Crawford Kilian
Auteur de Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
A propos de l'auteur
Crawford Kilian is the author of twenty-two books and a contributing editor at The Tyee. A retired community-college instructor, he lives in North Vancouver, BC. Partial proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Hogan's Alley Society.
Séries
Œuvres de Crawford Kilian
A Writer's Guide to Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction and Fantasy (Writing Series) (2019) 2 exemplaires
The Last Viking 1 exemplaire
Writing for the Web, 4th edition 1 exemplaire
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- 1941-02-07
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- USA (birth)
Canada (resident) - Lieu de naissance
- New York, New York, USA
- Lieux de résidence
- Berkeley, California, USA
Mexico City, Mexico
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
New York, New York, USA - Études
- Columbia University (1962)
- Professions
- technical writer-editor (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory)
English teacher (Capilano College)
columnist (Vancouver Province) - Courte biographie
- North Vancouver's own guru of creative writing was born in New York City and grew up in Los Angeles and Mexico City. He returned to NYC for college, did two years in the US Army at Fort Ord, worked as apprentice tech writer in Berkeley, moved to Canada with his wife in 1967, stumbled into teaching and found that he loved it. He has been at Capilano College since it opened in 1968, and ha has also taught in China. Author of many books and articles, his current projects include two novels and articles for online journals.
Membres
Critiques
In some ways, this is a very Canadian book. Kilian is a Canadian. It was first published in Canada by Douglas E. McIntyre before being picked up by Bantam Books. It’s dedicated to James De Mille who wrote the first significant work of Canadian science fiction, a utopian satire set in the Antarctic called A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. Margaret Atwood has commented that (at least among Canadian Old Stock), the Arctic is a national myth.
Kilian’s story is also clearly inspired by the tale of Ernest Shackleton’s famous polar expedition and his account of it, South. Almost all the technical and scientific personnel of the New Shackleton Station, “Shacktown”, are Commonwealth citizens, and the station is run by the Commonwealth Antarctic Research Project. The three exceptions are Penny Constable, an American science journalist; Katerina Varenkova, a Russian medical doctor; and American paleontologist Ben Whitcumb.
Perhaps reflecting some Canadian view of the Cold War in the 1970s, Pearson doesn’t think much of Whitcumb:
"a prick, an all-too-typical modern U.S. careerist right down to his crew-cut hair and right-wing politics. His sermons on President Wood and the official American policy of Dynamic Self-Reliance had been as boring as his lectures on therapsid endothermy. Ben was the kind of scientist she’d come here to escape."
Kilian presents his story in an almost documentary style. If this book 243 page book were published today, it would probably be three times as long. I suspect an editor would insist on that.
Kilian’s book provides little in the way of characters’ emotions, at least not through internal thoughts. While Kilian provides a schematic of New Shackleton Station’s layout and a not detailed enough map of the Antarctic, he doesn’t provide a dramatis personae, and it’s hard to keep many of the characters separate. Penny serves to provide a muted emotional response to events, including her ups and downs in her post-surge romantic relationship with Steve Kennard, a seismologist. One of the four women at the base is Jeanne Taylor, a glaciologist student, who also provides some emotion to the narrative. She’s secretly pregnant before she arrives at the base and, after the surge, takes up with Will, another scientist. There’s Hugh Adams, the base’s leader, and he strives, following the example of Shackleton (whose picture he has in his office), to keep the group cohesive and alive. There’s also Al Neal, pilot of the base’s plane and helicopter and Gordon Ellerslee, drilling engineer and trouble maker.
Those, along with Katerina, are the most significant characters, and the rest mostly are just names the reader may find themselves having to look back to remember who they are.
Kilian’s description of action is not barebones enough to seem like a mere outline, but, again, a writer now would probably have described the action in more detail and provided individual characters’ emotional responses.
This is not to say Kilian’s narrative, in effect sort of a science fiction version of Shackleton’s epic escape from disaster, doesn’t provide drama.
The story opens with the natural world already in turmoil. Unusually severe solar storms have hurt radio communications and increased UV radiation at Earth’s surface. Magnetic navigation is affected as the magnetic field weakens and, eventually, flips polarity. The most speculative science is Steve Kennard’s theory that Antarctica sits on two tectonic plates with the boundary being on the Transantarctic Mountains. He expects a significant earthquake on that fault line with a possible surge of the ice sheet into the Southern Ocean.
