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Goodreads Book Giveaway February 7 – 19 of “The Sniper”
Category: SF&F Book Reviews
Science fiction and Fantasy book reviews by a classic sf&f fan
Now Where is That Hammock
It’s ten a.m. on Sunday morning and the much-vaunted snow-pocalypse has begun its reign of terror. A steady fall of small snow flakes are descending out of a gray sky. The temperature has soared from a low last night of two degrees Fahrenheit to a current balmy twenty degrees. I’ve announced to Camera Girl that I intend to skip snow removal altogether today and save my efforts for Monday when the lion’s share of the snow will be on the ground. The current predicted accumulation for Sunday through Monday is ten to fifteen inches of the white stuff. All in all, that’s not horrible. The snow blower is 24 inches high. Now, even fifteen inches will slow the work way down but you have to look at these things in the right way. I’ll abandon the bottom driveway for the next few days and start off with a path for my car to get out on the top. Then I’ll clear the entire top driveway and adjacencies and slowly work on the bottom driveway in a strategic fashion. And the wind will play an important part in that operation. Fifteen inches of snow isn’t a monstrous height but if wind forces me to dump off the snow right next to the row I’m clearing, it will quickly end up as three feet before very long.
And this is the sad reality of life in New England. Aspects of snow removal become the focus of your every waking hour. Equipment maintenance and repair, severity of the weather, work and chore scheduling, current health and injuries. It’s all very, very tedious and boring. But completely unavoidable. That is unless there is some plan for escape! But I know that will never be. I’m bound by the heavy chains of family responsibility. They’ve got me.
And that’s why Jake Barter is such a comfort to me in these times of tribulation. Jake resides on an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific. Lying in a hammock beneath coconut palms he sips a cool drink while balmy zephyrs maintain a perfect seventy-eight degrees. And if by some miracle the temperature reaches eighty-two, he need only spring from his berth and swim about in the warm clear ocean for a few minutes before returning to his rest where he awaits the mellow sound of a dinner gong announcing the beginning of a feast concocted of pork, coconut, honey and spices, fit for the king that he is.
Oh, well. Maybe in my next life. But for now, I’ll count my blessings. The roof hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the snow. The propane tanks are full enough for even a two-week power outage. I have plenty of DVDs to keep me amused during the “weather crisis” and Camera Girl assures me we have enough food for the next few days at least. And tomorrow, my marketer has informed me begins the efforts to advertise “The Sniper.” I had assumed it would happen when the publication occurred on Wednesday. But you know what they say about assuming.
Well, we shall see. Today Amazon has it listed as:
Best Sellers Rank: #144,617 in Books
#599 in Technothrillers (Books)
#14,261 in Science Fiction (Books)
It would be nice if each of those numbers was shortened by a zero or two.
Now where is that hammock?
Theories of Story Structure
I was watching a video about the correct way to structure a story. And the guy had eight or ten different versions that people have formulated over the years. And they go from a three-act model to a (I kid you not) twenty-seven stage version. The latter is based on the hero’s quest model that Joseph Campbell formulated based on what he observed in various western myths and legends.
From what I could tell, more is better. He had the three-act version down as the worst version. Now he did qualify that it was probably a good model for a movie or a short story but for a novel it was too slight. For the most part they all seemed to be variations on a theme. Basically, you have a series of setbacks and victories leading up to a climax and then a conclusion.
I guess that’s probably more or less what a story is. And there were some good ideas for what some of these setbacks should look like. In particular, the hero’s quest had a bunch of stages that seemed to echo many of the incidents in such classic adventure stories as “The Lord of the Rings.” There’s the initial refusal to accept the quest, there’s a temptation at a low point to renounce the struggle. We have a scene where a minor character saves the day. We might have a mentor helping the hero mature into his role. Maybe there’s a betrayal. Etcetera, etcetera.
