Quick notes from the 1 PM Novels You Should Have Read Since Chicon 7 panel. Any errors are wholly mine. Panelists: Elizabeth Bear (moderator), Willie Siros, and Jess Nevins. Any really outstanding books? Siros: Sea Change, S. M. Wheeler fairy tale fable, internal logic, compared to The Last Unicorn Nevins: Brian Catling’s The Vorrh fantasy that avoids the usual fantasy tropes Bear: Cassandra Rose Clark, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter SF, robot civil rights, riff on “Bicentennial Man” issues of climate change, peak oil, global cultural change as background elements Siros: Iain Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata Nevins: Selvedin Avdic, Seven Terrors Horror, post-war Bosnia Bear: Toh EnJoe, The Self-Reference Engine picaresque novel - vignettes revealing greater story Siros: Shaman, Kim Stanley Robinson In dealer’s room – Larry Smith Bear: The Drowning Girl last year, but still good Nevins: Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker Siros: Peter Hamilton, The Great North Road Tighter than other recent Hamilton Bear: new Tales of the Beanworld hardcover, Larry Marder makes a good entry point into the series Nevins: Anna Tambour’s Crandolin medieval cookbook novel? Bear: Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series Good Man Friday historical detective novels Siros: Karen Joy Fowler: We Were Completely Beside Ourselves mainstream/slipstream Bear: American Elsewhere, Robert Jackson Bennett weird small town with small things going on that add up to something bigger Austin writer, writes books that are hard to summarize Nevins: Lauren Beukes, Shining Girls time travel, serial killer Bear: Ian Tregillis has finished his Milkweed trilogy Bitter Seeds, Coldest War, Necessary Evil alternate WW2, Nazis create super soldiers and UK turns to necromancy Siros: Neal Gaiman, Ocean At The End Of The Lane Bear: Karen Lord, Best Of All Possible Worlds planetary romance, not plot-driven, reminds Bear of Bradbury “a very relaxing book” Nevins: Koji Suzuki’s Edge quantum horror about California falling into the sea, Greg Egan-esque Bear: Seanan McGuire’s cryptid books lighthearted fun Jim C. Hines Libriomancer and Codex Born magicians who can pull things out of books they’re written in some books are locked off… the One Ring Nevins: The Last Policeman, Ben Winters policeman doing his job in a small town before the meteor hits Nevins: Deb Taber, Necessary Ill Siros: Devon Monk, Cold Steel and sequels steampunk Wild West, brothers who are lycanthropes Bear: Merrie Haskell’s Handbook for Dragon Slayers, middle school to write a handbook for dragon slayers, one must slay a dragon… Bear: Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson far future post-apocalyptic YA, set in Brazil Siros: Brandon Sanderson, Rithmatist math based magic, YA Bear last thoughts: Wesley Chu, The Lives of Tao Ramez Naan, Nexus and Crux The Incrementalists, Skyler White and Steven Brust coming in September Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead epic fantasy constructed like an urban fantasy which is a courtroom drama Siros last thoughts: Steven Gould, Impulse next in Jumper series The Thousand Names, Django Wexler historical fantasy/alternate world Evening’s Empire, Paul McAuley Nevins last thoughts: Hannu Rajaniemi, The Fractal Prince Audience Mira Grant, Blackout (Newsflesh trilogy) Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance David Levithan, Every Day, YA Daryl Gregory, Raising Stony Mayhall, YA zombie POV James S. A. Corey, Abaddon’s Gate, third in the Expanse series Allen Steele, Apollo’s Outcast, compared to Heinlein’s juveniles Anthology: Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, John Joseph Adams edited Paul Cornell’s London Falling, London urban fantasy verging on horror Year Zero, Rob Reed, humor The Golem And The Jinni, Helene Wecker, literary fiction set in 1899 NYC The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, sequel to The Long Earth

I wanted to give the class creation system in Adventurer Conquerer King a spin, so I cranked out a Warlord class. This is untested.