And that is what happens. The book sort of goes through the psychosocial stages we often see in disaster novels: initial shock and elation (at least amont the scientists) when the disaster occurs, stunned fatigue after surviving it, steady work to ensure survival, growing realization of new dangers and growing dissension on how to deal with it, and uniting for survival.
Shacktown has little contact with other polar bases much less the outside world. Like Shackleton, they are on their own.
Kilians’s sparse style still has plenty to offer by way of adventure and spectacle. There’s the surge of the ice sheet, triggered by an earthquake swarm and the eruption of Mount Erebus. There’s the trek back to “Shacktown” from a crashed helicopter. The surging ice grinding islands down as it moves into the ocean. A convoy of vehicles traveling hundreds of miles across the ice during the winter of the polar night.
Kilian provides lots of detail on the hardships of living, working, and traveling in Antarctica. We learn of the fragility and sparse comforts of the underice Shacktown, especially as it is now embedded in an ice shelf making its way to the ocean. There are the problems of maintaining and starting vehicles in the cold, of defrosters not keeping the frost off windshields. We learn just how short of a time one can work outside in Antarctic conditions and how you really can freeze your lungs to the bleeding point (though my research says this only occurs at temperatures colder than -70 Fahrenheit). You can definitely have frostbitten eyes at even warmer temperatures. Sunburn and snowblindness are even a worse problem than usual given the increased UV.
The scientists, though cutoff from communication with the outside world and perhaps thought dead, can imagine the worldwide effects of all this. The Earth’s albedo will increase with ice remaining on the Antarctic continent and now more in the surrounding oceans. The cold, fresh water from the new ice mass in the sea will affect ocean circulation. There definitely won’t be, the scientists know, any global warming now. The ice slamming into the ocean after sliding off the continent will create massive tsunamis.
There is some sexual tension among the Shacktown group. The married couple of the Dolans, who are the base’s cooks, is accepted, but Jeanne and Penny pairing off causes problems. When Penny breaks up with Steve, Gordon and Whitcumb put the moves on her with varying degrees of aggression.
I liked this book despite what others would see as problems and found it a worthy disaster novel.… (plus d'informations)
Kilian’s story is also clearly inspired by the tale of Ernest Shackleton’s famous polar expedition and his account of it, South. Almost all the technical and scientific personnel of the New Shackleton Station, “Shacktown”, are Commonwealth citizens, and the station is run by the Commonwealth Antarctic Research Project. The three exceptions are Penny Constable, an American science journalist; Katerina Varenkova, a Russian medical doctor; and American paleontologist Ben Whitcumb.
Perhaps reflecting some Canadian view of the Cold War in the 1970s, Pearson doesn’t think much of Whitcumb:
"a prick, an all-too-typical modern U.S. careerist right down to his crew-cut hair and right-wing politics. His sermons on President Wood and the official American policy of Dynamic Self-Reliance had been as boring as his lectures on therapsid endothermy. Ben was the kind of scientist she’d come here to escape."
Kilian presents his story in an almost documentary style. If this book 243 page book were published today, it would probably be three times as long. I suspect an editor would insist on that.
Kilian’s book provides little in the way of characters’ emotions, at least not through internal thoughts. While Kilian provides a schematic of New Shackleton Station’s layout and a not detailed enough map of the Antarctic, he doesn’t provide a dramatis personae, and it’s hard to keep many of the characters separate. Penny serves to provide a muted emotional response to events, including her ups and downs in her post-surge romantic relationship with Steve Kennard, a seismologist. One of the four women at the base is Jeanne Taylor, a glaciologist student, who also provides some emotion to the narrative. She’s secretly pregnant before she arrives at the base and, after the surge, takes up with Will, another scientist. There’s Hugh Adams, the base’s leader, and he strives, following the example of Shackleton (whose picture he has in his office), to keep the group cohesive and alive. There’s also Al Neal, pilot of the base’s plane and helicopter and Gordon Ellerslee, drilling engineer and trouble maker.
