David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 163 Step count: 18,572

Awake around 7:00 after 7 solid hours of sleep. We seem to be on Venice time, though still a bit tired and low on brain. I refuse to credit the homeopathic anti-jet-lag pills that our friends Bo and Don recommended (though I did take them), because I don’t believe in homeopathy even if it works.

We were a bit disappointed to find last night that there were no blinds on the windows. This morning I realized: we are in Venice, so there are shutters instead (they are green, of course). Also should have remembered before I did that the pull string in the shower that doesn’t seem to do anything is actually an “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” switch that triggers an audio alarm outside. I hope it was only audible in our room but, if not, I’m sure they’re used to it by now.

Breakfast was delivered to the room right at 8:30: coffee, steamed milk, croissants with powdered sugar on the outside and apricot jam on the inside, cute little crusty bread rolls, several kinds of packaged rusks, some packaged cookies (?) that we didn’t open, butter, jam, honey, Nutella. Continental breakfasts are not tidy; we wound up with powdered sugar and bread crumbs everywhere. There was also one small packet of corn flakes (though no bowl). I ate them in my coffee cup, with hot steamed milk, an experience I do not intend to repeat. There was also a largish clear plastic tumbler which is, I think, intended as a trash basket, and sugar in two varieties: “classico” (white) and “tropical” (brown).

After breakfast we wandered in a generally southeasterly direction toward an antiques-and-beads store Kate knew about, with many a diversion along the way. One highlight was the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where the portrait of kindly San Giovanni Bosco had offerings of cactus and amaryllis and plug-into-socket devotional candles (1 euro). At some other altars you could pay 50c to flip the switch on a preinstalled electric candle. S. Maria Formosa also featured an impressively large (adult-sized) baptismal font which we dubbed the “holy hot tub.” Every altar was decorated with many many ornate silver hearts with “GR” and other initials; no one could explain these. Morning snack: panini “club rustico” with speck (ham), mushrooms, cheese. Found a lovely little hidden garden between Piazza San Marco and the lagoon, with grass and trees and benches, an oasis of tranquility just steps from hordes of tourists. Nearby was a hotel(?) with a covered gondola dock and a drawbridge that obviously hadn’t been closed in years. When we did find the antiques shop it was closed, alas.

“Eat the thing with eyes” and “embrace not knowing” are our watchwords.

The famous Piazza San Marco was extremely crowded, with big lines to get into the basilica and campanile, but nonetheless we had to stop in. Then we headed to tucked-away-in-a-back-street Osteria da Carla, recommended by the “TapVenice” app, for lunch: cichetti assortment, pasta with zucchini & scallops, ravioli with pumpkin — yum. After lunch we visited Teatro Fenice (Phoenix), an ornate opera hall that has lived up to its name, having been destroyed several times, most recently by a 1996 fire, and rebuilt each time. The building was impressive, also the original architect’s model from 1790, but the audio tour was interminable, being delivered exceptionally slowly and with repetitious redundancy that repeated itself a lot. We theorized that the English-language audio was made exceptionally clear, so that it might serve for all those whose native languages were not covered, at the cost of brevity for native English speakers. Came out of the theatre to discover we’d missed a downpour (excellent timing!) and decided to head back to the room for a nap, with a brief stop at St. Stephen’s to view the impressive ship-like ceiling.

After our nap we met our tour guide for a private “chicetti crawl” we’d booked online ahead of time. Chicetti is basically Venetian tapas, an assortment of small dishes. We visited four or five different chicetti bars, sampling various small and delicious things on bread and drinking prosecco and “spritz” (a popular Venetian aperitif combining Aperol, white wine, and sparkling water), chatting with our guide about Venetian life and history on the way and finishing up with gelato. Had a bit of difficulty finding our way back to the hotel as the sun set, but being lost is just part of the Venice experience (and it’s an island, how lost can you really get?).

Word count: 161 Step count: 10,015

Stayed up until 1 AM the night before the trip dealing with various issues (mostly ebook-related… paper books weigh more, but they don’t crash) and woke up at 5:00 with mind spinning, so started this long long day with 4 hours’ sleep.

The good news is that we did this flight in business class on Air France. We cashed in every Alaska frequent flyer mile we had, and then some, to do it, but it was well worth it — long-haul upgrades are your best air-miles investment. On our first leg, from PDX to LAX, a fellow business-class traveler was Claire Coffee, the actress who plays the Hexenbiest in Grimm.

