New book from Jeff Duntemann (AKA Novilio)

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New book from Jeff Duntemann (AKA Novilio)

Postby renderman » Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:31 pm

He may have some trepedation about pimping his own book, but I have no such problem :)

<PIMPING>

Our own Novilio, aka Jeff Duntemann, Has switched gears from technical manuals, back to Science Fiction with a new book called "The Cunning Blood"

Scifi.com has a review at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/advance/02_books.html

A couple summers ago, I was fortunate to be allowed to read the manuscript for this book and I was very impressed. I'm not usually one who has enough attention span to sit down and read a novel, but I found myself quickly engrossed in it. I found myself particularly amazed with the amount of technical detail he put into the book. The technologies he creates for the book could be fiesable and definatly appeal to the geek in me. He is a most creative technical author and has a story to back it up.

You can read the above review on Scifi.com or Jeff's own page about the book at:

http://www.duntemann.com/CunningBlood.htm

No Amazon link yet (Hint!) but it can be ordered from the publisher at:

http://www.isficpress.com/TheCunningBlood.html

I'll definatly be getting a copy. You should too

</PIMPING>
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Postby streaker69 » Tue Nov 08, 2005 3:19 pm

Next you'll have a long feather in your fedora, wearing platform shoes and driving a shagged out pink cadillac.
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Postby Barry » Tue Nov 08, 2005 4:04 pm

Render don't need no Caddy! He gotz the pimpin G-didily-demon!
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Postby G8tK33per » Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:12 pm

Any published member deserves to get stuck. Or at least a sticky post.
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Postby Airstreamer » Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:00 pm

G8tK33per wrote:Any published member deserves to get stuck. Or at least a sticky post.



Does the daily police blotter count? :D

Really, I love good scifi! Grew up on 'Have Spacesuit Will Travel' and other RH stuff, plus Pornelle and Co. Glad to have another good author in the mix.
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Postby Dutch » Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:33 pm

Airstreamer wrote:Does the daily police blotter count? :D

Really, I love good scifi! Grew up on 'Have Spacesuit Will Travel' and other RH stuff, plus Pornelle and Co. Glad to have another good author in the mix.

Back in the days when Byte magazine still was in print, and Jerry Pournelle wrote his monthly column in it, I picked up some of his sci-fi books. Having been an avid SciFi fan since I first read Asimov's Foundation story in first grade, I must say that even though Jerry Pournelle in collaboration with Larry Niven have spun some fine tales, I would not rank J.P as a great author in the ilk of Isaac Asimov, Brian Aldiss, Robert Heinlein, and Frank Herbert.

I'll be picking Jeff's new book up, and looking forward to see if his skills in SciFi writing are just as good as his skills in technical writing. If that is the case, then it's quite possible I'll be adding another name to the list above ;)

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Postby streaker69 » Wed Nov 09, 2005 4:48 am

Hey, several years ago, I had something published in 2600. :)
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Postby Monitr7 » Wed Nov 09, 2005 4:54 am

renderman wrote:He may have some trepedation about pimping his own book, but I have no such problem :)

<PIMPING>...


Well, yeah, I can see why you'd want to pimp this, render. Earth is ruled by Canada! :D
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Postby Dutch » Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:01 am

Monitr7 wrote:Well, yeah, I can see why you'd want to pimp this, render. Earth is ruled by Canada! :D

You're telling us that Terrance & Phillip actually is modelled on Renderman and Novillio ?
:eek:

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Postby Monitr7 » Wed Nov 09, 2005 6:04 am

Dutch wrote:You're telling us that Terrance & Phillip actually is modelled on Renderman and Novillio ?
:eek:

Dutch

Heh.

render: Hey, Novillio!

Novillio: What?

render: (farts) Hahahahahahaha!

Nah. For some reason, I can't imagine the two of them acting like that. Now, some of the other members of the forum, however... :D
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Postby Novilio » Wed Nov 09, 2005 7:43 am

Monitr7 wrote:Well, yeah, I can see why you'd want to pimp this, render. Earth is ruled by Canada! :D

Well, I was hoping to have as many original ideas in the story as possible, and as best I could tell, nobody had yet postulated that the Canadians would someday rule the Earth. I figured that if a couple of Canadian readers didn't object to that, I wouldn't lose the Canadian audience.