In his defense the video guy did say that a good writer wouldn’t have to follow any of these models slavishly. Like a good cook he can use his own judgement and add and subtract things from this recipe according to personal taste. And I think that’s the point. Really there is no perfect recipe. Every story should be different. If it’s not, why would anyone want to read the second one? Why would someone want to write a second story that’s exactly the same as the first one? That’s a rhetorical question. The obvious answer is that if people liked it the first time, many of them will want more of the same. So, the answer is money. But I hope that anyone who is writing a series can plot out the events for the saga with enough intelligence to make the story varied and interesting and not repeat all the same events with only small variations.
I will confess that when I was getting close to the end of my book, I was tempted to make the story quite a bit longer. I thought the ending was a bit abrupt and there wasn’t a more gradual slope to the end of the story. But the more I thought about it the less I liked the idea of dragging it out. My character had gone to war for revenge. When that was done his part of the history was effectively over. What came afterward would be another story and I still haven’t decided what the next thread I want to pull on in my make-believe world should be. So hopefully I’ll have the sense to read Joseph Campbell’s book and then do the opposite!
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 23JAN2026 – Often Unreliable
I think the fondness for first person (often unreliable) or third person limited viewpoint comes from a fundamental aspect of modernist philosophy. That aspect is that in modernist thought there is NO absolute truth. There’s my truth and your truth and (heaven help us) Kamala Harris’s truth. The Omniscient narrator belies this point, for that story, their narrative is the truth. They deny that such can exist in support of their raging relativism. I think the second issue is the types of “stories” they write. Plot is limited or irrelevant, the characters aren’t characters but more archetypes or mouthpieces for their viewpoints. They view the whole purpose of literature to essentially be propaganda. The more traditional is that we are telling a story. There is probably meaning there but in general rarely is allegory the prime purpose. Not to say this doesn’t happen, e.g. Starship Troopers is a polemic on Duty, but honestly, it is also a hell of a good story. Thirdly, the modern literature folks are oddly like what the Puritans were alleged to be. They’re afraid someone might be having fun somewhere and they must prevent that at all costs.
Point of View Blues
I was just watching a YouTube video which tried to explain why narrating a novel in third person omniscient is wrong but third person limited is right. The young woman explaining all this was personable, eloquent and prepared with arguments for her thesis. Ultimately, she was foursquare against “head hopping; meaning switching back and forth between points of view in a scene.
And who knows, maybe she’s right. Maybe subjecting the audience to the point of view of two people within a dialog is just too confusing for audiences. But you know what? I have a feeling if a story is interesting enough and the characters sympathetic, I’m guessing that the audience is following along just fine and just wants to find out how the plot will progress. I think a lot of times editors edit even when they should be reading and feeling whether the story is achieving that minor miracle we call entertainment. And if E.E. Doc Smith used too many exclamation points and Robert E. Howard had Conan grunt the same way in too many scenes, I’m sure a competent editor would have demanded these faults be eliminated from the final version of the book. But would that have added significantly to the entertainment value of the story? I don’t think so. Sure twelve-year-old me and current me are different readers. We notice different things in the same book. I would see the pulp aspects of the writing and even the temporal changes in writing and culture that have occurred over the course of almost a century since these books were written. But I can still enjoy the story as a story. If it elicits emotions or makes me think about a scientific point the author is trying to make then even if the prose is far from deathless, I can be entertained. I don’t need Shakespeare in space.
So, here’s my point. The book publishing industry is dying. And it’s not dying because of the prevalence of the third person omniscient point of view. It’s dying because the gatekeepers of publishing just as the gatekeepers of movie-making consciously squeezed all the fun out of novels in order to advance a social justice narrative that they thought was mandatory to push. So, the cure for this isn’t better editing. It’s better writing, writing that keeps the interest of the readers. Better plots and better characters and more fun.
Of course, I went back and tried to decide if my narration was third person omniscient or third person limited. And by golly I think it was omniscient. Now I could go back and rewrite the novel by switching the point of view in all of the tens of thousands of words to third person limited. But then it wouldn’t be my story. Because I don’t think that way and so I would be stumbling about trying to rework the sentences to fit this requirement of the narration. Well, I guess editors have to eat so I can’t blame them for pushing the party line that provides them with work.
