SFF180 presents the Virga Readalong! discussion

Virga author Karl Schroeder has joined the group, and is delighted we're all doing this. Apparently this is the first readalong anyone's ever held for one of his books, so I'm pleased to be doing the honors. In this thread, Karl will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the stories, the characters, the series and the future it portrays, or just engage with you generally. This thread allows spoilers. You can ask pretty much anything, so be aware of that before you step in if you aren't ready.

I'd also like to reassure anyone who might feel a little intimidated by an author's presence in a readalong. We're all aware that every book impacts its readers differently — some people will love it, some not so much. And that's okay. The important thing is you're all trying out a new series and a new writer telling a different sort of story, and that's a great experience. And part of that experience is that in each book's general discussion thread, everyone feels free to offer their impressions, pro or con.

Thanks again to everyone for participating and to Karl for bringing us new realms of SF to enjoy.

Yeah, as I mentioned to Thomas, one of the consistent issues people have with these books is difficulty in visualizing them. Of course, I can picture everything in full panoramic technicolor in my own mind, but for instance, when we were looking for artists to do the graphic novel, we discovered that very few were able to draw a zero-gravity world. To me it makes perfect sense that a freefall potato farm is going to be a big net full of free-floating plants, like a green cloud. The artists insisted on having an up and down to everything, so they would put stairs on zero-gravity platforms and such. We all have a lifetime to visual instincts that tell us how things are supposed to look, including that they have a top and bottom.

In other words, there are no dumb questions. Some people get this stuff instinctively, others don't. If something puzzles you, ask. For one thing, you'll be letting me know where my descriptions could use more work.

Also, there are hundreds of little details about the people and the world that I didn't have room for in the novels. This is the place to ask about them.

It's interesting to me that artists would have such a difficult time envisioning a microgravity environment. It's not as if this is unprecedented in SF. I'm thinking in particular of Larry Niven's Smoke Ring / The Integral Trees for which Michael Whelan produced some nice covers.

Well, that was Whelan. I had Stephan Martiniere and Dave Seeley do my covers, which are also stellar. My suspicion is that for visual artists up and down are such fundamental compositional elements, learned so early, that they almost can't unlearn them. It's like drawing within the frame; how do you compose an image that spills out of a frame? (For most artists it would be: create another, imaginary larger frame.) Take away gravity, and they unconsciously put it back in.

Dave Seeley has done the most photographic image of Virga. If you want a good shot of Hayden Griffin giving Venera Fanning a lift on his bike, you'll find it on the cover of the Book Club edition, Virga 1.2. For a large version of the picture, go here: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/...

Karl wrote: "Dave Seeley has done the most photographic image of Virga. If you want a good shot of Hayden Griffin giving Venera Fanning a lift on his bike, you'll find it on the cover of the Book Club edition, ..."

Thanks for that great pic and I like the covers of the books.

I'm really getting drawn in by all of the wild zero-gravity visuals in this book, and that brought to mind a writing question I wanted to ask. How do you as a writer decide which wild visuals to use, when they enhance the story, when you need them to pull people in, and when to stop so that people don't get bored?

Having tried to do this myself, I fell like this is something that really trips me up - whereas in Virga I just keep tripping out on all the cool things to look at! (Granted: I'm probably on the opposite end of the spectrum - I write near future stuff so people are always busting me for not having ENOUGH crazy visuals, whereas it seems Virga has an endless supply of them).

In the old days, readers were happy to let an SF writer stop the action dead to spend a few pages describing the physics and engineering behind the monster or world or spaceship that was threatening the hero. You can't do that anymore so, in a book like this, the world has to be revealed gradually. Also, we almost never stray from the point of view of the main characters, so we perceive only what they perceive. It's a slow process of unfolding and done strategically.

For instance, in Chapter 1, at first you see only the curve of the town wheel, then some cloud, then the sun... it takes time for the details to emerge. If I hadn't done it this way, the book would have degenerated into a series of lectures, or the readers would have started confused and stayed that way.

