Contemporary Authors

• Arabella of Mars Tor (New York, NY), 2016

1. Arabella of Mars https://lccn.loc.gov/2016288141 Levine, David D., 1961- author. Arabella of Mars / David D. Levine. First edition. New York : Tor, 2016. 350 pages ; 22 cm. PS3612.E92384 A88 2016 ISBN: 9780765382818 (hardcover)0765382814 (hardcover)

• Daniel D. Levine - http://www.daviddlevine.com/about/bio-photo/

  David D. Levine is the multi-award-winning author of the Regency interplanetary airship adventure novel Arabella of Mars (Tor 2016) and more than fifty science fiction and fantasy stories. His “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, his story “Nucleon” won the James White Award, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, Sturgeon, and Locus. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, Realms of Fantasy, Tor.com, numerous anthologies and websites, and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, as well as his collection Space Magic from Wheatland Press, which won the Endeavour Award for the best SF or Fantasy book by a Pacific Northwest writer.

  David is a contributor to George R. R. Martin’s bestselling shared-world series Wild Cards. He is also a member of Book View Cafe, a writer-owned publishing cooperative, and Oregon Science Fiction Conventions Inc., a non-profit organization which produces OryCon and other SF conventions. He has narrated podcasts for Escape Pod, PodCastle, and StarShipSofa and the audiobook of Space Magic, and his video production “Dr. Talon’s Letter to the Editor” was a finalist for the Parsec Award. In 2010 he spent two weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station, a simulated Mars base in the Utah desert.

  David lives in a hundred-year-old bungalow in Portland, Oregon. His web site can be found at www.daviddlevine.com.

• Daniel D. Levine - http://www.daviddlevine.com/about/honors-awards/

  Honors & Awards

  Hugo Award for Best Short Story winner: Tk’Tk’Tk (2006) Nebula Award for Best Short Story nominee: Damage (2015) Nebula Award for Best Short Story nominee: Titanium Mike Saves the Day (2008)

  Hugo Award for Best Short Story nominee: The Tale of the Golden Eagle (2004) John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer nominee (2004) John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer nominee (2003)

  Phobos Fiction Contest winner: Ukaliq and the Great Hunt (2002) James White Award winner: Nucleon (2001) Endeavour Award winner: Space Magic (2009)

  People’s Choice Award for Best Drabblecast Story of the Year winner: Babel Probe (2009) Writers of the Future Contest winner: Rewind (2001) Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest winner: Citizen-Astronaut (2010)

  Parsec Award finalist: Letter to the Editor (2013) Year’s Best Fantasy #2: Nucleon (2002) Science Fiction: The Best of 2003: The Tale of the Golden Eagle (2004)

  Year’s Best Fantasy #5: Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely (2005) Year’s Best Science Fiction #24: I Hold My Father’s Paws (2007) Heiresses of Russ 2012: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction: The Tides of the Heart (2012)

  The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year Five: Liaisons Galantes: A Scientific Romance (2014) Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera: The End of the Silk Road (2014) The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1: Damage (2015)

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Levine

  David D. Levine
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  David D. Levine
  David-D-Levine.jpg
  David D. Levine at a reading for the launch of his debut novel, Arabella of Mars. Taken at Powell's Books Cedar Hills Crossing, in Beaverton, OR, on July 13, 2016.
  Born February 21, 1961 (age 55)
  Minneapolis, Minnesota
  Occupation Writer
  Nationality American
  Genre Science-fiction
  Notable works Wavefronts of history and memory, Tk'tk'tk, Teaching the Pig to Sing, Arabella of Mars
  Notable awards Hugo Award for Best Short Story
  Spouse Kate Yule (d. 2016)[1]
  David D. Levine (born February 21, 1961, in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American science fiction writer who won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2006 for his story "Tk'tk'tk". His novel, Arabella of Mars, was published by Tor Books in July 2016.

  Contents [hide]
  1 Biography
  2 Bibliography
  2.1 Collections
  2.2 Novels
  2.3 Wild Cards anthology
  2.4 Other Short Fiction
  2.5 Essays and reporting
  3 References
  4 External links
  Biography[edit]
  Although he has a long interest in reading and writing science fiction, he began as a writer of technical articles.[2] He has primarily written short fiction; his first professional fiction sale came in 2001.[3] A long-time member of science fiction fandom and early member of MilwApa (the Milwaukee amateur press association), he also co-edited a fanzine, Bento, with his wife, Kate Yule,[4] and has served as Convention Committee Chair for Potlatch.[5] His short story "Ukaliq and the Great Hunt" appeared in The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology Volume 2 (2003).

  Although he grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Levine now lives in Portland, Oregon.

  In 2010, he spent two weeks in a simulated Mars habitat of the Mars Society, in Utah.[6]

• Locus Online - http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2011/05/david-d-levine-life-on-mars/

  David D. Levine: Life on Mars

  — posted Thursday 12 May 2011 @ 7:48 pm PST
  David D. Levine was born in Minneapolis MN and grew up in Milwaukee WI, where his family moved when he was six. He went to Washington University in St. Louis MO, earning a bachelor’s in architecture. Unable to find work in that field, he moved to Portland OR and became a technical writer, eventually working for Intel, where he became a software engineer and user interface designer. He worked in high tech from 1983 to 2007, when he retired and became a full-time writer.

  Levine has been active in fandom since the 1980s, working as staff or on committees for various conventions. Since 1989, he has co-edited the roughly annual fanzine Bento with his wife Kate Yule. His first SF publication was fannish alternate history ‘‘The Worldcon That Wasn’t’’ (1996), in anthology Again, Alternate Worldcons.

