Author: jasonloch

Diablo 3 beta news!

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime announced today during a conference call with investors that internal testing on Diablo 3 has begun and the team hopes to begin the beta test at some point during the third quarter (i.e. between July 1 and September 30).  He also made it clear that a 2011 release is still on the table, much to my delight.

Of course this all needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  This is Blizzard, after all, and they’re not afraid to miss deadlines if they think a game needs more polishing.  But I’m going to play the optimist and assume that we’re finally entering the home stretch after years and years of waiting.

Now the question I have to ask myself is whether or not I want to try to participate in the beta.  On the one hand, I’d love to get my hands on D3 as soon as possible, but on the other hand, I kinda feel like seeing the beta version of the game would ruin some of the magic.  Yeah, I know, I’m weird. 😛

A nice day for a white wedding

Anglophile that I am, I joined 2 billion other people in watching the wedding of Prince William (now the Duke of Cambridge) and Catherine Middleton last Friday.  It was, of course, a splendid affair that showed British pomp and circumstance at its best.  The service was wonderful and a number of the hymns chosen by the royal couple were favorites of mine (in particular “Guide me thou, O Great Redeemer” and “I Was Glad”).  I also have to give them a lot of credit for using the Series One marriage rite from Common Worship rather than the abysmal modern language rite with its cringeworthy talk of “the delight and tenderness of sexual union.”

Last Friday’s wedding demonstrated that the Monarchy can adapt to changing circumstances while still remaining grounded in history.  Happily, it looks like ‘The Firm’ has learned the painful lessons of Diana’s unhappy tenure as Princess of Wales.  Kate enters royal life much better prepared than Diana was and I think she will find the experience much less of an ordeal.   And, unlike Charles and Diana, it was clear that William and Kate were very much in love.  Their relaxed, easy demeanor stood in stark contrast to the stiff formality of William’s parents on their wedding day.   Hopefully, this is a portent of a long and happy marriage and, come 2071, we’ll be celebrating their diamond anniversary.  🙂

Egyptian expeditions to Chad

This is cool:

http://www.unreportedheritagenews.com/2011/03/ancient-egyptians-made-arduous-trek-to.html

I have to admire someone who could leave the relative comfort of the Nile Valley and go off trekking through the desert.  That takes a lot more guts than I have!

The idea of a correlation between the geography of Chad and the geography of the Underworld as described in the Amduat is intriguing.  I’ve often thought that the distances mentioned were peculiarly specific and this could well explain that.

Tales of Ancient Egypt

I visited my mom over Easter and, while I was there, I had the chance to look through some of my old books.   One of the titles I came across was Tales of Ancient Egypt by Roger Lancelyn Green.  A friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein, Green was a great popularizer of world mythology and folktales. Tales of Ancient Egypt was my first exposure to ancient Egyptian literature and his retelling of the Setna Khaemwaset stories captivated me.  The sense of wonder that that little volume evoked has remained with me through the years and I owe Green an enormous debt of gratitude since his work set me on the path that would eventually lead me to Evil in Thebes.

Since I first read Tales of Ancient Egypt, I’ve read more Egyptian literature than any sane person should.  I can now see how Green took liberties with his source material.  Sometimes he bowdlerized, sometimes he simplified.  Every once and a while, he embellished for dramatic effect.  But because he was aiming to capture the spirit of his source material rather than the precise details, his renderings are often much more pleasing to the casual reader than the scholarly treatments found in Lichtheim or Simpson.

So if you’re looking for an accessible introduction to the world of Egyptian literature but don’t want to get bogged down in a sea of philological footnotes and opaque scholarly commentary (though I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t enjoy those things!), I highly recommend Green’s book.

 

On infodumps

One of my biggest pet peeves is when authors clutter their work with excessive background information.  Few things irritate me more than having the flow of a story broken so the narrator can regale me with a mini-lecture on Egyptian temple decoration, the lineage of the High Elf Lords of Fantasia Minor, or the sewer system of Paris.  Even if I’m actually interested in the subject material, I resent having it dumped on me in that fashion.

Part of the problem is that these infodumps are almost always done by the narrator.  For me, narrators work best when they’re unobtrusive and it’s hard for them to be unobtrusive when they’re yammering on about  beekeeping in the Roman Empire.  Some writers try to avoid this by putting their infodumps in the mouths of their characters, but that gets dangerously close to “As you know, Bob…” territory.

Writers of historical fiction need to be especially wary of falling into this trap.  We do not have the luxury of writing in worlds that are readily understandable to our readers, so we’re always going to have to make more of an effort to set the scene properly.  But while it’s fine to spend some time explaining things that modern readers might not be familiar with, that doesn’t give us license to cram so many historical tidbits into our work that it looks like it was written by an 18th century antiquary.

Regular readers of my blog may wonder how I could enjoy Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell since it contained copious amounts of background information.  She could get away with it because she was deliberately imitating the style of 19th century authors.  As anyone who’s ever read Victor Hugo or Anthony Trollope will tell you, info dumps were all the rage back then.  Clarke also tended to confine her background information to footnotes, so if you didn’t want to read it, you could easily skip over it.

What do you think?  Do extensive background infodumps detract from a story, or do they make it richer?

Magically impotent pharaohs

Given the omnipresence of magic in ancient Egyptian society, it should come as little surprise that feats of magic are commonplace in Egyptian literature.  Their stories are filled with wise lector priests who can reattach severed heads, part the Nile, or send animated wax figures into Nubia to beat up a local chieftain.  But there is one person in Egyptian literature who never seems to work magic: the pharaoh.  In fact, in a number of stories the king is actually rescued from death or humiliation by the skills of a crafty lector priest.  This strikes me as odd.