Redhat has a shiny new Openstack (original) install process, which includes an all-in-one configuration. This beats DevStack on Ubuntu for me because it’s persistent, which DevStack is not. And I’m a bit too lazy to work through the install by hand if there are options available. I’m pretty sure this guide (original) would have been useful if I wasn’t lazy, FWIW. Anyhow, I’m running through the install now. Only one snag so far; the Quickstart fails to tell you that you need to install puppet. Do this before step 3: ...

The last time I spent extended time in London, lo 10 years or more ago, I brought back the Malazan Empire books. Possibly thanks to Jess Nevins, I can’t recall. It was certainly a worthwhile haul in any case. This time I fine-tuned the process; Susan and I hit Forbidden Planet in the company of Catie and Ted, and we picked up a few first novels in various series which are not so readily available in the United States. We also controlled the urge to pick up some books you can easily get over here but which have much better cover treatments in Great Britain. ...

Susan and I will be hitting LoneStarCon 3 (original), aka Worldcon 2013. It’s in San Antonio, so we can take the whole week and spend a few days in Austin first. Mmm, barbecue. Mmm, breakfast tacos. Mmm. I have now poked my nose back into Worldcon site selection politics and am delighted to note that it’s still Worldcon site selection politics. By which I mean I’m relieved that I moved to California just when I would have gotten sucked into convention organizing in Boston. I dunno, Orlando looks good to me for 2015. ...

Did you remember that Ron Perlman was in Quest for Fire? Me either, but he was. This post is not about cavemen, though. It is a note on an AT&T LTE provisioning problem in the interests of helping other people get the problem solved. I upgraded from my iPhone 4 to a spiffy new iPhone 5 on AT&T. It was great except LTE wasn’t working; I just got 4G and nothing better. The first week I had it, I went to Austin and Las Vegas which kept me a bit too busy to bug AT&T. I did call AT&T tech support from Vegas a couple of times, but neither time was very successful. (Do not foist me off on Apple, dude! Uncool.) My research said that a number of things could be wrong: my sim card might not be provisioned for LTE; I might not be on an LTE data plan; or the sim card itself could be hosed. ...

The first two issues of High Society showed up on Comixology this week. The first one was free, so I bought it. It’s really gorgeous: high-def, quality scans for the most part. There are one or two pages where the white on black text fills in a bit much, but given the unfortunate house fire which destroyed a bunch of the negatives recently, I am not unhappy about that. It’s gorgeous and funny and an amazing achievement and this is even before Gerhard came on board. Plus there are 30 or so pages of notebooks and historical stuff at the end. Issue two is only 99 cents, which is a bargain – at the rate of a couple of issues a week, I would have no financial qualms about buying all the Cerebus this way. ...

After a really jam-packed first episode of Last Resort, I wound up with a multitude of questions filed into two slots. First: is the plot in any way believable? You have to buy into the captain of a nuclear sub refusing orders, plus he’s gotta have enough charisma to make his crew more or less stick with him. Also there’s a huge conspiracy in the background. Said conspiracy does some pretty outrageous things even if the Reagan quote at the beginning is taken as good foreign policy. What I’m saying here is that I’m not entirely certain that we’re watching actual humans making sane decisions. ...

Every year, if at all possible, I walk to raise money for suicide prevention. It’s an important cause for me because four years ago, my friend and housemate Wyatt Parkinson killed himself in the house we (and Susan) lived in. Susan found him. It’s a really horrible thing to have happen. I’m walking again this year, in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am looking for donations, that being the point of the walk. We’re also happy to have company. The first walk we did was right after it happened, and it was tremendously important to see hundreds of other people mourning the same kind of violent occurrence. ...

It’s really easy to do twice-baked potatoes on the Egg, especially if you have like three hours to kill. Which, sure, sometimes. Take your nice big russets. Put some olive oil on the outside, and whatever spice you want. I used some hickory garlic rub and that was nice. Wrap them in foil, and kick ’em into the Egg at 400 degrees for an hour. Turn them every 20 or 30 minutes. I did a WoW instance during that hour and I didn’t worry about the temperature once and it all worked out okay. ...