  He attended Clarion West in 2000, and his short fiction career began in earnest with ‘‘Wind from a Dying Star’’ in Bones of the World (2001), followed by over 40 stories in magazines and anthologies, notably James White Award winner ‘‘Nucleon’’ (2001); Hugo and Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist ‘‘The Tale of the Golden Eagle’’ (2003); Hugo Award winner ‘‘Tk’tk’tk’’ (2005); and Nebula finalist ‘‘Titanium Mike Saves the Day’’ (2007). Many of his stories were gathered in Endeavour Award-winning anthology Space Magic (2008). In January 2010 he spent two weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station, a simulated Mars base in the Utah desert. He wrote up his experiences in self-published book The Mars Diaries (2010).

  Levine was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer in both 2003 and 2004. He and Yule live in Portland OR.

• The Qwillery - http://qwillery.blogspot.com/2016/07/arabella-of-mars-blog-tour-interview.html

  Friday, July 08, 2016
  Arabella of Mars Blog Tour - Interview with David D. Levine and Giveaway!

  Please welcome David D. Levine to The Qwillery as part of Arabella of Mars Blog Tour and the 2016 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. Arabella of Mars will be published on July 12th by Tor.

  TQ: Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?

  David: I've been writing SF since I was a kid, to the extent that my middle school and high school writing teachers asked me to try writing something else. But I stopped writing fiction after college, when I was working as a technical writer and it was too much like the day job. I started writing fiction again when I changed from technical writing to software engineering in 1999.

  TQ: Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?

  David: I am SUCH a plotter. I've tried pantsing, and it's just impossible for me to start writing a story without, almost immediately, knowing what comes next and the ending. That being said, as I grow more experienced I find myself outlining in less and less detail, and pantsing more and more between outline points.

  TQ: You've written over 50 shorts stories, have been shortlisted for the Nebula, Campbell and Sturgeon Awards, and have won a Hugo Award. What were the biggest challenges for you when writing a novel? What did you enjoy the most about writing a novel?

  David: The biggest challenges when writing a novel were keeping all the details straight in my head and just finishing the darn thing. It takes me about two years to finish a novel draft, and I really hope I can find some way to speed that up because my next deadline is only a year away. My favorite part of novel writing is having the time and space to really learn about the world and characters.

  TQ: Describe Arabella of Mars in 140 characters or less.

  David: ARABELLA OF MARS is a Regency Interplanetary Airship Adventure. It's the story of a Patrick O'Brian girl in a Jane Austen world.

  TQ: Tell us something about Arabella of Mars that is not found in the book description.

  David: I've tried to be as faithful as possible to real physics and the technology of the early 19th century... which is not to say I haven't handwaved some things.

  TQ: What inspired you to write Arabella of Mars? What appeals to you about writing Alternate History?

  David: I started with the idea of a solar system full of air, then began to wonder how people would first have discovered this. I figured it would have been during the Enlightenment, which led to the idea that the exciting period of interplanetary exploration would have been in the 1700s. My writing style has been described as old-fashioned, so I decided to turn this bug into a feature and write historical fiction!

  TQ: What sort of research did you do for Arabella of Mars?

  David: I read tons of reference books and primary sources on the Regency, the Napoleonic Wars, the East India Company, and the British presence in India and China... and lots of Patrick O'Brian novels.

  TQ: The novel is set primarily on Mars. In your opinion what is the allure of Mars?

  David: Mars is our nearest neighbor in space and a near-twin of Earth. It's been a fascinating place for people to project their ideas about the possibilities of life other than what we know for the entirety of human history and probably even before that. What's not to love?

  TQ: Who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?

  David: Captain Singh was the easiest. He is very much like me: cool, intellectual, and distant. Arabella was the hardest, because she's on stage for the whole book and she needs to go on a difficult journey both physically and emotionally.

  TQ: Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in Arabella of Mars?

  David: With this book I have tried to examine issues of gender, race, and cultural relations using the Regency period as a lens to focus on our own time. Arabella, a tomboy raised by Martians, is an outsider in her world, but she also has considerable privilege because of her race and class. In her adventures she abandons some of that privilege (leaving the gentry for a life as a common airman) but also gains privilege (leaving the woman's world for life as a man) and learns much in the process.

  TQ: Which question about Arabella of Mars do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!

  David:

  Q: Would the flying ships you've described really work?

  A: I've done my best to make them at least plausible, but I think that for them to really fly would require an adjustment to the force of gravity and some other fundamental physical constants.

  TQ: Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from Arabella of Mars.

  David:
  "Some day, Arabella thought, perhaps she might take passage on such a ship. To sail the air, and see the asteroids, and visit the swamps of Venus would be a grand adventure indeed. But to be sure, no matter how far she traveled she would always return to her beloved Woodthrush Woods."
  "Setting her candle down, Arabella seated herself on the floor behind the automaton and lifted its skirts, in a fashion that would have been most improper if it were human. Beneath the suffocating layers of muslin and linen the automaton’s ingenious mechanisms gleamed in the candlelight, brass and ivory and mahogany each adding their own colors to a silent symphony of light and shadow. Here was the mainspring, there the escapement, there the drum. The drum was the key to the whole mechanism; its pins and flanges told the device where to place its fingers, when to nod, when to appear to breathe. From the drum, dozens of brass fingers transmitted instructions to the rest of the device through a series of levers, rods, springs, and wires."

  TQ: What's next?

  David: At this writing I have just finished the first draft of book 2 in The Adventures of Arabella Ashby, currently titled "Arabella and the Battle of Venus." There will be a book 3, and I've begun thinking and researching for that. I've also just completed a short story, the first one of those in many months.