At LAX, getting from our Alaska gate to the Air France lounge took an entire hour (including a brief visit to Alaska’s lounge, bus to the other terminal, check in at the Air France ticket desk, and getting through security) which didn’t bode well as our layover in Paris, also involving a change in terminals, was only a little more than an hour all told.

Our five-hour layover in the Air France lounge went really quickly, mostly dealing with various computer issues and some email — including an agent rejection, alas. The agent liked the book but “I just don’t believe I could sell this. There aren’t really any YA editors with any understanding of hard-ish SF, and even if I found someone, I can’t see this getting through acquisition somewhere.” Argh.

On the LAX-Paris flight, I watched Mission Impossible 4 (silly fun), slept about 6 hours, did a little reading. Air France’s food in Business Class was actually delicious, and we made it across huge DeGaulle airport (1.52 miles’ walk, according to my pedometer), through passport control and security, and to our gate with time to spare. Whew! Hearing the babel of languages at CDG reminds me that travel forces us to question our assumptions (“of course everyone talks like me, eats like me, dresses like me, lives like me”) — you learn that there are other ways to do things that you had never even realized you were doing at all.

Another excellent meal (technically a snack – it was small and cold – but it had 3 courses and it was delicious) on the plane to Venice. We never did get looked at by Customs; I think I saw some guys in Douane vests talking with each other at CDG as we walked past. It was raining when we arrived, so we decided to take the bus (quick and cheap) into Venice rather than the boat (slower and more scenic, but not so nice on a gray day). The walk from the bus stop to the hotel was a bit of a slog, especially with wheelie bags over those picturesque stepped bridges, but WOW we are really here at last!

The hotel was a bit surprised to see us (our host muttered darkly about her husband not writing down our reservation in the book; I suspect those two will Have Words later) but they did honor our reservation and set us up in a charming little room with mini-fridge and bidet. We threw down our bags, brushed our teeth, and went out in search of dinner. We found several really nice-looking, popular restaurants but they were Fully Committed; most of the rest were either too touristy (multi-lingual menus, obnoxious touts) or too underpopulated or both, or else chicceti bars which we didn’t have the brain power to deal with. The good news is that the search gave us a lovely walk and I got to appreciate the way the character of the light changed minute by minute as the sun went down.

We wound up at a restaurant on a side street, with a multilingual menu but decently crowded and had a nice vibe, where we had a very nice dinner of tomato and onion bruschetta, grilled veg antipasto (Kate had sardines as well), seafood risotto (tentacles!) and a lovely assortment of fried seafood (Italian tempura). We did let ourselves get upsold into a pretty pricey dinner but still a lovely start to the trip.

Tomorrow, we tourist in earnest.

Last night’s SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series reading in Portland, the first once since I took over from Mary Robinette Kowal, went off smashingly. The crowd was a bit smaller than last time, perhaps because this one was on a Monday rather than a Tuesday, but those who attended had a fabulous time.

Tonight (Tuesday) the series returns to the Seattle area with another reading at the Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033. New York Times Best-selling author Kat Richardson hosts and reads, along with Ted Kosmatka and Shanna Germain. The reading begins at 7:00 and is free and open to the public. For more information and to RSVP, please see http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the Kirkland reading this time, because tomorrow morning we are flying off to Venice!

We’ll be spending a month in Europe on what we’re calling the “Fallen Empires Tour:” Venice, Bologna, Vienna, several towns in the Czech Republic, Prague, Dresden, and Berlin. I must confess I’m a little freaked out that this is finally happening after so many months of planning, but I expect we’ll have a blast. I hope to blog frequently, with photos, during the trip, but that will depend on the availability of time, energy, and wifi. Take good care of the US while we’re gone.

On Thursday I was one of the judges for the Design A Martian Habitat Contest for students grades K-12. My part of the process was to look over each entry and provide a few comments as well as a grade from 0.0 to 4.0 for Originality, Feasibility, Science and Engineering, Essay, and Total. My comments and grades, along with those of the other judges, will be used in the final determination of the winners. At least two judges will grade each entry.

There were a lot of entries. I got through about half of the ones from the grade 5-8 section. Most of those were from grade 5.

I was very impressed. Almost all of the entries identified the most pressing issues for human survival on Mars and provided plausible solutions to those issues. Many of the essays were very well written and most were accompanied by a vivid and enthusiastic illustration of the habitat design. My hat’s off to these kids.

Even the best essays, however, contained occasional phrases that, for all their sincerity, made me laugh out loud. (And I must emphasize that some of these came from essays I graded highly.) So here’s a “greatest hits” composite essay with all the bits that were just too much fun not to share. Every sentence below came from an actual entry, with spelling, capitalization, and punctuation exactly as shown…

INTRODUCTION

Mars is the coolest place on earth. Mars is an amazing planet and we need to be prepared for Whatever its surface beholds.

