The Martian (Midpoint Analysis)

I've been listening to the audiobook of Andy Weir's semi-recent hard sci-fi novel The Martian the last couple weeks.  I'm about halfway through it.  It's really quite good.

Other than using the "F" word twenty or so times, I really love the protagonist and 1st-person narrator.  He has an excellent character voice and manages to incorporate humor into the main stream of things, which is essential for humor to work in sci-fi.  The other characters with little parts toward the end of the first five hours of audiobook have solid characterization and voice right off the bat.  The entire cast is stellar.  (That's a crazy partial-pun, intentionally.)

While the conflict in this story is different from that of other stories I've read, it works for me.  Survival stories are daunting to write, but very satisfying to read if done well.  Add Mars, a pseudo-travelogue (involving food production), and a Time Bomb and you have yourself a really cool plot.

There are two main settings in The Martian.  The first is Mars.  That's awesome because...it's Mars.  The second is the NASA base.  It's chaotic and colorful, too things the novel needed to compensate for the weaknesses in Mars as a setting.  So, yeah, Andy Weir is a genius.

I would definitely recommend purchasing this novel, whether it be in hardcover, ebook, audiobook, whatever.  Even lacking knowledge of the second half, the first half is worth your money, trust me.

A Sharp Lullaby

     Yamish fidgeted with his mask as he crawled into the Duke’s bedchambers, slipping past armed guards.  He stifled a laugh.

     The Duke stirred amid his silk blankets.  Yamish paused at the side of the bed, waiting for him to still.  The urge to keep him stilled made Yamish’s hands twitch.

     Yamish drew his dagger, Lullaby, from her sheath.  She hummed a melody to him.  The song came louder than usual.  The Duke opened one eye and stared.

     Lullaby went silent.  Then she started to sing.  Beautiful words poured out from her silver blade, calm and peaceful. 

     Yamish finished his job.

Old 3rd-Limited

Prior to about 1990, 3rd-limited POV was in its infancy.  Many works implemented it, but few stuck to it 100%.  Back then, omniscient snapshots in the middle of a 3rd-limited story were acceptable.  Today they would be considered horrendous POV errors.

The first novel I noticed with such a POV was Ender's Game.  Perhaps five times during the book the POV shifts for a sentence or two in the middle of a scene.

I just found today that George Orwell's classic 1984 stands in the same boat.  At the end of Chapter IV in Part II the thoughts of two characters are seen in the same paragraph.

Prose is changing constantly, and this is just one small way that it has transformed recently.

Some Praise For SpeckLit Stories

Here's what I had to say about a few stellar drabbles from SpeckLit Magazine:

Storytime by Sierra July
This is an interesting little magic system. The repercussions could be massive if it isn’t an individual thing.

Bully Balloons by Anne E. Johnson
It’s funny how this story manages to start with one conflict, gain a solution, add another piece of conflict, then use the original solution in a different way in order to solve both conflicts at once.

Blink by Maggie Denton
This is beautiful. I just wish the ending wasn’t so abrupt. There’s a certain sincerity to it, but it could have been very graceful as well.

Mylnn's Ride

     Cascades of light from a far-off star adorn Mylnn’s water droplet.  She shivers, tucking her miniscule wings closer to her body for warmth.  Gravity pulls at her stomach, or what passes for such, as the droplet tumbles ever faster.

     Despite the friction, heat abandons her.  Mylnn releases a telepathic scream as her droplet begins to freeze.  The beating of her triplet hearts slows to a low rumble.  For a few moments, she is encased in an icy tomb.

     Mylnn takes a rapid breath.  Her droplet warms to a liquid state, joining millions of others in the planet Bynthon’s wrap-around waterfall.