Those, along with Katerina, are the most significant characters, and the rest mostly are just names the reader may find themselves having to look back to remember who they are.
Kilian’s description of action is not barebones enough to seem like a mere outline, but, again, a writer now would probably have described the action in more detail and provided individual characters’ emotional responses.
This is not to say Kilian’s narrative, in effect sort of a science fiction version of Shackleton’s epic escape from disaster, doesn’t provide drama.
The story opens with the natural world already in turmoil. Unusually severe solar storms have hurt radio communications and increased UV radiation at Earth’s surface. Magnetic navigation is affected as the magnetic field weakens and, eventually, flips polarity. The most speculative science is Steve Kennard’s theory that Antarctica sits on two tectonic plates with the boundary being on the Transantarctic Mountains. He expects a significant earthquake on that fault line with a possible surge of the ice sheet into the Southern Ocean.
And that is what happens. The book sort of goes through the psychosocial stages we often see in disaster novels: initial shock and elation (at least amont the scientists) when the disaster occurs, stunned fatigue after surviving it, steady work to ensure survival, growing realization of new dangers and growing dissension on how to deal with it, and uniting for survival.
Shacktown has little contact with other polar bases much less the outside world. Like Shackleton, they are on their own.
Kilians’s sparse style still has plenty to offer by way of adventure and spectacle. There’s the surge of the ice sheet, triggered by an earthquake swarm and the eruption of Mount Erebus. There’s the trek back to “Shacktown” from a crashed helicopter. The surging ice grinding islands down as it moves into the ocean. A convoy of vehicles traveling hundreds of miles across the ice during the winter of the polar night.
Kilian provides lots of detail on the hardships of living, working, and traveling in Antarctica. We learn of the fragility and sparse comforts of the underice Shacktown, especially as it is now embedded in an ice shelf making its way to the ocean. There are the problems of maintaining and starting vehicles in the cold, of defrosters not keeping the frost off windshields. We learn just how short of a time one can work outside in Antarctic conditions and how you really can freeze your lungs to the bleeding point (though my research says this only occurs at temperatures colder than -70 Fahrenheit). You can definitely have frostbitten eyes at even warmer temperatures. Sunburn and snowblindness are even a worse problem than usual given the increased UV.
The scientists, though cutoff from communication with the outside world and perhaps thought dead, can imagine the worldwide effects of all this. The Earth’s albedo will increase with ice remaining on the Antarctic continent and now more in the surrounding oceans. The cold, fresh water from the new ice mass in the sea will affect ocean circulation. There definitely won’t be, the scientists know, any global warming now. The ice slamming into the ocean after sliding off the continent will create massive tsunamis.
There is some sexual tension among the Shacktown group. The married couple of the Dolans, who are the base’s cooks, is accepted, but Jeanne and Penny pairing off causes problems. When Penny breaks up with Steve, Gordon and Whitcumb put the moves on her with varying degrees of aggression.
I liked this book despite what others would see as problems and found it a worthy disaster novel.… (plus d'informations)
1 
RandyStafford | Jan 25, 2024 |
RandyStafford | Jan 25, 2024 | 
Okay book about writing craft. Glosses over topics that can be found other places.
There is a good section on sub-genres of science fiction and fantasy.
The sections on research and publishing are dated to pre-internet.
There is a good section on sub-genres of science fiction and fantasy.
The sections on research and publishing are dated to pre-internet.
I was just curious and it was a short read. Brought up all of the same stuff I've read before, elsewhere, but it is still nice to recap.
Prix et récompenses
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Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 22
- Membres
- 1,043
- Popularité
- #24,687
- Évaluation
- 3.3
- Critiques
- 11
- ISBN
- 69
Even more so than that book, I have the impression this book would not be published as is today. It’s a mere 218 pages long. It would probably be three times that length today or maybe even a series. Kilian, in that brief span, takes us from the events just before the tsunamis, triggered worldwide by large portions of the Antarctic ice shelf catastrophically sliding into the ocean, through the disintegration of the old order and a tentative rebuilding of civilization.