  TQ: Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.

  David: You're very welcome!

• The Short Review - http://www.theshortreview.com/authors/DavidDLevine.htm

  Interview with David D. Levine
  The Short Review: How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?

  David D. Levine: They were written between 2000 and 2005, and each took from a couple of days to a month (or so) to write.

  TSR: Did you have a collection in mind when you were writing them?

  DL: No, each was written with the intention of publication in a magazine or anthology. Some were written for specific markets, others as general "spec" stories. I figured I would not have a collection until much later in my career, but fellow Portland writer M. K. Hobson said I should be shopping a collection around. I put together a proposal, and the first small press I sent it to accepted it.

  TSR: How did you choose which stories to include and in what order?

  DL: The editor asked for 80,000 words, and it was really hard to choose such a small slice of my work. It's a mix of my best-known stories and my favorite but least-known stories, and is intended to demonstrate my range (fantasy, hard SF, humorous, serious, etc.). Each of these stories makes me proud in some way.

  TSR: What does the word "story" mean to you?

  DL: I think that a "story" has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There has to be a situation, and characters, and the characters have to DO things -- things that have an effect on the situation and the other characters -- and the characters must be changed by the effects of those things. A lot of modern fiction is just vignettes, not stories -- the difference is that the characters don't take any action, or there isn't an end.

  TSR: Do you have a "reader" in mind when you write stories?

  DL: I suppose, like a lot of writers, I write mostly for myself, or people like me. My ideal reader is one who is looking for the traditional science fiction "sense of wonder," who wants a story where things happen, in an interesting and unusual setting.

  TSR: Is there anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your
  collection, anything at all?

  DL:Which of these stories surprised you the most?

  TSR: How does it feel knowing that people are buying your book?

  DL: I'm amazed and honored that anyone is willing to pay good money for some stuff I just made up. One of the coolest things that's happened to me is seeing my book in the catalog of my local library system... and most of the copies were checked out!

  TSR: What are you working on now?

  DL: At the moment I am just finishing up final revisions on my second novel; I plan to have it in the mail by the end of this month. My first novel has been rejected by just about everyone but I haven't given up on it yet. Once this novel is out of the way I plan to work on short stories for a little while before starting on novel #3.

  TSR: What are the three most recent short story collections you've read?

  DL: The Dog Said Bow-Wow by Michael Swanwick, Transhuman edited by Mark Van Name and Toni Weisskopf, and the 25th annual Year's Best SF edited by Gardner Dozois.

