the minor characters in those stories: Auri, the young girl who lives in the Underthing (the subterranean foundations of the University). Auri is a strange character, and we see very little of her in the other books, but she is fascinating. When I started this book, I expected to finally learn her backstory and discover how she came to be such a fragile, slightly broken yet disturbingly deep soul. This book does not explain her backstory, but it does explain her character in a much more meaningful way: it shows the world through her eyes.
Auri’s world view is vastly different from the modern perspective. In fact, it’s so alien that it seems incomprehensible to many readers. After reading the book, I was astonished at the number of angry and dismissive comments I found on Goodreads. There are people so viscerally opposed to this book that they’ve excoriated the author for writing it, accusing him of, essentially, treason to their expectations. How dare he waste our time trying to make a buck on this silly excuse for a book when we’re waiting for him to finish the book we expected him to write!
These reactions leave me very sad. I want to say to these readers, “If you only want to read the stories you’re already familiar with, give up on books. Turn to Hollywood, where you’ll always get the same things you’ve seen before, and nothing else.”
The truth is, Auri’s world view is not so alien after all. It is a very ancient view, an animistic way of looking at the world that has been part of the human experience far longer than the modern, rational perspective. To Auri, and to all of humanity through most of our existence, there are no inanimate objects. Everything is alive, everything seeks its place in the world, everything has its own true name, and learning the names of things can elicit their cooperation. This is, in fact, the fundamental premise of The Name of the Wind, so why would fans of that book dismiss this deeper journey into that experience?
As an aspiring writer, I am in awe of Rothfuss for how intimately he brings us into this perspective. This is no easy task. I’ve dabbled in trying to tell a story from an unfamiliar mindset, and it is a very difficult thing to do. What Auri experiences is not directly expressible in words, yet the author’s words lead us there and we experience it, if we allow ourselves to do so.
No book can work for everyone. It’s fine if you don’t want to read a book in which, arguably, “nothing happens.” But don’t denigrate the author for showing you something you’ve never seen before, especially when it can illuminate the oldest aspects of our shared humanity.
My story, Fractal Ambush, was submitted to the 2013 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards.
Alas, it was not a winner.
After 25 years in software development and 9 years as a technical writer, I retired from the corporate workforce at the end of August, 2012. So far, I haven’t missed it.
Before retirement
After retirement
More than once, I’ve heard an argument that reduces to this: “Science doesn’t know everything, therefore there must be God.” I understand the premise and the conclusion, but I’ve never seen the logic that gets us from one to the other. These two options do not partition the entire space of cosmic understanding. Of course there are things in the universe that I can’t explain. Almost certainly, there are truths that are beyond the ability of the human mind to understand; but that doesn’t mean there exists an omnipotent, omniscient God who runs the whole show. There’s no connection from one to the other.
Some say that the exquisite complexity — the unbounded interconnectedness of the universe — is proof of conscious design, yet that defies everything observed throughout all of human existence. Everything designed and constructed — whether by humans or any other species — is limited, approximate, and compromised. Anything designed can be improved with better tools. What nature shows is the glorious efficiency of adaptation rather than design.
Designed things are static. Once made, they cannot be made again. Natural things are dynamic. They adapt to everything they can and end when they cannot. The products of organic growth, the dance of subatomic particles and fields, the forces that move stars and planets in intricately connected harmonies — these are not static, designed things. These are natural things. To look at this and see a cosmic designer and creator is to miss the whole point. Organic growth is of a higher order than design and construction. Not because it is designed and constructed by a higher intelligence, but because it arises from forces more complex and subtle than intelligence. Time and chance and the chaos of everything asserting its effects on everything else, submitting in turn to the influences of everything else — these are powers of a higher order than intelligence, design, or construction. Compared to this, the machinations of gods and demons cannot be taken seriously.
My wife and I adopted two cats recently. It’s not the first time we’ve had cats, but it’s been several years since the last one died. Yes, they’re cute and fun, but that’s not what I want to write about now. It’s possible that aspect of cats has already been covered elsewhere on the internet.
What strikes me now is just how alien these strange little creatures are. People play with cats, but to the cats there is only one game — hunter/prey, the game of life and death. Our cats have distinct personalities, but the gray tabby is the most single-minded predator I’ve ever watched. Destined to an indoor life, she carries the jungle within her. She attacks every lure presented to her with a ferocity that would be terrifying if we existed on her scale. Even our other cat retreats to a safe location when Smokey is on the chase. Nothing stands in her way; she’ll carom off the walls and furniture, leap higher than our waists, and twist in mid-air to capture the prey. Lying in wait behind the glass patio door, she stands alone to secure us from the total squirrel apocalypse which surely would result without her diligent protection.
Watching the cats convinces me that their existence is as alien to ours as any extraterrestrial civilization could ever be. What a great disservice we do in films and books when we portray animals as small, furry people with human thoughts and concerns. Teaching children to look at animals this way is a terrible waste of a profound learning opportunity, but it’s nearly impossible to do otherwise. We can only think from a human perspective. Even if we could really understand their perspective, how could we ever describe it? Our tools of description are words and concepts completely outside the animal experience. Casting their lives into human terms would be a poor translation, at best.
Even the lives of ancient people, far removed from our own experience, may be easier for us to understand. With them, we share the life of reason, words, hopes, and dreams. With cats, we share our living space, but what that means to us may bear little resemblance to what it means to them.
Of course, it’s also possible to go too far this way — to say that their wordless life of instinct means they have no actual consciousness as we know it. I think that would be a mistake. Any efficient predator must be able to anticipate the reactions of the prey. That implies at least some ability to imagine the perspective of another creature, which is a sophisticated act of conscious behavior. In this regard, the difference between us may be more a matter of degree than of kind.
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Some short examples of my original writing can be found under the Stories page.
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