Novel of the week: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen

There's magic in the best science fiction. An abiding sensawunda. An intellectual and emotional longing. A deeply human touch embracing the greater universe and the unending possibilities flowing around us.

Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen is one such science fiction novel. Set in a far future populated by anthropomorphic animals uplifted by humanity, Barsk is exciting, intellectually probing, and extremely moving. The novel is also a triumph of world creation, making you love the characters and their universe as if they were your own.

Despite the novel's galaxy-wide setting, the story focuses on a single world, the Barsk of the eponymous title which is the homeworld of two races of elephant-human hybrids. Despised by the rest of the species in the galactic alliance, these races of elephant-humans have walled themselves off on their world, content to live their lives according to their cultural beliefs and ideals.

One of these beliefs is that each elephant-human sets out on a personal journal shortly before their death to the elephant's graveyard. But something is stopping the recent dead from reaching their final resting place. One of the planet's historians, who also has the ability to speak with the dead, sets out to discover what is happening.

I have enjoyed Lawrence Schoen's fiction in recent years, but with Barsk he takes his storytelling to new heights, rivaling the top authors in the SF genre. In addition to the compelling story Schoen created, one of the best things about Barsk is how he weaves in interesting theories of cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics — both fields in which Schoen works — without letting the novel turn either preachy or boring. This depth takes the novel beyond a simple space opera tale into the realm of great genre works like Dune and The Left Hand of Darkness.

I can't remember the last time I finished a SF novel and immediately reread it. I did this with Barsk. This is a novel to cherish and urge others to read. This is a novel to show people who say the science fiction genre is dead and unable to create original stories.

Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard is highly recommended and will likely be on my shortlist of Hugo and Nebula nominees.

My schedule for Life, the Universe, and ConFusion

I'm a participating author at the ConFusion convention in Detroit from January 21 to 24. ConFusion is an excellent regional convention with a strong literary focus — and how can you not love a con whose theme is Life, the Universe, and ConFusion? This year's Guests of Honor are Alaya Dawn Johnson, Kentaro Toyama, and Gordon Smith. 

Here's my panelist schedule. Look for me and say hello.

Note that the following times are subject to change.

Justice for Ancillary Perspectives
Annalee Flower Horne (M), Jason Sanford, DongWon Song, Jenny Thurman, Natalie Luhrs
Friday January 22, 8 PM
Ann Leckie's now-complete trilogy of the Radch Empire has been critically and commercially praised for its exceptional blend of high concept space adventure and quiet contemplative look at identity and cultural constructs. Why has Leckie's work succeeded to the degree it has? How is she carrying on the work of Joanna Russ, Ursula LeGuin, and the feminist vanguard of the 1970s?

Podcasting Science Fiction and Fantasy
Michael K. Elliott (M), Jonah Sutton-Morse, Jason Sanford, Dave Robison, Jeannie Szarama
Saturday January 23, 11 AM
Talking about the popularity of podcasting in SFF fandom. What are the best podcasts out there?

The Rise of the Novella
Melissa F. Olson, Brian McClellan, Jason Sanford (M), Yanni Kuznia, Carl Engle-Laird
Saturday January 23, 3 PM
The last few years have seen a resurgence of shorter forms of fiction. Novelettes, novellas, and even short novels are doing better than they have in years, through self publishing and traditional publishers like Harper Impulse, Tor.com Publishing, and Subterranean Press. Is this resurgence a result of a digital evolution or declining attention spans? What does the future hold for fiction under 50,000 words.

Singularity for the Rest of Us
Wesley Chu, Jason Sanford, Tom Doyle (M), Andrea Phillips, Cameron McClure
Sunday January 24, 10 AM
Is post-humanism really as straight, white, and Western as it often seems? How can science fiction talk about post-body identities without diminishing or dismissing embodied identity and experience? This panel will discuss the stories out there that complicate the uploaded experience.

Are Steven Universe And Korra the Future?
Jason Sanford (M), Merrie Haskell, Carl Engle-Laird, Kimchi Zerbe, Navah Wolfe
Sunday January 24, 1 PM
Steven Universe is blazing a number of trails in animated SF&F, from its diverse characters and voice cast, to redefining issues of masculinity, and its emphasis on love, kindness and acceptance. The Legend of Korra has made similar waves with its clear nod to a same-sex relationship in the finale and the outright confirmation of it by the creators. Are Korra and Steven Universe opening a new chapter in what we can do with family-friendly SF&F media?

Novel of the week: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

My new "novel of the week" review should have been written weeks ago. Months ago. I've been epically derelict in not reviewing the epic fantasy The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu, which is one of the best novels I've read this year.

