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Daniel Abraham


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[quote name='pat5150' post='1719786' date='Mar 15 2009, 02.48']To read "The Best Monkey," a scifi short story Abraham wrote for [i]The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, volume 3[/i], click [url="http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2009/03/excerpt-from-solaris-book-of-new.html"]here[/url].
Cheers,
Patrick[/quote]
I don't usually like Sci-Fi these days, but that was a pretty good short story.
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[quote name='Triskele' post='1719152' date='Mar 13 2009, 20.33']I've decided that Abraham and Simmons are my next fantasy reads. Time to add to my very small catalogue of fantasy that I've read.[/quote]

Wise decision :thumbsup:




edit: yes I edited a two word post :leaving:
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[quote]edit: yes I edited a two word post[/quote]

Happens to the best of us... :lol:

Grrrr, why is [i]The Price of Spring[/i] not in my hands yet?! I want to fast-forward to summer. :(

In related news, Mr. X and I bought prints of Stephan Martiniere's covers for the Long Price quartet. They only had ASIS and AAW at Boskone, but we're ordering the matching prints of ABIW and TPOS.
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[quote name='Xray the Enforcer' post='1720401' date='Mar 15 2009, 18.52']Happens to the best of us... :lol:

Grrrr, why is [i]The Price of Spring[/i] not in my hands yet?! I want to fast-forward to summer. :(

In related news, Mr. X and I bought prints of Stephan Martiniere's covers for the Long Price quartet. They only had ASIS and AAW at Boskone, but we're ordering the matching prints of ABIW and TPOS.[/quote]

I love Martiniere's work. Very distinctive. Piccacio is distinctive as well, but much more abstract. I dont really get his need to put a big colored face on almost every cover. :P
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Just finished this series. Extremely enjoyable, intelligent, emotional. Great books. I have a one or two questions that bothered me, and I do not see another discussion thread, so under the hood they go:

SPOILER: all books
I don't get the andat system. These creatures are the only reason the Khaiem are a global power. They have the greatest economy in the world without the necessity of military (because the andat double as nuclear bombs). I get it. So why the heck are there ever single poets alone in a city without another poet ready to take over should anything happen? I would think that would be the most important thing. There are only about a dozen andats, right? Surely there should at all times be backups in every city in case a poet has a heart attack or falls down drunk in a puddle.

Also, why aren't there teams and teams of people dreaming up new Andat? I get that only a select few can hold an andat, but surely many, many, many more should be working around the clock to come up with possible poems and variations. There should be no reason that Sarakheyt (sp?) should be w/o an andat for 8 whole years when Seedless goes. If it only took 8 years to come up with a replacement, then why the heck didn't they come up with it in the preceding generations? There should always be back-up andat on hand.
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[quote name='unJon' post='1730998' date='Mar 23 2009, 20.02']Just finished this series. Extremely enjoyable, intelligent, emotional. Great books. I have a one or two questions that bothered me, and I do not see another discussion thread, so under the hood they go:

SPOILER: all books
I don't get the andat system. These creatures are the only reason the Khaiem are a global power. They have the greatest economy in the world without the necessity of military (because the andat double as nuclear bombs). I get it. So why the heck are there ever single poets alone in a city without another poet ready to take over should anything happen? I would think that would be the most important thing. There are only about a dozen andats, right? Surely there should at all times be backups in every city in case a poet has a heart attack or falls down drunk in a puddle.

Also, why aren't there teams and teams of people dreaming up new Andat? I get that only a select few can hold an andat, but surely many, many, many more should be working around the clock to come up with possible poems and variations. There should be no reason that Sarakheyt (sp?) should be w/o an andat for 8 whole years when Seedless goes. If it only took 8 years to come up with a replacement, then why the heck didn't they come up with it in the preceding generations? There should always be back-up andat on hand.
[/quote]

SPOILER: andat
There were teams trying to come up with new ones. That's what the Dai-kvo's village was all about. But after so many generations, there wasn't a whole lot of idea-space that was left unmined. Plus which every time you got one wrong, you lost a researcher. This goes back to A Shadow in Summer when Heshai-kvo says they aren't poets anymore, but scholars. These things are just that freaking hard to catch.

There should be a backup on hand kind of the way we should have been regulating the derivatives market.

Now why would you ever let a poet walk around outside? For one thing, remember how much pressure they're already under just holding these things. Adding the psychological burden of being prisoners wouldn't be a good idea. Plus which they own and control small gods. If you ever pushed a poet far enough, he could kill the world. If they want to walk down the street for a soda pop, they kind of get to. And for all the power they hold, the cities of the Khaiem (especially in the first book, but in the second one a little too) have become complacent. See derivatives market above.