New discoveries: a variety of debuts
Neal Wyatt
Library Journal.
141.14 (Sept. 1, 2016): p142.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text: 
Finding a debut author is a special delight for bibliophiles, regardless of their preferred reading matter: fiction, nonfiction, or specific genre. Here
are six titles that would never be shelved together but do offer up the delightful promise of a new author.
Yaa Gyasi's haunting and forceful HOMEGOING (Knopf. Jun. 2016. ISBN 9781101947135. $26.95; ebk. ISBN 9781101947142) is a riving
novel that at its heart is the separation of two half-sisters living in 18th-century Africa. Effia is sold off for a bride price to an English trader and
goes to live with him in the colonial comforts of the Cape Coast Castle. Below, in its dungeons, is Esi, "cargo" bound for the terrors and
depravations of American slavery. Divided by these two shores, the book tracks generations on both continents as the history of each branch of
the family unfurls. Gyasi's intimate take is as harrowing and confrontational as its topic demands and yet, at its close, is gilded with a type of
cathartic hope.
POND (Riverhead. Jul. 2016. ISBN 9780399575891. $26; ebk ISBN 9780399575914) reads more like a diary, or collection of oddly paged
vignettes, than it does a novel. However, a lack of narrative drive does nothing to lessen the slow and heady pleasures of Claire-Louise Bennett's
cross between Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, M.F.K. Fisher, and any number of poets. Her first-person account of a woman living alone in rural
Ireland is sharply personal and oddly addictive. The character's thoughts lead and trip this way and that, as observations unfold and fold back.
Topics include meditations about lovers and food, the travails of donating a box of colored straws to a party, and riding a bike in the dark. Readers
interested in the company of a bright, observational character will find it a captivating experience.
Sf fans will know David D. Levine from his short stories. His debut novel, ARABELLA OF MARS (Tor. Jul. 2016. ISBN 9780765382818.
$25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781466889491), is a mashup of steam-punk, seafaring adventure, and the tropes of historical romance. Set in the 1800s on
both a colonialized Mars and England, it follows the intrepid Arabella as she joins an airship crew disguised as a boy and travels home to Mars in
order to save her brother from a murderous plot. Shipboard fights, battles, and mutiny all occur before Arabella finally makes it back--only to find
that her brother is nowhere in sight. An interesting automaton adds dimension and helps advance the slightly romantic plot.
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Blair Braverman has held many jobs, all connected with the landscape she most loves: the very cold and icy climes of places such as Alaska and
Norway. In WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN ICE CUBE: CHASING FEAR AND FINDING HOME IN THE GREAT WHITE NORTH (Ecco:
HarperCollins. Jul. 2016. ISBN 9780062311566. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062311580), she describes her search for an anchor in such locales and
her quest to hold her own within them. She tells her story with an honesty that is lyrically compelling, sickeningly disquieting, and boldly
triumphant. Cutting back and forth in time, she recounts learning rough lessons, experiencing periods of wonder, and celebrating moments of
exaltation. Tales of friendship, work, discovery, and more are equally detailed in vivid and fully lived reminiscences.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS (St. Martin's. Aug. 2016. ISBN 9781250121004. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250121011), B.A. Paris's horrifying
domestic thriller made a huge splash in the UK, where it got a great deal of notice and made best sellers lists. Grace and Jack Angel have a
seemingly perfect marriage and charm everyone they meet. Jack is movie-star handsome and has never lost a case in his laudable role as an
attorney, ensuring that domestic abusers go to prison for a very long time. Soon the couple will welcome Grace's beloved sister, Millie, into their
household as well. So why does Grace shake with terror in her husband's presence? Why does she live in a house with bars on the windows and a
special room that cannot be opened from the inside?
Nina Stibbe made a splash with her epistolary memoir, Love, Nina, about the time she spent as a nanny in a literary household in London. Her
first novel, MAN AT THE HELM (Back Bay: Little, Brown. Jan. 2016. ISBN 9780316286701. pap. $14.99; ebk. ISBN 9780316286749), is
equally enchanting. After her mom and dad breakup, nine-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself with a problem: she and her family need a new
father figure if they are ever to find stability. Few choices are on offer, however, and Lizzie must do what she can to steer her family in the right
direction. Delightful and witty, Stibbe's debut is full of wonderfully drawn characters, sharp dialog, and smart observations. Those hooked on
Lizzie can read her further adventures in Paradise Lodge, which came out in July.
Neal Wyatt compiles LJ's online feature Wyatt's World and is the author of The Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction (ALA Editions, 2007).
She is a collection development and readers' advisory librarian from Virginia. Those interested in contributing to The Reader's Shelf should
contact her directly at Readers_ Shelf@comcast.net
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
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Wyatt, Neal. "New discoveries: a variety of debuts." Library Journal, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 142. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462044987&it=r&asid=eea22ffc8c03cb312669062e49ac78a1. Accessed 1 Feb.
2017.
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Arabella of Mars
Krista Hutley
Booklist.
112.21 (July 1, 2016): p46.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text: 
* Arabella of Mars. By David D. Levine. July 2016. 352p. Tor, $25.99 (9780765382818); e-book (9781466889491).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This Verne-inspired novel is a joyous throwback to sf adventure tales of old. Levine combines steampunk technology, Victorian sensibilities,
British colonialism, and interplanetary maritime swashbuckling with wit, energy, and excitement. As a proper English lady, 17-year-old Arabella
Ashby should regard the Martian frontier a barbarous place, but having lived on an English plantation on Mars all her life, Arabella feels more
kinship with the Martian way of life, taught by her itkhalya (nanny), than her mother's lessons. Fearing further native behavior, her mother takes
Arabella and her sisters to Earth, where she withstands frilly dresses, prim conversations, and unrelenting gravity. When she uncovers a plot to
control the family fortune by murdering her brother Michael, still on Mars, Arabella disguises herself as a boy and enlists on a Mars Trading
Company ship. Despite her inexperience sailing the solar system, Arabella has a knack for the complicated automata used for navigation. To
return to Mars, she endures grueling labor, storms, privateers, mutiny, and an uncomfortable attraction to the confident Captain Singh. The
alternate-world science is novel, the plot thrilling, and the romance appropriately chaste, but with her wits, resourcefulness, and courage, Arabella
cuts a dashing figure as the heroine of this story. --Krista Hutley
YA: Teens who like urban fantasy (particularly the novels of Gail Carriger) will find lots to enjoy here. KH.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hutley, Krista. "Arabella of Mars." Booklist, 1 July 2016, p. 46. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459889025&it=r&asid=808b79ce97238525884de27191f3af83. Accessed 1 Feb.
2017.
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Arabella of Mars
Publishers Weekly.
263.19 (May 9, 2016): p51.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
* Arabella of Mars
David D. Levine. Tor, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7653-8281-8
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Arabella, a human teenager born on Mars, is catapulted into adventure in a tale that cleverly combines some of the most intriguing elements of
steampunk and classic science fiction. In an alternate 1812, Arabella's mother moves her three daughters to Earth and away from the wild
influences of the Martian colony. When the family gets news that Arabella's father has died on Mars, the headstrong 17 -year-old girl disguises
herself as a boy and hires on with one of the great ships that sail the solar winds between the planets, planning to protect her brother, who's still
on Mars, from treachery. Along the way, she faces privateers and mutiny, but Arabella is resourceful and courageous, gamely enduring hardship
to accomplish her mission. Arabella is a fully realized character, daring and willing to risk everything to protect the brother she loves and the
legacy that her father has left them. Her wits and cleverness save the ship and crew more than once in this rousing swashbuckler. Agent: Paul
Lucas, Janklow & Nesbit. (July)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Arabella of Mars." Publishers Weekly, 9 May 2016, p. 51. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA452883325&it=r&asid=d16178b7f0af8e33d61af9894b72917d. Accessed 1 Feb.
2017.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A452883325

Wyatt, Neal. "New discoveries: a variety of debuts." Library Journal, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 142. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462044987&it=r. Accessed 1 Feb. 2017. Hutley, Krista. "Arabella of Mars." Booklist, 1 July 2016, p. 46. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459889025&it=r. Accessed 1 Feb. 2017. "Arabella of Mars." Publishers Weekly, 9 May 2016, p. 51. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA452883325&it=r. Accessed 1 Feb. 2017.