I'm usually not a fan of epic fantasies. Not merely because so many of them are boring Tolkien retreads where moral dilemmas are never truly a dilemma. Or that so many epic fantasies adhere to absolute rights and wrongs which never enter those troubling moral gray zones of real life. Or that the settings of these fantasies are often epic only in their authors' minds as they endlessly copy from a medieval Europe which never truly existed.

I don't dislike most epic fantasies for any one of those reasons — it's for all of those reasons. A combined irritation, if you will, at the state of the fantasy landscape bequeathed to us by a half-century of epic fantasy failures.

Thankfully, Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings avoids these issues as he stakes out his own ideas and beliefs on what an epic fantasy should be. Inspired in part by Chinese history and in larger parts by our modern world, Liu has created a fantasy unlike any other. The story is fast paced with plenty of endearing and believable characters, filled with engrossing action, and features an exciting mashup of steampunk elements, gods and magic.

I'm tempted to go on about the novel, but as I said I should have reviewed Liu's novel months ago. By now many others have given far better reviews than I ever could. (For one of the most insightful reviews, check out Andrew Liptak's take at io9.)  My short review is here to simply tell everyone that I really enjoyed The Grace of Kings and that the novel is a serious contender to make my Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy shortlists.

Review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens from a kid who ran away to see the first Star Wars film

Before any science fiction fan nitpicks to death my Amber Alert tweet, yes, I'm aware Amber Alerts didn't appear until two decades after Star Wars: A New Hope arrival in theaters. It's a joke!

The ancestry of a 21st century multi-racial American family

My wife identifies as African American and was born and raised in Ohio. I identify as white and was born and raised in Alabama. We met while serving together in the Peace Corps in Thailand.

As our kids grow older we've become fascinated by our family's ancestry, so we recently completed autosomal DNA tests to fill in the gaps on our family trees. The results came in today.

My ancestry breaks down as 3% from Africa (divided between northern Africa and Mali), 95% from Europe (with Great Britain at 30%, Europe West at 26%, Ireland at 17%, Scandinavia at 13%, and other regions like Greece and Italy at 9%), and the Middle East at 2%.

Here's my ancestry map. The darker the shading the more ancestry I have from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

Jason's ancestry map. The darker the shading the more ancestry from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

Jason's ancestry map. The darker the shading the more ancestry from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

My wife's ancestry breaks down as 46% from Africa (with Cameroon/Congo at 14%, Nigeria at 11%, Senegal at 10%, and other regions at 11%), 13% from Asia (with India at 11% and other regions making up the remainder), Europe at 38% (with Ireland at 16%. Europe West at 13%, and other regions at 9%), and Pacific Islanders at 2% and trace readings for other regions.

Here's my wife's ancestry map. 

My wife's ancestry map. Again, the darker the shading the more ancestry from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

My wife's ancestry map. Again, the darker the shading the more ancestry from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

A lot of this matches up with what we already know from our family histories, but a good bit doesn't. My wife didn't know about her ancestors from the Asian region. I didn't know about the small amounts of African/Middle East ancestry, although since I'm from the American South I'm not overly shocked. We're also amused that we share almost identical ancestry percentages from Ireland.

So what do these percentages mean? Well, one way of looking at this is to compare the percentages of DNA we all share with our recent ancestors. Here's that breakdown:

  • Parents: We share exactly 50% of our DNA with each parent
  • Grandparents: 25% for each grandparent
  • Great-grandparents: 12.5%
  • Great-great-grandparents: 6.25% 
  • Great-great-great-grandparents: 3.13%
  • Great-great-great-great-grandparents: 1.56%

If you have 3% ancestry from a region that could mean one of your great-great-great-grandparents lived there. Or it could mean many ancestors had parts of their ancestry from there. Or it could even result from the margin of error of the DNA test (the lower the percentage the greater the chance of an error).

Of course, the fun part of human ancestry is that you don't have to go back very far to discover that all people are related. If you go back 10 generations, say around 200 years, you have 512 ancestors. If you could track your family tree back 600 years or a mere 30 generations, you'd discover that you have more than 500 million ancestors, or more people than lived in the world at that time.

Obviously we can't be descended from more people than existed at a time, which means everyone's family trees branch in and out of themselves. It also means the next time someone says they're descended from William the Conqueror or Genghis Khan or Cleopatra you can simply tell them so are you.

I understand the limitations of DNA tests, but they are still fascinating tools to explore our shared histories. Especially when you're part of a multi-racial family in the 21st century.