One of my favorite science fiction authors, John Scalzi, is answering questions from readers this week on his blog. Today he answered my question:

You are the the Great God Scalzi, but sadly you are not quite omnipotent. In fact you only have the ability to create five new technologies. Which 5 technologies will you bestow upon humanity in 2008?

Here’s the beginning of his answer:

Five seems a little much; if you choose the right five, humans won’t have to do a damn thing for themselves between now and when the race finally implodes from ennui. So, Daniel, allow me to limit myself even further and give humanity only a single technological advance, not just in 2008 but ever. That advance: Fusion.

His answer is the same as mine. If I were to give humanity one technological gift it would be inexpensive, plentiful, and clean energy.

My review of this book is simple. I loved it.

Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon is a lot of fun. The book isn’t literature. The writing isn’t sublime. But reading this book is the most fun I’ve had reading for quite some time. I started reading it on a Wednesday evening. I read until very late that night and then finished it after work on Thursday evening. It was very much worth the sleep I lost.

The world Naomi Novik has created is a cross between the Napoleonic-era books by Patrick O’Brian and the novels of Anne McCaffrey. I probably have read about ten of the Patrick O’Brian novels, but I’ve only read one of Anne McCaffrey’s novels. I just don’t get excited about dragons. But Novik’s novel is a nice combination.

This story is a lot of fun as a voyage of discovery about how dragons work in her world. The book is very well paced and I was never bored reading it.

If you like fantasy novels, I highly recommend Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon.

Richard Russo is a great writer. His novel, Straight Man is a wonderful book. It is very fun and at the same time serious. I am very envious of his writing ability.

Russo wrote a piece in Sunday’s Washington Post about Eliot Spitzer as a character in a novel. Russo makes some good points about how character in novels should be complex–not entirely good or bad, but flawed. Spitzer is obviously a good choice.

One of the things that makes Russo great is his use of humor. In the article, Russo provides a character sketch of Spitzer and then he adds this humorous bit:

The novel’s getting pretty dark, and that worries me. Time for a little comic relief. Real-life Eliot has few friends, we’re told, the natural result of what some people like to call his arrogance, though my Eliot has never thought of it in those terms until now. Arrogant? He’d simply tried to put criminals in jail where they belonged. Wasn’t that his job? Is that any reason he should be friendless now? So I’ll give my Eliot one friend, someone to help him put what he’s done into perspective. I’ll give this friend some of my own cynical humor. Ah, what the hell, I’ll give him my name. Call him Rick. I can change that later with a keystroke.

Before everything begins to unravel, Eliot confides to Rick that he’s made a mess of things, betrayed everyone he loves, that he isn’t even sure who he is anymore. But Rick will tell him not to be melodramatic. It’s true that he’s made mistakes, big ones, Rick explains, but they aren’t what Eliot thinks they are. Rick admits he’s outraged that Eliot has spent $80,000 on prostitutes, because it shouldn’t cost that much to get a little action in America. It’s like one of those $500 Pentagon hammers. Downright wasteful. And why order a hammer from New Jersey and pay the shipping? There are perfectly good hammers in Washington — it’s a damned city of hammers, when you think about it. Where on earth did Eliot get the idea that New Jersey hammers were superior? All he wanted to do was nail something, right?

I wish I could write like that. If you haven’t read Straight Man, buy it.

In 1953, a Brit named Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell moved to Hollywood and became a screenwriter. His first film was The Fly in 1958 (the same story was remade by David Cronenberg in 1986). In 1960, the writers’ strike put his screenwriting career on hold.  But Clavell didn’t stop writing, instead he wrote a novel–King Rat. King Rat was a fictionalized account of his experiences as a POW in Changi Prison during World War II. This was the first novel that launched the book-writing career of James Clavell.

I hope other writers can writ their first big novel during the current writer’s strike. Apparently many of them are working on it.

Someday, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire will be turned into a HBO series. Until then, some fans have taken scenes from various movies and made then into a fake trailer for the series:

Robert Jordon, the author if the Wheel of Time series died today according to his blog.

A while ago I read the first four books of the Wheel of Time series (he was working on the 12th when he died). I loved the first book, The Eye of the World, but the story petered in the next few books. It seems like Jordon fell in love with his world and forgot to tell the story he set out to tell in the first book. Jordan was a good writer who could have been great with a good editor to reign him in.

I wish is family the best.