• TOR
  http://www.tor.com/2016/08/16/blending-the-impossible-david-d-levine-arabella-of-mars/
  Word count: 790

  THAT WAS AWESOME
  THAT WAS AWESOME! WRITERS ON WRITING
  Blending the Impossible: David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars

  Mary Robinette Kowal
  Tue Aug 16, 2016 12:00pm 3 comments 1 Favorite [+]

  Let’s say you like the Regency era, but you also like space opera, and really like Patrick O’Brian. And Mars. Normally, mixing all of these disparate elements together would be a hot mess, but David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars is awesome. I am completely in love with this book and want another one yesterday.

  Where to start… How about Mars? The book opens on Mars and it’s the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs with vast alien civilizations, but it’s seen through the lens of British colonialism. Wait—that makes it sound dry, and it’s not. Well, I mean, it IS a desert, but the plot is about as far from dry as you can get. What I mean is that Arabella has a nanny, effectively, in the form of Khemel, her Martian protector. They have a genuinely affectionate bond, but the book doesn’t gloss over the way the British Empire created exactly these dynamics here on Earth.

  What I love about the book is that it’s smart, and it’s smart without sacrificing forward plot momentum.

  So while the book starts on Mars, it doesn’t stay there. In fact one of the first things that happens is that Arabella gets shipped back to Earth because her mother is concerned about how she is running amok on Mars.

  It’s nice to see the Regency from the point of view of someone who is both British and not at the same time. Arabella is Martian. Earth is strange to her. It is warm and damp and heavy. And because she’s grown up in a colonial outpost, the customs all seem strange.

  From there, for reasons which I won’t go into because it’s way more fun to experience it, Arabella has to go back to Mars and to do so she winds up disguising herself as a boy and working on a Marsma. This is the interstellar version of the Indiaman, which plied the seas between England and India in the 1800s.

  Here interstellar currents between planets allow people to travel back and forth on interstellar ships. And this is where you can really tell that David Levine is a science fiction writer, because having decided upon this outrageous conceit of an interstellar wind between planets, everything from that point forward is rigidly scientifically accurate. He thinks about “free descent.” He thinks about navigation. How does one navigate between worlds using 19th-century technology? And through all of this you have an exciting yarn and about a young woman who is torn out of her place and still manages to excel even within the confines of her role in society.

  And it’s also just plain fun. There are pirates. In space. In the Regency!

  You with me so far? Because in addition to the social drama, this is also an adventure at sea. Or in this case space. Here, too, David doesn’t disappoint. He manages a large cast of characters, such as would be on a sailing ship in the 1800s, and gives them each a distinct personality. Because Arabella is new on board, she’s at the bottom of the pecking order. Her jobs are the least desirable and the grubbiest, which really gives you a sense of what life a sea would have been like.

  Except, of course, that they are in space. So she has to have a safety line around her ankle as she moves around ship. It is a source of constant tension, because one wrong move could send someone spinning out past the ship to float between worlds. You can’t drown in this endless vastness, but you can die slowly of starvation and dehydration. The dangers of space are clear and almost a character in their own right.

  And yet, what I wanted most, while reading this, was to be able to go on one of these vessels. I wanted the Mars of David’s imagination to be real. I wanted Arabella to teach me how to navigate the Martian desert at night. I wanted to fly through the gunnery deck in free descent.

  As I said when I started, there are so many amazing ideas packed into this book, that in a lesser writer’s hands it would be a hot mess. In actuality, Arabella of Mars is awesome piled upon awesome.

• Futures Less Traveled
  http://www.futureslesstravelled.com/review-damage-by-david-d-levine/
  Word count: 511

  [Review] Damage, by David D. Levine
  DEC 08, 2015by VIVIENNE RAPERin ARCHIVES
  Greg from Rocket Stack Rank wrote in the comments on Lela E. Buis’ blog:

  Try “Damage” for a really bad story that actually got recommended by someone.

  How could I resist an invitation like that? And, yep, Damage is pretty bad. Although not the worst I’ve read this year.

  Plot-wise, Scraps – a cobbled-together intelligent spaceship with feelings – is tasked to go on a top secret mission with her pilot, Commander Ziegler. Turns out that he’s an arrogant, blood-crazed bastard commanded by a genocidal maniac, and her mission is to penetrate Earth’s defenses and nuke Delhi until it glows.

  Writing this review, I assumed Scraps was a girl spaceship (they were cobbled together from two ‘female’ spaceships). Her behaviour is certainly a bad gender stereotype. She’s mainly passive. The pilot does the flying. Her main role seems to be providing tactical data and doing basic tasks, which my iPhone 6 can manage just fine without consciousness/sentience. The rest of the time, her “maths co-processor” is devoted to loving her pilot (the reasons for this programming are explained), bolstering his oversized ego and hand-wringing about the horrors of war.

  The pseudo-sexual elements were especially cringeworthy:

  I miss the thrill of my beloved’s touch on my yoke.

  I had no doubt he was the same man who had warmed my cockpit every day since the very hour I awoke

  The whole thing reads like Fifty Shades of G-Force** in which Anastasia Steele is handcuffed to Christian Grey while he goes on a killing spree in central Seattle. Or maybe Fifty Shades of Grey crossed with Pacific Rim, in which a gigantic Anastasia Steele trashes Seattle while Christian Grey rides on her back, giving orders. All Scraps needed was an ‘inner goddess‘ in her bomb bay.

  [**Fifty Shades is the only erotica I’ve read. Hence it gets used as a reference point].

  I couldn’t suspend disbelief at the weirdness of this setup. If Scraps is an AI, why isn’t *she* flying the spaceship? She manages to deploy grapnels on her own. In fact, why use a human pilot for the battles, at all? He’d be flesh blancmange after the first manoeuvre. And why doesn’t anyone – except Specialist Toman (a traitor to the Free Belt) – seem to notice that Scraps has PTSD?