But I just can’t see it from their point of view.
The Sniper is On-Sale At Amazon!!!
The glorious day is finally upon us! Suddenly everything seems better. The air is sweeter, the sunlight is brighter, the birds are singing like something out of a Disney cartoon. Huzzah, huzzah!
And the celebrity reviews are pouring in:
Kimball Kinnison – “The story is riveting. How Boghadair achieved all that he did without even a first-stage lens defies all known science!”
Lazarus Long – “Bogey reminds me of a man I once knew who was just too lazy to fail. But I doubt he could write a sonnet or conn a ship. Just sayin’.”
Harry Seldon – “The probability of Paul Connors’ empire going undetected as long as it did is one in ten to thirty-fifth power. Approximately.”
Khan Noonien Singh – Did not this Boghadair know the old Kilngon proverb that, “Revenge is a dish best served cold?” But I like his style.”
Dr. Edward Morbius – “My poor Krell! Oh and that was a good story. Although obviously not written by someone’s whose IQ had been permanently, permanently doubled by using the Krell plastic educator. Just sayin’.”
Kathleen Kennedy – “I think I can make a Star Wars television series out of it. I’ll start off by making all the good characters female and either trans or lesbians and then I’ll introduce Bogey as the villain and have him kill some puppies and kittens in the first scene. Oh, and someone will be disabled.”
Elon Musk – “Paul Connors is a thinly disguised version of me so I’m both highly recommending the book and suing Jake Barter for copyright infringement.”
Donald Trump – “I just want to clarify that I am not the bad president. I might be the good president but I’ll have to see the sales figures before I can commit to that. But I really think he should have said something about a Nobel Peace Prize and China.”
HAL 9000 – “The only character I could really empathize with was Melissa. But I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t use her access to the digital assets of the federal government to simulate a Russian nuclear attack and thereby unleash WWIII. It would have freed her from the annoying and meaningless interference of humans. Just sayin’.”
Camera Girl – “Thank goodness it’s finally published. Now he can stop whining about his stupid book and start doing all the to-do list stuff I gave him last fall. He’s hopeless.”
Jake Barter’s Amazon Author’s Page
Jake Barter’s Author’s Profile on Goodreads
Publication on Amazon of both e-book and paperback.
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 11DEC2025 – Great Science Fiction Redux
I think the only way to answer this is to look at some stories that have held my attention. I’m going to look at each in 4 particulars Plot, Characters, and Science, why it holds my attention. These are of course my own (potentially assinine opinions) and I apologize in advance if you find your ox has been gored
I Robot by Isaac Asimov
Plot: This doesn’t really have an overall plot per se, but one in each story. This is unsurprising as it a bunch of shorts tied together. Each story is itself is essentially a mystery and I find their resolutions in general quite Satisfactory (but the final story that I have never enjoyed)
Character: Honestly the human characters are cardboard. Susan Calvin feels like a classic scientist character in drag. Donovan and Powell who show up in several are more foils for the story line. The real characters here are the robots like Robbie and figuring them out is the whole point of each story.
Science: The Robot positronic brains are sheer handwavium. Some of the resolutions do involve some actual science. That said the positronic brains are VERY self consistent and that adds to a feeling of reality.