This book has a little more detail on the troubles of the the pre-tsunami world than Icequake did. We hear about the devastation the new solar flares are wrecking on electronics and communications. (Oddly, Kilian only has disruption and not the actual destruction of electronic devices. That may be because there were a lot less transistors and microchips about in 1983.) Agricultural has been greatly affected by the increased UV from the sun. Crops are withering. Cattle wander about blinded if not equipped with sunglasses. Activity has largely become nocturnal for people. There is an interesting racial component here in that blacks can move about easier in the daylight hours though even they need to wear sunglasses.
And things aren’t going to get better. Einar, a grad student in solar physics, says the recent solar flares have revealed new information about the sun. Its fusion has stopped, and it may be from 5,000 to 50,000 years before it starts again. An ice age is on the way.
The story has three main viewpoint characters: Don Kennard (physical oceanographer, Canadian, and brother of Steve Kennard, the seismologist who was a major character in Icequake, but the brothers make no contact in this novel), his wife Kirstie (Scottish and a climatologist), and Anthony Allison, a film director of popular, exploitive war movies. The itinerant Kennards happen to be working out of the San Francisco area and Allison out of a ranch near Monterey, California.
The Kennards and Allison and his group represent two different approaches to the disaster. The Kennards are deliberately childless, able to conceive the long term consequences of events. They concern themselves with the welfare of the Bay Area’s residents that they find themselves among. Prominent are Oakland’s black residents who, practicing President Wood’s (Ronald Reagan’s successor) “dynamic self-reliance” seem improbably well-organized and relatively peaceful given the actual history of that city.
Allison, in contrast, is a California native and concerned only with his family and riding out what he thinks will be only a few months of disruption. That involves not only gathering supplies for his ranch but gathering a group of friends and business associates around him. In addition to his beautiful wife Shauna, an actress in his projects, there’s his organizational expert and producer Ted Loeffler and his wife, stuntman Dave Marston and his wife, and ex-Marine and technical advisor Bert D’Annunzio. Conveniently, Allison also has connections to the local army base at Fort Ord since he worked with its commander on a movie project.
At first, Allison is quite sympathetic. He’s calm, prudent, organized, and pragmatic. But he becomes a lot less sympathetic when, post-tsunami, he lures his ex-wife away so he can kidnap, his daughter Sarah and leave her mother to her fate.
Both the Kennards and Allison will face similar struggles. Military discipline fades away with the control of the national government. Eventually, the Joint Chiefs of Staff stage a coup. There are the inevitable problems of getting food, water and fuel and with thieves and looters. Both the Kennards and Allison become leaders in nascent states. There is some emotional punch in the short, matter-of-fact scenes of violence those characters, especially Allison, see.
But Kilian’s sympathies are clearly with the Kennards as we see Allison’s become a leader with vassals and the simultaneous moral and psychological disintegration of his group.
Rather like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer, this novel ends with a fight over energy. In that novel, it was to secure a nuclear power plant. Here, it’s a fight over a tanker full of fuel which the Kennard’s have the resources to get but lies in Allison’s zone of control.
There is a Canadian feel to this book which, like its predecessor, was first published in that country. It’s just not the trip by the Kennards to Vancouver to get the ship necessary to salvage that tanker. It’s a certain disdain for American institutions. Ronald Reagan’s term as president, still ongoing, of course, when the book was published, is predicted to be economically depressed. While the disintegration of the U.S. military (Kilian himself served in the U. S. Army) is plausible in the circumstances and something you would expect to see in this kind of story, Kilian has the Bay Area defended from the post-coup U. S. Army by a group of veterans who served in the Vietnam War. Canada was, famously, the place American men went to avoid the draft, and perhaps Kilian is relishing those who did go to that war finally mounting their own resistance to an unjust institution.
A modern reader probably won’t be happy with how this book or Icequake ends. Despite Kilian celebrating the power of science, it’s not clear, given Einar’s prediction, that the efforts of the Kennards will be enough to save civilization just as, in Icequake, it’s not clear what Steve Kennard can really contribute to rebuilding the world. And I doubt a modern reader would stand for the fate of three characters, one a child, left unresolved.
Still, it’s a very efficient novel with some scenes of power. In its day, when tsunamis were a hazy concept to many and hadn’t been extensively recorded on video, it would have been even more compelling.… (plus d'informations)