  If Scraps had true agency, blowing the s**t out the good guys instead of putting her metaphorical fingers over her eyes like a good little spaceship, I think it would have improved the story. She wouldn’t be an immaculate victim-protagonist, but – instead – a troubled and complex war criminal. That raises more interesting questions, I think.

  Conclusion: 2.5 stars + 0.5 stars for the space battles. The writing is alright. The plot has a beginning, middle and an end. The story elements don’t quite add up.

• The Novel Hermit
  http://www.thenovelhermit.com/review/arabella-of-mars-david-d-levine/
  Word count: 1231

  REVIEW • FROM LONDON TO MARS! (ARABELLA OF MARS BY DAVID D. LEVINE)
  JULY 19, 2016 • CEE • REVIEWS
  Arabella of Mars1

  Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine • July 12, 2016 • Tor Books
  Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Indigo | Library
  Ever since Newton witnessed a bubble rising from his bathtub, mankind has sought the stars. When William III of England commissioned Capt. William Kidd to command the first expedition to Mars in the late 1600s, they proved that space travel was both possible and profitable.

  Now, one century later, a plantation in the flourishing British colony on Mars is home to Arabella Ashby. A tomboy who shares her father’s deft hand with complex automatons. Being raised on the Martian frontier by her Martian nanny, Arabella is more a wild child than a proper young lady. Something her mother plans to remedy with a move to an exotic world Arabella has never seen: London, England.

  Arabella soon finds herself trying to navigate an alien world until a dramatic change in her family’s circumstances forces her to defy all conventions in order to return to Mars in order to save both her brother and the plantation. To do this, Arabella must pass as a boy on the Diana, a ship serving the Mars Trading Company with a mysterious Indian captain who is intrigued by her knack with automatons. Arabella must weather the naval war between Britain and France, learning how to sail, and a mutinous crew if she hopes to save her brother from certain death.
  myreview

  I received this book for free from Tor Books for review consideration. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
  First sentence: “Arabella eased her bedroom door open and crept into the dark hallway.”

  Mars is home for Arabella Ashby. Not this London, England her mother has forced her to move to. She could be roaming the Mars frontier or fiddling with automatons at her family’s plantation, instead she’s learning to be a proper young lady in London at her mother’s urgings and suffocating under all the expectations and rules.

  With threats to her brother’s life and plantation on Mars, Arabella runs off to save her brother. On her way to Mars, she disguises herself as a boy to get back; she joins the Diana, a ship from the Mars Trading Company, and learns how to work on a ship and navigate; she encounters dangers like French privateers and mutiny that she never flinches at. Arabella’s on a journey of a lifetime to Mars.

  what to expect from arabella of mars
  You have a girl who will do absolutely everything to save the people she loves, even if it puts her at danger.
  Words I would use to describe Arabella Ashby: headstrong, brave, resilient, curious, quick thinker. She doesn’t care for English rules on propriety. She’ll break all the rules of what’s expected of her (and she does). Despite the terrible circumstances she finds herself in, she faces them head on. She disguises herself as a boy, and takes on jobs that exhausts and scares her. Arabella will do everything she can to get to Mars. If she has to do the heavy lifting and do jobs she has never done on the Diana, she’ll do it.

  You experience the high skies journey to Mars.
  Want to know what life on a ship is like? The Diana shows you that. Life in the skies is very much like life on the sea. You sail across Space as if it’s the sea. Wind currents in pushes the ship forward fast. Asteroids are considered the islands of Space. It’s a wonderful way of traveling that Arabella gets to experience firsthand.

  The journey to Mars is not relaxing trip. There’s a crew full of members of the Mars Trading Company working 24/7 to keep the ship sailing across Space by using the winds and a crew to navigate effortlessly. Being part of the crew means a lot of hard work that will physically and mentally exhaust you. Men are shoveling coal and pedaling; they have to fight and be quick on their frets when they’re in life-threatening situations. You gotta be able to pull your own weight. Arabella of Mars spends a lot of time exploring this life, which slows down the book a lot.

  You learn a lot about navigation.

  You learn everything there is to know about navigating through the skies and Space when Captain Prakash Singh takes Arabella under his wing. It’s a semi-complicated process that only a couple people can understand—Arabella included. Navigation on the Diana involves Aadim, an automaton that acts as a clockwork navigator and has the most accurate readings. This navigating automaton is a source of fascination for these characters, and I wish it was explored more, especially after some very curious moments with Aadim.

  You get a taste of Mars and Martian life, but not enough.
  In this world, Mars is a British colony as well as a place Arabella calls home. It’s a place where it values its females over their male—warriors tend to be female Martians. It doesn’t seem any different from the countries Great Britain had colonized. The portrayal of Mars and Martians lack necessary world building. It’s an important place for Arabella, so I expected to learn more about Martian culture and custom and everything that makes them vastly different from English humans. It’s disappointing they aren’t really delved into until the last part of the book during the Martian uprising occurs. It made me wonder what life was life before and after Arabella moved to London.

  Arabella of Mars touches upon British colonialism briefly.
  Mars and the Mars Trading Company will probably remind you of a former British colony—India. I didn’t like the portrayal of colonialism here because it’s hinted at but ultimately glossed over even though it vastly impacts Mars and Martians. These characters do not acknowledge the problems of it and the problems that can and will arise from it. It’s too idealistic and naive to not address the issue with colonialism even if it’s in a fun story.