Believe me, I left 90% of the stuff I imagined out of Sun of Suns. This turned out to be wise, because I had several more books to fill (wait'l you see Fracas!). Trying to reveal or explain everything too soon would have been counterproductive, so I clung close to what was necessary to make any given scene make sense--with perhaps one or two extra details that more observant readers could use to connect the dots.

One thing that has really impressed me in both Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce is your handling of sudden momentum shifts. I'm thinking specifically of the assault on the ballroom in Gehellen and Venera's ruthless deposing of Margit in Liris. In both instances, a calm scene (albeit not a happy one in the latter case) breathlessly but effortlessly moves through the gears in pacing without stumbling or feeling like it is rushing ahead of itself.

While one expects sequences of action in stories of this type, in these cases the nature and pace of the action was a surprise, with little hint that such a drastic or turbulent change was coming. Thrillingly so, if I may say.

So, I guess my question is a technical one. Does that sort of approach to action come naturally to you? You appear to use it sparingly (I've not yet finished book two so this is an assumption) alongside more conventional sequences. Is that merely coincidental or specific attempt to use the narrative device sparingly?

As an aspiring writer myself, I found the sequences very inspirational.

It's funny, I haven't really examined that aspect of my writing. I tend to obsess about the things I don't do well. But off the top of my head, two things come to mind:
--The auditory quality of writing is really important to me. I read fiction at a speaking pace, and have to hear the words in my head; I can finish a nonfiction book in a day, but spend weeks on a shorter novel.
--I don't have the books in front of me at this moment, but if you asked me write such a scene right now, one thing I would do is make the transition from placid to violent at a natural conversational or descriptive break point, but the important thing is to start it using the same rhythm already established for the scene. You want the reader to have a "wait what just happened?" moment about a sentence into the shift. So sentence length, type of adverbs, even people's initial reactions are the same as they have been in the preceding quiet; it should take a paragraph or two for the language to catch up with what's happening, which mirrors the surreal moments in the characters' minds where they are also trying to catch up.

Now I look forward to looking at the books and seeing whether this is actually what I did, or whether I'm just making stuff up.

I just finished the second book and have a question. I believe we are meant to understand that Garth is the one the outs Venera in an act meant to protect her. We don't see him do it, but we read his thought process.

When he apologizes later she interprets that as his condolences for the loss of her lover Bryce, who she then discovers alive after all. It didn't seem clear to me whether she realizes by the end what Garth was apologizing for and has forgiven him or if she is still unaware. If that is the case it would be very interesting to read that scene considering how differently you would expect the character to react at the end of the novel compared to the woman we met at the beginning of this novel or for that matter at the beginning of Sun of Suns.

Venera really does grow (a little bit) through the course of the novel. She's intended to start as a very unlikable character, the one she was in Sun of Suns. But my idea was always that she was socialized to be like this--literally trained to be a sociopath--and that, though she still doesn't have the mental language to justify altruism to herself by the end of this book, she's started unlearning the habits of paranoia she gained in her father's court. It's partly her realization that Chaison was already changing her into someone she liked better that generates she fierce grief in her when she thinks he's died. She's afraid she'll never finish becoming that new person.

Thank you, Karl! I am enjoying the series and I am starting book five today. You have built an amazing world with intriguing characters. I am intrigued to see how it all turns out.

That's very flattering, Cheryl. It means a lot to me to hear that people are enjoying my work; as an author you sort of throw things out like messages in a bottle, and hope that someday you find out what happened to them. Actually getting praise for your work... it never gets old.

I do hope you enjoy the rest of the books. I think I more or less lived up to the promise of Sun of Suns, especially with the finale.

Thank for participating Karl, enjoyed the first two books, go the rest on the 'to read' list - do you have any new novels coming out this year?

This year it's a flurry of short stories, mostly following up on the success of "Degrees of Freedom" which was published in 2014 in the Hieroglyph anthology and netted me all kinds of attention. I am working on a novella and a new novel, though; the novel is a bear and is taking a mighty struggle to wrestle into shape, but it'll be worth it! Many new projects, in short, but not very many seeing the light of day in 2016.