Jonah is going to Mars. He brings food, water, air, metal, tools, spacesuit, more air, plants to make more air with, and his guitar. First, he goes to Phobos. Phobos is like rocks.

And off they traveled in to the unknown bounders of space only to find the planet mars …

AIR, WATER, FOOD, AND GRAVITY

The astronauts brought big, warm puffy coats and lots of blankets to keep them warm; they also brought materials that would make the bad air from outside turn into good air that they could breathe only in their air tight shelter.

Astronauts will gather water from the ice caps. They will collect the ice and bring it down to a vat of hot water. The ice will melt and the astronauts will have water. I would test it to see if you could drink it. I would take all the chemicals out of it.

They will get gravity by using the gravity box that NASA has lent them. They will also wear heated clothes that look kind of like a space suit but not as fat looking.

I would bring a food supply that would last years. I will need apples, water, meat and a refrigerator to store food. I would also bring beans.

Since Mars’s atmosphere is thinner than ours and since the UV rays and solar radiation would burn them bad I thought they could just wear thick hats and cloths and allot of sunscreen while their outside so they wouldn’t have a problem with that.

Because of the low pressure they have most of there things attached to the ground, they also need a (n) electric compressor.

Since low pressure can give u a headache they are going to have to bring allot of Aspirin. And since it can make your ears pop they are going to bring a lot of gum and gummy bears and gummy worms.

Jonah didn’t bring his friends. Sometimes it’s dark.

DESIGN OF THE HABITAT

There is no breathable air on mars. So after they finish the space station they will take bottles of oxygen and spray the whole building. All doors are sealed shut unless they are opened.

The astronauts shot electricity into the atmosphere to separate fhe oxygen from the other gasses. They store it in an underground tank. There is a plug with a rope attached to it that hangs out into the science lab. To release oxygen, you pull on the rope. There are strips of rubber strapping the plug to the tank, so if you let go of the rope, the plug snaps back into place. [I gave this one high marks. Low tech = reliable!]

There is going to be a cafeteria on the middle floor, and astronauts will have mini fridges in their room. There is a connection from the cafeteria to the food cellar where the cook can pull up food.

In the bathroom you have to Deposit your waste into a bucket, then poor it in to the waste shoot. Your waste then goes down to the burning room where it is burned. This produces heat for the Base.

Since I already explained about the bathrooms, the water, and the food I will explain about the beds. They are not bunk beds but they are just regular single beds. Every astronaut gets their own bed. In the morning they have to go all the way to the dressing rooms to get dressed. [I suspect the writer of this paragraph has to share a bedroom.]

I was thinking like in the airplanes have oxygen masks you could hang them every where in your headquarters. You would be safe wherever you walked!

They would do all of their experiments and more in their lab which is part of their home and they would aloes bring all the tools they would need for the experiments, like test tubes, spoons, gloves ext.

There is a door to the janitors closet ( for spills and puke etc. )

Jonah wants to talk to people on Earth. He wants to set up Skype because of his laptop. He will hook up to his solar panels. He will need a special antenna. He will have to build it. It will have to be really big. It will take Jonah seven days to build it. He will grow food and air from plants. He will go and get rocks and make dirt for the plants. Now he is ready to talk to Earth.

EXPLORATION

For science experiments, they could study the rocks. They would go out in their astronaut suits and grab a rock. When they got back inside they could study it.

This is special iron. Every time you hit it, it blows up.

the second thing they saw was the space ranger that they have heard many stories about but never dreamed they would see it in person but now there it was all dusty,

‘We need to see if we are not alone. So we need to go back inside and get more air for are tanks. “Then we can go and see if there is anyone else here on This stinking planit named mars.”

CONCLUSION

When astronauts go to mars they need to be prepared. Mars is a far away planet. But then again, not so far away.

My conclusion is that if you go up to Mars you should be prepared. This essay will make sure of that. If you don’t have all of these things you will probably not be happy. I hope you take this into consideration.

I’m off to Seattle (blogging from the train at the moment, actually) where I will be one of the judges for the Design A Martian Habitat Contest for students grades K-12. I’ve never done this sort of thing before, so it should be fun!

This will be a flying visit and I’ll be heading home tomorrow.