My heroes in the SF writing world, by the way, are Niven, Heinlein, Vernor Vinge, the early David Brin, Frederick Pohl, and other guys like that. If you like their take on SF you may like mine. Guns, starships, weird science, guns, cowboys who ride mastodons, guns, orbital skyhooks, fluidic computers, it's all there. One thing you won't find are aliens. I don't believe in 'em. Another thing is that ray guns, while possible, are clumsy, delicate, wimpy things next to a good solid 24th century assault rifle. (Think Jayne and his Vera on the old Firefly series.)

I've mounted the first chapter on my Web site, in PDF format, so you can get a sense for the story:

http://www.duntemann.com/CunningBloodpage2.htm

The book is only just now off press and hasn't worked its way into the retail channel yet. We're unveiling it at Windycon 32 in Chicago this weekend. Shortly after that it should be on Amazon, and in a scattering of stores.

Writing SF and getting paid for it is tough these days. I wrote this thing in 1998 and have been trying to get it into print for seven years. The publishing house that picked it up is brand new and a little wobbly, so if you like the book, do talk about it. In small press, pimping can be the difference between survival and bankruptcy...

(Actually, even if you don't like it, talk about it. In publishing math, a bad review is equal to two thirds of a good review. The only thing worse than a bad review is...silence.)

Thanks to Render for posting his note; I really did NOT put him up to it.

Good luck and let me know what you think.

--73--

--Novilio
(Jeff Duntemann in meatspace)
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Postby Thorn » Wed Nov 09, 2005 7:58 am

I for one am looking forward to it! Nowadays the SF section in the bookstores have too many dragons and not enough rocket'n'rivits.

<rant>
Down with trolls! Up with orbital mechanics!
Put the Science back in Science Fiction!
</rant>
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Postby streaker69 » Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:00 am

Thorn wrote:I for one am looking forward to it! Nowadays the SF section in the bookstores have too many dragons and not enough rocket'n'rivits.

<rant>
Down with trolls! Up with orbital mechanics!
Put the Science back in Science Fiction!
</rant>


While I do agree with you. It was nice to see Lord of the Rings done, and I'm looking forward to seeing The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in December.
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Postby Novilio » Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:41 am

Thorn wrote:I for one am looking forward to it! Nowadays the SF section in the bookstores have too many dragons and not enough rocket'n'rivits.
<rant>
Down with trolls! Up with orbital mechanics!
Put the Science back in Science Fiction!
</rant>

Heh. You want rivets? I'll give you rivets!

There's a fine little book called WORLD BUILDING by Steven Gillett, which presents all the relevant theory and equations for creating believable planetary systems. I used it as a reference to build a "planet planner" spreadsheet, into which I could plug varying values for the star's luminosity, a planet's mass, diameter, orbital period, rotational period, and so on and see how it all came together.

I had originally set one of the main planets in the story in the Tau Ceti system, but when I plugged Tau Ceti's luminosity into the spreadsheet, it was all wrong: Tau Ceti is considerably cooler than our Sun, so an Earthlike planet (basically, liquid water all year except at the poles) would be so close to the star that it would tidally lock, which doesn't allow an Earthlike ecology. I had to hunt up a more Sun-like star, of which there are many. (You can browse a catalog of Sun-like stars at The Encyclopedia of Suns.) 47 Tucanae is one of the closest matches to Sol, and I chose it because my wife collects toucans.

The orbital skyhook came from Hans Moravec's papers on the subject, which are in a number of places online. (I borrowed them in printed form from an astrophysicist friend. Those are good to have.)

Several people have done the math on rayguns, and it's not pretty unless you can mount the gun on a battleship. Storing energy in non-chemical form is tough, as is releasing it in a packet condensed enough to do some damage. Handhelds would require chemical pumping and some additional creative physics, but I'll grant that a fluorine-pumped laser gun might be possible. (Just don't breathe the smoke...)

Etc. Thorn, I don't think you'll be disappointed. It was a lot of fun to do, and a lot of the best fun was figuring out the science. I feel kind of like that friend of Tolkien who is reported to have said, "Oh, no! Not another f---ing elf!"

--73--

--Novilio
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Postby Dutch » Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:50 am

Novilio wrote:Etc. Thorn, I don't think you'll be disappointed. It was a lot of fun to do, and a lot of the best fun was figuring out the science. I feel kind of like that friend of Tolkien who is reported to have said, "Oh, no! Not another f---ing elf!"

Uhmm.. Does that mean your next book will be a fantasy/sci-fi crossover with dragons, wizards, orks and trolls wielding rayguns ?

/ducks and runs...

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