A Book Review: The Twisted Citadel

Title: The Twisted Citadel
Author: Sara Douglass
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 548

Quality Rating: 9
Content Rating: R

In this second installment of the DarkGlass Mountain Trilogy, Sara Douglass continues to weave together her fantasy worlds and memorable characters. She takes relationships that we think cannot be salvaged and melds them back together into unbreakable bonds. She transforms ancient evils into even worse evils. She brings deception and betrayal to new levels. She truly is a master of the concept that everything must get worse for the characters in a story. Yet despite it there are moments of love, hope, and joy within the story. It is a magnificent tale, and a perfect middle book.

This book is R for use of the f word, sexual content, fantasy violence, and dark betrayals.

A Book Review: The Serpent Bride

Title: The Serpent Bride
Author: Sara Douglass
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 673

Quality Rating: 9
Content Rating: R

I love Sara Douglass. She's one of my favorite authors, and this first installment of the DarkGlass Mountain Trilogy does nothing to ruin my favor of her. This book was awesome. She brings back characters I love (Axis SunSoar of The Wayfarer Redemption Series among others). No one makes me love and hate characters like Sara Douglass does. No one makes me simultaneously love and hate characters like she does (Axis SunSoar being the perfect example of someone I love and hate all the time). All of her high fantasy series are fantastic, and if you've never read Sara Douglass, you should go out right now and buy her books. But don't start with this one. You'll just be confused. Start with The Wayfarer Redemption. (If you're not in the USA it will be called Battleaxe).

This book is rated 'R' for multiple uses of the f word (a surprise in high fantasy), fantasy violence, dark betrayals, and sexual content. Still a good read.

A Book Review: The Burning Bridge (Ranger's Apprentice Book 2)

Title: The Ranger's Apprentice: The Burning Bridge
Author: John Flanagan
Genre: Fantasy (MG)
Length: 262

Quality Rating: 6
Content Rating: PG

This was almost a 7. Perhaps I should have given it a 6 and a half. I simply didn't enjoy it as much as the first book. I found half of the story line to be a little disjointed and I still have a sense of confusion whether the series is actually high fantasy or set in ancient Britain. It's hard to tell for those of us who aren't British history experts. However, the story of Will and his friends does progress. Will and Horace's friendship grows, and I love how Horace continues to come to Will's aid without ever thinking about it. I enjoyed this book despite its minor problems and I have great hope for the next book. I'm thinking this book was just a sophomore slump.

This book, like its predecessor, gets a PG rating for some fantasy violence, duels to the death, and insinuation of terrible things done to others.

Nomenclature

As an engineer, I have a tendency to use a lot of acronyms. Where I work is even worse. You can’t follow meetings unless you know all the acronyms because people utter sentences like this: “We just put out a RFP for the ECS system. LDEs can find it on ddms and hopefully it will come in before the SSRR.” Needless to say, my first couple of weeks at my job were filled with confusion.

To ease your confusion, today I am providing a list of acronyms and abbreviations I tend to use. In the future I will make sure I link all acronyms and abbreviations back to this page for your easy reference. There will be both engineer and writer acronyms.

I will add to this list as I think of other acronyms or use other acronyms.

Without further ado:

ACS Attitude Control System
ADS Attitude Determination System
ADCS Attitude Determination and Control System
AE Aerospace Engineer(ing)
CD&H Command & Data Handling
CDR Critical Design Review
CEE Civil and Environmental Engineer(ing)
ChemE Chemical Engineer(ing)
COMM Telecommunications System
CS Computer Science/Scientist
ECE Electrical and Computer Engineer(ing)
ECS Environmental Control System
EPS Electrical Power System
FCR Flight Competition Review
GPS Global Positioning System
KSC Kennedy Space Center
LDE Lead Design Engineer
MC Main Character
ME Mechanical Engineer(ing)
MG Middle Grade
MSE Material Science Engineer(ing)
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NRE Nuclear and Radiological Engineer
PM Project Manager
PSE Project Systems Engineer
RFP Request for Proposal
SF Science Fiction
SF/F Science Fiction/Fantasy
SSRR Subsystem Requirement Review
WIP Work in Progress
YA Young Adult

Sorry about the lack of appropriate formatting. I need to brush up on my html.