Many of you have probably heard that Egyptian pharaohs were considered living gods.  But while Egyptian texts are quite clear that the king becomes fully divine after death, the nature of his divinity while alive is much harder to pin down.  The waters are muddied even further by the fact that kings such as Amenhotep III and Ramesses II seem to have been deified within their own lifetime and are in fact depicted making offerings to themselves.

Even if the Egyptians believed that their kings’ earthly divinity was strictly limited, that still doesn’t explain why he’s depicted as magically powerless in literature.  Lector priests aren’t in any way divine, yet they’re capable of working great feats of magic so it’s hard to see why the king couldn’t do so as well, even if his divinity doesn’t really manifest itself until after he’s dead.

It could be that this is all an accident of preservation.  After all, the existing corpus of Egyptian literature is doubtlessly just the tiniest fraction of what was originally produced.  Unfortunately, this fragmentation also makes it difficult for us to draw meaningful conclusions.  *Sigh*  On the plus side, it does mean that, as a writer, I have a lot of leeway when it comes to making up my own explanation. 😀

Rebecca Black, self publishing, and the rise of the eBook

Many of you have no doubt heard about Rebecca Black, the thirteen year old singer whose debut song “Friday” has become an object of near universal mockery on the Interwebz.  With lyrics like this:

Fun, fun, think about fun

You know what it is

I got this, you got this

My friend is by my right, ay

I got this, you got this

Now you know it.

it’s not hard to see why some people are calling “Friday” one of the worst songs of all time.

Black’s parents paid $4,000 for her to make a video with ARK Music Factory, which makes “Friday” the musical equivalent of the many self-published books churned out by vanity presses like iUniverse and AuthorHouse.  Since these companies get their money upfront, they don’t have to worry about pesky things like quality or marketability.

Recently, it has become something of a fad within the publishing world to forecast the imminent demise of literary agents and traditional publishers.  Pundits point to people like Amanda Hocking (who has become a millionaire by selling her self-published eBooks through the Kindle store) and claim that authors will eventually self publish all their work in eBook form.  It’s not hard to see why some authors find self publishing platforms like the Kindle to be an appealing alternative to traditional publishing.  Not only are you free to publish your story exactly how you want it without any editorial interference, but you can also get royalties of up to 70%.

While  eBooks will eventually relegate paper books to the status of collectors’ items, literary agents and traditional publishers still have a valuable role to play in ensuring some basic level of quality.  They’re actually making an investment in the author, so they have a vested interest in making sure that the author’s work is good, or at least marketable.  Granted, Amazon doesn’t charge you anything to publish via the Kindle, but they’re not exactly making an investment in you either, which is why they’ll still accept almost anything under the sun.  A traditional publisher also provides basic publicity services to help market your book.  If you’re self published, you have to do all that on your own and, contrary to what some people seem to think, social media isn’t a magic wand that you can wave and guarantee your book a vast readership.

As long as self publishing continues to be associated with the literary equivalent of Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” there will be a place for traditional publishers.  The switch to eBooks may provide a second chance for authors who were bypassed by traditional publishers, but easier distribution won’t automatically level the playing field.

Thoroughly Modern Marple

I just read that Jennifer Garner (of Alias fame) has been cast as Miss Marple in new Disney film.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Agatha Christie’s books, Jane Marple is supposed to be an elderly spinster who lives in the small English village of St. Mary Mead.  Apparently Disney, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to ‘reboot’ the Miss Marple franchise by turning her into a hot thirtysomething.

This takes the cake for the most absurd thing I’ve read today.  When one thinks of Miss Marple, one thinks of George Orwell’s old maids bicycling to Holy Communion, not someone who could appear on the cover of Maxim.  Miss Marple’s sublime ordinariness is part of her charm.  She’s not a high-powered secret agent, she’s just a run-of-the-mill English lady who happens to have a gift for piecing clues together.

At first I thought this was going to be a prequel, but then I read that it’s going to be set in the modern day.  So not only are they shaving decades off of Miss Marple’s age, they’re also catapulting her decades into the future.  It looks like Disney’s just trying to cash in on the Marple name, but I have to wonder if that’s a winning strategy.  Presumably, the changes they’ve made are designed to appeal to a younger demographic, but I doubt that many people under the age of 50 know who she is.  And the people who already do know who she is probably won’t care much for the changes they’ve made.

Since this is a Disney film, we probably won’t be forced to watch New Marple thrash around in bed with some buff boytoy.  Nor will she be called upon to solve a disgustingly gruesome crime.   For that we should be thankful.  The Miss Marple stories were never about gritty, realistic dramas.  They were the coziest of the cozy mysteries.

Sigh.  I wonder how long it will be before Justin Bieber is cast as a young Brother Cadfael?

First person narrators

I’m not really a fan of stories told by a first-person narrator.  I know that, to some people, they make the story seem much more personal, but I just can’t suspend disbelief enough to accept a narrator who can somehow remember the ins and outs of every single conversation he/she has ever had.  There are a few books where the story is so compelling that I’m willing to overlook the first-person narration: N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, Robert Graves’ I, Claudius, and Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles are the ones that spring immediately to mind.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m not really a fan of H. P. Lovecraft.  But I don’t see his frequent use of the first person as one of his problems.  In fact, he’s usually able to pull it off a lot better than other writers because he doesn’t use a lot of dialogue, so his narrators’ reminiscences seem more believable.

What do you think of first-person narrators?  Am I alone in my distaste?