  Should you read Arabella of Mars? I’ll give a tentative maybe. If you want a steampunk-regency-kind of sci-fi book about a girl who pretends to be a boy, joins the ship crew to fly to Mars, and risks everything to save her brother, look no further than Arabella of Mars.

  I personally was disappointed with the book. I wasn’t as invested in the story as I expected to be. Arabella of Mars feels a bit disjointed. It spends a lot of time exploring ship life, which is great but it doesn’t exactly move the story forward and ramp up the stakes that much, and it doesn’t do a lot of world building of Mars and Martians at all. It’s a steampunk-regency book that tries to have a bit of fun, but loses its way.

• My Bookshelf Dialogues
  https://mybookshelfdialogues.com/2016/09/07/arabella-of-mars-by-david-d-levine-book-review/
  Word count: 995

  YA SCIENCE-FICTION

  Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine (Book Review)
  ddlevine-arabella-cover-large
  Date: September 7, 2016
  Author: mensrea3
  0 Comments
  Arabella of MarsArabella of Mars by David D. Levine

  My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars
  What this book is about:

  We are back in 1812 and Arabella aged 16 is playing with her brother a game of shorosh khe kushura. She is determined that this time she will be able to beat him. Life is simple and beautiful for Arabella who lives on Mars with her family. But when a small accident sends her mother reeling, she is forced to return back to England on Earth with her two younger sisters. Because Mars is not a proper place for a young lady and Arabella needs to learn how to behave like a British young woman of her age. A year later Arabella and her family receive the devastating news of her beloved father’s passing on and of her brother’s new right to the family’s plantation on Mars. But Arabella also learns that her brother is in danger and the only way she can help him is by boarding on a ship back home to Mars.

  p1040619_fotor

  Arabella of Mars is written by the Hugo Award winner of 2006, David D. Levine. David D. Levine is a science fiction author of more than 50 stories and has been short-listed for numerous prestigious awards, among them the Nebula award. His first full length novel, Arabella of Mars is 348 pages long, reads from a third person perspective and follows 17-year-old Arabella Ashby on her adventures to save her beloved brother Michael.

  What is quite amazing about this book, first of all, is the wonderful conception to marry between interplanetary travel and Georgian England. If you think about it, there aren’t many stories out there that take place between 1812 and 1813 on both Earth and Mars. Here we have an alternate history novel with a female protagonist going on a great adventure disguised as a boy on a ship that can fly. That’s how people are moving from Earth to Mars, on flying ships. If it sounds cool that’s because it is!

  And even though the distance between planets was so unimaginably vast…even though the news must be months old…even though it had been more than eight months since she had seen him with her own eyes…somehow, some intangible connection had still remained between her and her father, and at that moment she felt that connection part, tearing like rotted silk.
  And she collapsed in sobs.

  p1040620_fotorArabella of Mars is a better science fiction story than Cinder. Is it wrong to compare? Maybe..But the reason why I chose to do so is because I’d like to urge young adult readers to go ahead and check this book out. It’s written in the YA way, and follows an adolescent protagonist in an epic adventure. The swear words are crossed out like so: f–k or d–n and there are very few (one or two) bloody scenes. There is no heavy scientific terminology and the premise is quite the opposite of overwhelming. The story is rather simple and straight forward and the book is light and fun to read.

  As she rushed along, her brains rattling in her head from each blow of her heels on the path in Earth’s heavy gravity, she saw the coach come to the inn, draw to a halt, and the guard at the rear of the carriage hand down a packet of mail to the innkeeper.

  p1040635_fotorWhich brings me to my next point: this novel didn’t amaze me. Throughout the novel I was thinking: “okay, now it’s going to get better. Alright, now we are getting to the good part. This is it right here, things will go off now.” But this never happened. The story, to me, was quite predictable and the fact that it revolved solely or on such a huge degree around Arabella (the name Arabella must have appeared 50 times more than any other name) made the novel quite monotonous. I could have cared about more characters but they were in an overly obvious manner just background noise. Everything that annoyed me in this story is pretty much what annoys me in most YA novels, so one could deduct that I have outgrown young adult books or I simply don’t like them anymore. One thing I’m quite sure about though, is that this book will appeal to a great YA reading population.

  And now she found herself in the thick of it. Lost, bewildered, friendless, nearly penniless, dressed as a boy in a suit of stolen clothes, she had to find her cousin Simon somewhere in this enormous crowd and stop him before he could take passage to Mars.

  Even though I was very excited to receive this book, my feelings throughout the novel can be summarised as “meh, it’s alright”. Arabella of Mars is saved by the fact that it is a very fast-paced book with rapidly changing scenes so it’s quite difficult for the reader to feel bored. As I said, it really reads like something that would be loved by YA readers and is also a wonderful introduction into the science fiction genre. But, although YA readers will enjoy it, I’m not so sure about science fiction and fantasy fans. I do recommend you check this book out if you think that the issues I had with it would not discourage you from picking it up.

  p1040631_fotor

  I received a copy of this book from the publisher, Tor Books, to review.

  The pictures used in this review were taken in Ag. Ioannis in Pelion, Greece.

• The Saucy Wenches Book Club
  http://thesaucywenchesbookclub.blogspot.com/2016/10/fangirl-fridays-david-d-levine-and.html
  Word count: 1282

  Friday, October 7, 2016
  Fangirl Fridays – David D. Levine and Arabella of Mars

  This week, I’m fangirling about the first novel by David D. Levine, an author whose work I’ve admired for a long time. Years ago, I marveled at the way he designed how computer programs looked and worked, but it’s a whole lot more fun to explore the marvelously imaginative realms he so cleverly crafts in his remarkable collection of science-fiction short stories. So the instant I realized he had published an entire novel, I couldn’t wait to dive in!