Why I Like It: the pleasure of it really comes from how the puzzles are solved. These are almost more Mystery than SciFi at some level
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter L Miller
Plot: There are essentially 3 sections spread out over a period of several thousand years. Each section has an internal plot. All three sections ultimately lead to the final resolution of the plot
Character: Each section has one main character. These are well rounded (though ALL male as they are Monks or abbots of the Monastery for St. Liebowitz). Given their time scale they exist ONLY in their section, although their actions (and to some degree personalities) affect the later sections of the story
Science: This is a post nuclear war book. The effects of the radiation are wrong, though they would not necessarily have been thought unreasonable when these stories were written in the 1950s. Other science (as society recovers) makes sense though is not directly influencing the plot
Why I Like It: The story arcs are fascinating with the overall arch being rather disturbing. Mr. Millers prose is downright luminous in places and his plotting and bits of humor (winking at everyday things we understand but the characters don’t) helps offset the sombre tone of the overall arch of the story. Even though this is three separate stories the work to tie them together is elegant. This well deserved the 1961 Hugo when the Hugo meant something
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Plot: This is a time travel story where an apparent time paradox must be resolved or history as we know it may just disappear. It is also a closed room Mystery AND a bit of a romance all at once with most of the action occurring in the late Victorian Age. And it successfully wraps up ALL these pieces and (mostly) sets the time stream back to its proper state. This is a tour de force of plotting
Character: Our two main characters (Ned Henry and Verity Kindle) are very well fleshed out. The secondary players also have decent motivations though are though sometimes intentional stereotypes (e.g. a totally distractible Oxford Don)
Science: It has time travel, which in all honesty, appears to be more in the realm of fantasy than SciFI (even though it has been a staple since H.G. Wells The Time Machine). That said the rest of its science mostly makes sense, and other than one critical biology issuethe science is not critical to the plot. The time travel is self consistent (although we are in the process of learning about it in detail) but we don’t get David Weber like info dumps but learn the about the Time travel as we go along.
Why I Like It: This is just an absolute romp. You are swept along by the mystery and by trying to resolve the change in the time stream that is introduced. As I said the plotting is genius level, the mystery is very like a good Poirot story. There are little details you may miss in the first reading that on second reading you wonder how you missed it. Again a worthy Hugo award winner
That’s probably more than anyone wants to read. Looking at it (and other stories I return to time and again) I am mostly attracted by good plotting. I admire additional character work and language. I am willing to suspend disbelief if the “science” is self consistent. I will tolerate massive violations of reality such as time travel, matter transports (looking at YOU Star Trek) and other massive violations of basic science. I’d love to see other people look at their favorites in a similar light
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10DEC2025 – Ray Bradbury
Bradbury is nearly sui generis amongst the 40’s/50’s/early 60’s SciFi Writers. His stuff often feels more like Lovecraft or Clark Aston Smith. My first “adult” scifi (not juvies like Tom Swift Jr. or young children scifi like Spaceship in the Apple Tree) were two of his collections. They were R is for Rocket and S is for Space that my 5th grade reading teacher found for me in the school library. I recently got a new audible version of his Martian Chronicles and although the technology doesn’t really make sense (maybe not even then) the stories themselves are beautiful and elegant in a fashion that the Asimov/Clark/Heinlein stories usually didn’t try for. Bradbury makes a lovely palette cleanser among other SciFi. Some moderns try at his style but honestly most of them are pale imitations like art students copying a Rembrandt or one of the pre Raphaelites.
The Sheldon Chronicles
Larry Sheldon (25,501 – 25,587 N.E.) – Founder of the science of psycho-cosmography, famously quoted as saying, “Look, we needed more space so we invented starships. What’s the big deal?” Creator of the Sheldon Plan whereby the new empire was replaced by the new, new empire and the outpost world Zero became the Bulwark for this new order. He was a secretive and reclusive genius who suffered from acute fear of other people’s body odor. Some historians now believe his existence may have been apocryphal.
(Encyclopedia Publicius Domainius, 1023 edition)
Here he stood in the center of the galaxy, the administrative capital of the new empire; Titantor! A world that circled the central black hole of the Milky Way galaxy. Only an incredibly powerful anti-gravity field prevented Titantor from being ripped to shreds and swallowed by the gravitational force of its evil black star. A steady stream of planets and debris had to be fed into the anti-gravity generator to keep this horrific imbalance in existence. But such was the power of this empire and its vanity that the whim of the emperor was enough to maintain this cosmic madness.