The greater Pacific Northwest is home to Ursula K. Le Guin, Kay Kenyon, Jay Lake, Nancy Kress, Brent Weeks, Ted Chiang and Ramona Quimby. Although Ramona isn’t known for her Science Fiction and Fantasy escapades, the rest are, and will be celebrated as part of the Pacific Northwest Reading Series. These free quarterly events provide the Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network and enjoy readings from local authors.

Each event starts with notes from the host, a leading local author, who has selected two of their favorite writers to complete the evening’s theme. In turn, each is given time to read from their latest work, interpreting and explaining their concepts and vision. In addition, space is provided for networking and conversation.

The next quarterly reading in Portland will be on Monday April 16, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, at McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211. New York Times Best-selling author Lillith Saintcrow will be hosting and reading, along with with Ted Kosmatka and Shanna Germain.

The next day the series proceeds to Seattle, on Tuesday April 17, also from 7:00 to 8:30 PM, at the Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033. New York Times Best-selling author Kat Richardson hosts and reads, along with Ted Kosmatka and Shanna Germain.

Both events are free and open to the public. For more information and to RSVP, please see http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/

In my experience, compact fluorescent bulbs generally have a five to ten year guarantee and generally do not last nearly that long. I always save the package (or at least the guarantee and anything it calls for, typically the UPC) and the receipt, and write the installation date on the base of the bulb when I install it. Whenever one burns out, I check the date against the guarantee; if it’s less than the guaranteed lifetime I put the receipt and UPC in an envelope and send them to the manufacturer, who usually sends me one or more coupons for free light bulbs. They cost as much as twelve bucks a package, so it’s worth the effort for me.

Word count: 12440 | Since last entry: -180

My story “The White Raven’s Feather” is now available on the Daily Science Fiction website.

Also, the anthology Armored, including my story “The Last Days of the Kelly Gang,” is now available at bookstores everywhere and as a DRM-free ebook.

Finally, you can hear a radio interview with me on Talk of the Gorge.

Word count: 12620 | Since last entry: 503

Heading off later today to the Bay Area for FOGcon. I’ll be on the following program items:

Friday 4:30 PM, Salon B/C: Designing Alien Bodies. Aliens are probably going to have very different biology than humans do. How do bodies evolve from their surrounding environments? What might be different if an alien evolved in a waterless wasteland, or a chlorine swamp, or in the goo-powered city we designed at FOGcon 1? Ann Wilkes (Moderator), Carol Dorf, M. Christian, David Levine.

Friday 9:30 PM, Sacramento: Mars Wants Our Genitals. Humanity has often been described as exogamous — if it’s strange, and new, we want to have sex with it. This was simple enough when it was the people from the group down the river who spoke strangely — but what will it mean as we move out into the universe? Writers have already gone there — James Tiptree Jr.’s “And I Awoke And Found Me Here By The Cold Hill’s Side”, for example. How will we relate to a universe whose expectations of sex (if they exist at all) may be very, very different from ours? Shannon Prickett (Moderator), Mary Anne Mohanraj, Steven Schwartz, David Levine, Jean Marie Stine.

Saturday 8:00 PM, Salon B/C: Ask a Pro. Ask a professional writer anything you like about craft, business, or whatever you want to know. David Levine (Moderator), Nalo Hopkinson, Rachel Swirsky, Jean Marie Stine, Nick Mamatas.

Sunday 1:00 PM, Santa Rosa: Reading 11. Daniel Marcus, David Levine, Chaz Brenchley.

Word count: 12117 | Since last entry: 7043

Some of you have heard me read from my story “The Last Days of the Kelly Gang,” AKA the Steampunk Ned Kelly Power Armor Story. It’s longish, so I’ve never had the opportunity to read the whole thing and I always end on a massive cliffhanger.

This had a purpose. The purpose is to make you salivate to buy the story on the day it comes out. And that day is here!

Armored, a big fat anthology of power-armor stories edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Baen, is now available “wherever fine books are sold,” as they say. (Also, presumably, where crappy books are sold, but please don’t hold that against it.) I recommend that you buy it from Powell’s. You can also buy the ebook directly from Baen in a wide variety of DRM-free formats.

In addition to my story, Armored includes stories by Tobias Buckell, Genevieve Valentine, Jack McDevitt, Simon R. Green, David Barr Kirtley (I love that one), Michael A. Stackpole, Alastair Reynolds, Tanya Huff, Carrie Vaughn, Daniel H. Wilson, and others. And if that isn’t enough to convince you to buy it, you can check out the editor’s website for the book which includes several sample stories, interviews with the authors, and more.

Ding! Ding! Salivate, little readers, salivate! And buy!