  Arabella of Mars is a swashbuckling historical adventure that was a bit reminiscent of old classics plus a few of my favorite new things. It was like Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs crossed with some Patrick O’Brian and Jane Austen — with a smattering of Joseph Conrad, a goodly serving of Black Sails, Dr. Who Easter eggs, and a whole lot of Arya Stark thrown in.

  Set during an alternate version of England’s 19th-century Regency period, it tells the story of Arabella Ashby, a young woman of aristocratic family and soon-to-be-marriageable age, who is raised on the colony of Mars and then abruptly whisked back to London society when her mother begins to fear she’s becoming too unladylike to find a suitable husband.

  Of course, “unladylike” is just another word for “interesting”, so I liked Arabella immediately and began cheering for her to escape.

  I’ll tell you what happens to Arabella and more about her fascinating world after the jump.

  Arabella was raised on a British colonial plantation on Mars and tutored by a Martian nanny in the wisdom and ways of the indigenous culture — and also in survival, self-defense, practical clothing, and critical thinking. It’s hard to go from outdoor tomboy shenanigans to long afternoons of needlework and the vapid veneer of aristocratic drawing rooms.

  Dismally dispirited, Arabella soon becomes aware of a brazen plot against her family on Mars, so she runs away to thwart it. At the tender age of 16, she impersonates a young lad to sign up as a laborer on a steampunk starship, which looks a lot like a wooden clipper ship with hot air balloons.

  Source

  Levine excels at building worlds and exploring technologies using vividly descriptive prose that makes it easy to picture in your mind. He also strives to stay true to real life history and physics, with a teensy twist or two. In Arabella’s world, Isaac Newton once discovered the principals of interplanetary space travel while pondering bubbles rising from his bath, and now ships made from a special Martian wood sail on interplanetary currents of air. (Though Arabella was halfway to Mars before I realized she was breathing in space. I found it easy to just go with the flow, so to speak, in this intriguing universe.) There is a steep and scary learning curve for Arabella as she becomes immediately swept up in the rigors of being an airman and surviving the innumerable, potentially lethal threats you’d expect on a long sea voyage, exponentially exacerbated by the fact that it’s space travel.

  Les Edwards’s interpretation of
  Bradbury’s brilliant prose
  (Momentary digression: Though the stories are very different, the vision of ships sailing to Mars struck a nostalgic chord for me. It brought to mind a vision that Ray Bradbury seared deeply into my brain in high school, from The Martian Chronicles, of blue-sailed sand ships gliding across the shifting Martian sands, “turning as lightly as moon thistles”. So Mars and sailing ships were a natural combination for me.)

  Arabella is a spunky, no-nonsense gal who adapts to her environments quickly and figures out how things work and how to fit in. She has many opportunities to tap into her extensive education, acquire new skills, and discover her deeply heroic nature. She’s a quick learner, so before long the enigmatic ship’s captain Singh is providing private lessons on navigational calculations and taking her (the lad) into his confidence. Which begins to complicate her plans and make her gender deception increasingly uncomfortable.

  Arabella also has a knack for understanding the intricate mechanical automata that inhabit her world. She grew up tinkering with her dad’s eclectic collection, under his supervision and tutelage, and this skill of course proves invaluable to the story.

  One of my favorite characters in this book was the ship’s navigational automaton, Aadim. He’s like the less neurotic ancestor of the onboard computer Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  Different cool space-travel technologies,
  same blurring of lines between natural and artificial intelligence

  Back on Mars, the dark side of British colonialism is bubbling over with a vengeance, and Arabella must use all her wits and youthful training to try to save herself and those she loves, possibly even the entire colony, plus set the stage for the next book in the series. But she’s one of those kickass heroines that the Wenches love, and I love the way she rises to every challenge!

  Levine loves getting into character
  for book readings
  Levine has written quite a few short stories in the science-fiction genre (including Damage and the anthology Space Magic), and one called Tk'Tk'Tk won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2006, but this is the first full-length novel he has published. Having mastered inventive explorations of gadgetry and artificial intelligence, I thought it was a real treat that he added a full cast of engaging characters and expanded the scope of his storytelling enough to fill a book series. And he really gets into his books: before writing Arabella, he lived for awhile in a simulated Mars base, which he describes as “a big tube in the middle of the Utah desert with five people I’d never met”. Sounds like a man truly passionate about exploring brave new worlds!

  I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the feisty Arabella. (Plus a few other characters, but that’s all I’ll say because spoilers!) And tagging along on a rollicking romp across space to visit a disturbing version of Mars in an alternate universe teeming with an infinite array of possibilities. Levine has promised more books in the Adventures of Arabella Ashby series, and here’s what he has in mind:

  Book two has the working title of Arabella and the Battle of Venus. Just as Arabella had to travel from Earth to Mars to save a member of her family, now she has to travel from Mars to Venus. {snip} I like to say that book one takes place on Mars and is where Arabella becomes a man — by which I mean a person with agency. Book two takes place mostly on Venus and is where Arabella learns to become a woman, by which I mean a person with empathy who can work with other people. Book three takes place largely on Earth, and this is where Arabella learns to become a leader. Source

  I’m smitten with Arabella’s smart and sassy sense of adventure, intrigued by her story arc, and can’t wait to see what Levine envisions for Venus, so I’m most definitely looking forward to the rest of the series! And if you are a fan of science fiction, historical adventure with a bit of steampunk, or just good old-fashioned storytelling about new-fangled worlds, you might like to meet Arabella, too!

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