| | BlueMusings August 28, 2017 You're receiving this email because you're probably a reader and some flavor of fellow geek. More specifically, you entered a contest/giveaway which required your email to subscribe. You may unsubscribe at any time in the link in the footer below this message, but I do hope you'll stay a while. | | | LJ Cohen Science fiction, fantasy, assorted weirdness | | | | | | Promotions There are a few days left in the Mass Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors group free book promotion! ITHAKA RISING is part of the promotion along with a selection of other SF&F books available free. New Release Book 7 of Patty Jansen's popular AMBASSADOR series is out now. If you enjoy high stakes space opera thrillers and galactic politics, (um, yes, please!) take a look at this series. Patty offers book 1 SEEING RED free when you subscribe to her newsletter and it's definitely on my TBR list! I haven't read the Ambassador books yet, but I very much enjoyed her ISF-Allion series, and these sound just like my cup of tea. | Spotlight: ITHAKA RISING Ithaka Rising: Halcyone Space, book 2 A derelict ship and a splintered crew are not the rewards Ro had hoped for when she helped disrupt her father's plans to start a war with smuggled weapons. But with the responsibilities of full Commonwealth citizenship and limited resources, she is forced to take her father's place working as an engineer on Daedalus station while she and Barre try to repair their damaged freighter, Halcyone. Barre's brother, Jem, is struggling with the disabling effects of his head injury, unable to read or code. His only hope is to obtain a neural implant, but the specialists determine he is too young and his brain damage too extensive. When Jem disappears, his trail dead ends at the black market. Ro and Barre race to find Jem before he sells his future, risking his mind for an illegal neural implant. But they're not the only ones looking for "The Underworld" and its rogue planet, Ithaka. What they find endangers more than just the three of them and forces them to confront a very different truth about the war they believed was ancient history. Get it free, here,* along with a selection of other SF&F books written by Massachusetts area speculative fiction writers. Available through August 31st only! If you have read and enjoyed DERELICT, I would very much appreciate it if you might consider leaving an honest review. *You won't be subcribed to my mailing list twice! I promise. | | | | LJ Reads I read widely, across genres and when I've found something I've enjoyed, I'll share it with you. YMMV* because what we enjoy is almost always personal. (*Your Mileage May Vary) | Thieves of Fate, book one Tracy Townsend Okay. I feel almost guilty about this one because I got to read the ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) and it won't be available until November. (Though it's available for pre-order now.) This is not my usual kind of book - it's an alternate world fantasy with quasi-steampunk elements, but it's also unlike any other steampunk book I've read. It features metaphysics, a book that writes itself (the unseen author is possibly God, running a scientific experiment on the future of mankind through observations of nine random people. It's part thriller, part metaphysical treatise, part mystery and all entertaining. An alchemy (yes, pun intended) of wonderful things. The characters are vivid and original and the world building is brilliantly done. A lot of writers and writing books talk about voice, but it's a nebulous concept that isn't always apparent or done well. If you want to see an example of voice matching the book in a perfect marriage of tone and content, along with a rolicking good story, read THE NINE.
| | | | | The Science of Science Fiction " In altering the DNA code of human embryos, the objective of scientists is to show that they can eradicate or correct genes that cause inherited disease, like the blood condition beta-thalassemia. The process is termed “germline engineering” because any genetically modified child would then pass the changes on to subsequent generations via their own germ cells—the egg and sperm. " About a month ago, scientists in the US reported the first successful attempts to use CRISPR, a gene editing tool, to literally rewrite the human genetic code. Researchers took sperm cells from donors who carried genetic mutations (though they didn't specify which mutations) and were able to edit out the mutations in the resulting embryos by interfering at the time of fertilization. While this has been done in other countries, the Portland, OR team brought several improvements to the process, including uptake of the error correction in significantly more of the embryo's cells. None of the resulting embryos were allowed to develop past a few days and it is currently illegal to use this technology to create viable human embryos. But we are closer and closer to any number of science fiction stories - most of which have dystopian elements - that center around custom editing of DNA. All technology reaches the point where we realize we are capable of doing something. The biggest question is whether we should. We are significantly short sighted in seeing the larger context and consequences of our inventions, but this one has the ability to change the definition of what it means to be human and as such, needs even more careful consideration. | F-Bom The founders of F-BOM (The Feminist Book of the Month) interviewed me on FB live last week. You can see the replay here! "F-BOM novels are hand-selected by F-BOM staff for awesome storytelling and high-quality writing. But more than that–they’re books by self-identified women of all shapes, sizes, colors, sexualities, and journeys. These are the stories of people whose voices and visions we aren’t often exposed to, because they have to fight so hard to get into the spotlight." | Upcoming events October 6-8, 2017 Springfield, MO I'll be appearing at Missouri's GAME con as a guest of honor. Come find me there! | How am I doing? Please let me know if you'd like to see me cover a particular topic or theme in future newsletters. More recommendations? More links to promotions? More science of science fiction? Excerpts? You can let me know by replying to this newsletter or emailing me directly: lisa@ljcohen.net | | | | ©2017 LJ Cohen. All rights reserved. | | |