Holiday!

Today is a holiday, so there is no real post. Right now I'm driving from Pensacola, FL (where my parental units live) to Titusville, FL (which is where I live during the summers for my co-op job).

I schedule all my posts - that's how you're getting this even though I'm driving.

However, I felt you all deserved to know that I got into the advanced writing class I mentioned on Friday. The stressful wait is over and all was a success! Hopefully I'll learn a lot in the class. This just means I need to finish revising Spirit Riddled by like July 10th. Hopefully I can do that.

I hope you're enjoying your holiday!

Funny Things I Enjoy

So I recently applied to an advanced writing class that only accepts 5 participants. We’re all supposed to hear back tomorrow and the waiting is a little nerve wracking, so I decided to make today a little more humorous. So voila, links to funny things I enjoy. (I would have inserted them in, but I think that’s copyright infringement. Let’s go the legal path shall we?)

Women in engineering. It's all pressure.

Dividing by zero. It's not good.

The best movie ever. Seriously. I would go see this in a heartbeat.

Some Doctor Who love from a classic Doctor.

The joys of being a TA. Times two.

TV science. It's all lies.

Stuff Christians Like & Vuvuzelas. What's not to love?

More vuvuzelas. Annoying sound? Yes. Awesome word? Yes.

LOLC + Bible = awesome or appalling?

Ok, that's enough funny happiness for now. Hopefully this will lighten everyone's day a bit. And for future reference, I usually go to Piled Higher and Deeper and Stuff Christians Like for my daily dose of happiness. I recommend them to you as well.

Do you guys have anything funny you would like to share?

To FTL or not to FTL?

So this is somewhat a continuation of Tuesday's post on the speed of light. It's also moderately related to a post I read recently on the League of Extraordinary Writer's*. The post inspired this one, though if it read it you may wonder why. It's basically about hard science fiction against soft science fiction. I don't know if I agree 100% with what was said - I have a love of hard science (I am an engineer) - but I agree with most of what was said. Characterization is very very very important. However, this post has nothing to do with that. It has to do with a small offhand comment. The writer states that in the Firefly universe as created by Joss Whedon, there exists FTL travel.

That caused me to stop reading the article right there. All thoughts of characterization and hard scifi vs. soft scifi flew from my mind.

And I would like to note this is the problem with soft science fiction being too soft. If the writer says something scientifically wrong its going to take an engineer like me out of the story. It's going to make me roll my eyes and think "this person didn't do their research". And let's face it - who reads science fiction? Engineers and nerds like me.

Anyway, back to FTL. So what is wrong with this sentence? Nothing exactly. For all I know the Serenity has FTL capabilities. For all I know, Joss Whedon has written in his story Bible somewhere "and they have faster than light travel". This could all very well be true.

But I have seen no proof in the show or the movie that it is true. It takes the Serenity at least hours to travel between planets - which as far as I know are all in one solar system. Sometimes it takes days. This indicates that they cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

For you see, it takes the sun's light eight minutes to get to the Earth. That's right eight minutes. It takes the sun's light a little over 5 hours to reach Pluto. So unless the Firefly solar system is ginormously large - with FTL travel they should be able to fly from their system's sun to the reaver's planet Miranda in like 6 or 7 hours, not the days they normally take.

So if your science fiction writer, you can see that you may not even need faster than light travel. If your science fiction society only lives within the Earth's solar system, why would you need to travel faster than five hours from the sun to the outermost planet (err...or not planet. What is Pluto these days? Planetoid?). How much of a hurry are you in?

Faster than light travel is only needed if you want to travel fast between our solar system and a more distant one. Or if you want to travel between galaxy's. So before you assume that your universe needs FTL, just remember Firefly. It takes Malcolm Reynold's days to get anywhere, and it never hurt the story line. Maybe it won't hurt yours either.

*If you don't read the League, you really should. I love their blog. I don't even write dystopian fiction, and yet I find their blog to be thought provoking and interesting. I suggest you go by there and read some.