Or anyway, that's what I was thinking.


Glad you liked the Price of Spring, though. I always feel like the last thing I wrote sucked.
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[quote name='DanielAbraham' post='1731099' date='Mar 23 2009, 23.52']Glad you liked the Price of Spring, though. I always feel like the last thing I wrote sucked.[/quote]

On one hand I guess I can kind of relate to this as I also think the last thing I wrote sucked. And the first. And everything in between. But for perspective, if you think tPoS sucked, well let's just say your perception of sucking is of that in a little black dress on its knees 'not' having sex in the Oval Office with arguably the most powerful man in the world and mine is working a truck stop parking lot in hopes of affording a burger and a beer when my day comes to an end.

My question is now what? Granted the book hasn't actually hit shelves but for those of us who are willing bitches to your so called suckitude, what do we have to look forward to beyond tPoS?

Other than the next Hanover book.
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[quote name='gyrehead' post='1731431' date='Mar 24 2009, 07.19']My question is now what? Granted the book hasn't actually hit shelves but for those of us who are willing bitches to your so called suckitude, what do we have to look forward to beyond tPoS?

Other than the next Hanover book.[/quote]

The Hanover books are a different project, but I'm really enjoying them. I'm outlining the third one right now. The one where we start to see that *nothing* in the first book was what it looked like.

SPOILER: Black Sun's Daughter
Eric Heller left Jayne all the money and all the power, but never told her what was going on. He wasn't a stupid man. That's a contradiction. I love all the reviews of Unclean Spirits that say it's a simple good v. evil story, because *I* know what's actually going on. But back to the question at hand . . .


The proposal for the next fantasy series is in at Tor (well, and Orbit) right now. For the moment, it's called the Dagger and the Coin, but with any luck, that'll swap out for a better name. There are some things in the proposal that need to get smoothed out so that everyone's on board, but I think it'll happen.

It's a very different from the Long Price books. It looks and feels more like traditional epic fantasy -- quasi-Europe, ferinstance, and some dragons in the background, no 15-year gaps between books -- but the plot structure is packed with everything I think is cool. There are echoes I'm intentionally building in of from things as familiar as Firefly and the Count of Monte Cristo and as obscure as Tevis' Queen's Gambit and Reck-Malleczewen's Diary of a Man in Despair. And the magic system is all about faith and deception, which will be tricky and fun both.

What I want to do is write something that I could read now (39 years old, married, raising a kid, 10 year IT career behind me, post 9-11, post-Bush, etc.) with the same joy I read the Belgariad when I was 16.

If Tor (and Orbit) buys it ( and in this economy, nothing's sure until the check clears -- if then), I'll be working on turning in the first book sometime early next year. I don't know what the production schedule is going to look like, but I'd like to have the new books start rolling out without much gap. Have I mentioned that there's a lot of pressure right now to make us epic fantasy types meet our deadlines?
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I've had A Shadow in Summer for a while now and even started reading it at one point, but I didn't get very far into it for whatever reason. After finishing Lamentation by Scholes and seeing more than enough references as to how they are similar as far as acquired tastes go, I figured I'd pick it up again. Of course, since I only just started about a half hour ago, I have only made it through the prologue. However, just as I thought when I started it before, it was a damn good prologue.
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[quote name='DanielAbraham' post='1731513' date='Mar 24 2009, 09.27']What I want to do is write something that I could read now (39 years old, married, raising a kid, 10 year IT career behind me, post 9-11, post-Bush, etc.) with the same joy I read the Belgariad when I was 16.[/quote]
Man I loved the Belgariad!
Sure everything else he did was basically the same plot rehashed, but man I used to love Eddings.
Silk was a bad ass. ;)

Looking forward to The Price of Spring. An Autmn War was probably my favorite book last year.
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Ok, I'm late to the party. I've been reading the long price quartet, which I love. I read Daniels work in "Wild Cards" and "hunter's run".... is hanover a nom de plum? I tried to research this...but that's what I've inferred.

help me add to my stack "to be read" please.
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I just finished A Shadow in Summer. I know once an author paints their world the names they use can be whatever they choose but I particularly liked some of the names here because they remind me of exotic settings in our world. Even if it's completely unintended some of the placenames and surnames remind me of South East Asian placenames and surnames, and some of the first names remind me of Polynesian names. A most intriging world.

Going to pick up A Betrayal in Winter in the next couple days and looking forward to it.
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