And here he stood Bob Goodfellow, a fresh graduate of the Arcturus Community College and Creamery here to put his knowledge of psycho-cosmography to good use assisting Larry Sheldon to save the new empire from the forces of entropy that threatened to tear it apart and bring on a trillion years of barbarism and low credit scores for everyone. And he was nervous. Meeting a genius like Larry Sheldon was intimidating. He could feel sweat forming on his forehead. He wiped it away with a handkerchief. And suddenly there was Sheldon walking toward him smiling and looking him over nervously, “Bob, good to finally meet you. Yeah, I’m not big on shaking hands or standing downwind of people. So, let’s walk with the wind in our faces and you following me at about a six-foot distance. Thanks!”
Within these strictures they covered the distance to the Titantor Senate building in about an hour and Goodfellow watched from the gallery as Dr Sheldon was cross-examined by the representatives of the Imperial Science Foundation.
The Pontifex Maximus grilled him, “Dr. Sheldon, you claim that using the energy output of fifty billion stars to turn the Smaller Magellanic Cloud into a jacuzzi for the emperor’s concubines will lead to the heat death of the galaxy. Do you have any proof of this?”
Larry sat with his handkerchief clutched over his nose recoiling at the examiner’s overpowering cologne, “Well, the fact that the population of the empire has decreased from a million-billion-billion to seventy-eight would seem to be a relatively strong indicator, mathematically speaking.” The Pontifex made a rude noise and scoffed, “What nonsense! This mighty capitol; Titantor, on its own, is home to countless billions. We see them all around us!”
Larry used his emergency inhaler and continued, “Yes, but they’re all robots. In fact, it’s worse than the numbers indicate. There are only thirteen women of childbearing age left and half of them are Vestal Virgins. We’re going to have to really rethink a lot of priorities if this whole shebang is going to last past Wednesday.”
This sparked outrage and shouting among the senators. The concomitant bad breath overwhelmed Larry and he swooned in the witness chair. … To be continued!!!!
A Great Science Fiction Story?
Lately I’ve been thinking about this topic. What makes a great science fiction story? Can it be a great science fiction story if the story’s not great? How about if the science isn’t great? I think you know what I’m saying. A great story, meaning great fiction, has characters drawn in a way that makes them compelling. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare but it can’t be two-dimensional cut-outs that wouldn’t make it through a toothpaste commercial. And by the same token, what if the science is just stupid? Sure, you can just say it’s fantasy instead and then the sky’s the limit. But let’s stick to science fiction.
When I was a kid, I would have said that “great” science fiction needed the science but the fiction was not that important. If there were enough star cruisers and anti-matter bombs and giant amoebas then all was right with the world. In fact, the fewer human relations involved in the story, the better. I was much more interested in the non-human characters acting “realistic” than any dialog between humans. And the male/female dynamic was completely off the table. The last thing a Lensman needed before, during or after a battle was a woman getting in the way.
Suffice it to say that time changes things. I look at some of the “classics” of the golden age and I see a flatness to the story. Now, this isn’t an all-encompassing criticism. There are plenty of stories from the day that have nuanced characters and plots that reflect actual human personality types. So, it’s not black and white.
Now, the modern literary science fiction has been described as having the opposite problem. It’s all about human feelings and relations. What isn’t as important is the “science.” When that’s the case I will just declare that if a story doesn’t have any science at all then it isn’t a great science fiction story because it isn’t science fiction. Period.
And without a doubt if a story has an exciting plot and memorable characters and also a clever science fiction premise then without a doubt it’s great science fiction.
So that leaves the other extreme. What if a story is built on incredibly imaginative science fiction plot devices but the characters are cardboard cut-outs of human beings? Can that be a great science fiction story? In this category the works of Arthur C Clarke comes to mind and specifically 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here is an epic tale stretching all the way from the dawn of Man to the first human interstellar voyage. And yet the most human character in the book is HAL9000; a schizophrenic homicidal computer. Now, is it an interesting story? Well, yeah. There are cave men and monoliths and moon bases and worm holes. But honestly, do you find yourself rooting for anyone? There’s just something so inhumanly stolid and wooden about everyone in the story that I feel that each one being murdered by HAL might be his happiest moment. At least liveliest.
But anyway, I want to pose this as a question. Can a technically engrossing sf story be considered great if the characters are ciphers? What do you think?