Science Fiction

In this week's edition of YA Wednesday, we say nothing about the 4th of July, or fireworks.

Hungry Reading
I lost Paul to a book for about a day and a half this week--he was buried in Hunger Games, the first book in Suzanne Collins' futuristic trilogy about an annual tournament of death between teenage boys and girls (on TV, of course). This book doesn't come out until October, but people have been raving about it for a couple of months now. Paul says it's a "good book for girls and boys"... something about the "action, and fashion."

He also mentioned that it reminded him of Battle Royale. Elizabeth at Fuse #8 also pointed out her husband mentioning Battle Royale in her review last weekend (because, according to Paul, "all guys" know about that movie), and she also had a hard time putting it down:

"About the time you get to the fifth chapter that ends with a sentence that forces you to read on, you’re scratching your head wondering how the heck she DOES that."

YA and SciFi, together again
This month's Locus Magazine is a special YA issue with essays from Neil Gaiman, Scot Westerfeld, Sharyn November, and other YA authors, as well as interviews with Garth Nix (whose Superior Saturday comes out next month) and Christopher Barzak. I particularly enjoyed this piece from Cory Doctorow on writing for younger readers (hat tip to Justin over at Guys Lit Wire).

Piers or Jack: What kind of girl are you, anyway?
E. Lockhart (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks) extols the pleasures of Piers Anthony's A Spell for Chameleon (and, basically, anything else in the Xanth or Adept series) over Kerouac's On the Road in "Exile to Mundania," a fun, short piece in the July/August issue of Horn Book Magazine (online today) about her teen self trying to conform to the books she thinks her boyfriend wants her to like:

"The thing about falling in love when you are seventeen: you haven’t yet figured out who you are. So when your significant person says, “Hey, don’t you love Kerouac?” you think, “Hmmm. I did fall asleep and feel annoyed most of the time I was reading On the Road, but maybe I did love it without really noticing, because it certainly was deep and I’m fairly sure I’m a deep person--and anyway, I’m outgrowing that kid stuff I used to like,” and so you answer him, “Yes. A total genius.”"

Let the super-readers have their big-kid books (more against age-banding)
Alli at Ypulse provides some helpful background--and thoughtful insights--today on the ongoing Brit discussion of whether or not books should be marked for certain age groups (which Paul mentioned in last week's kid-lit roundup). 

"...a sort of literary, slightly random, Word-Association-Rorschach-Blotty-Blog-Interview"
On her Imaginary Blog last weekend, author Lynn E. Hazen (whose Shifty comes out in September) asked bloggers Cynthia Leitich Smith (Cynsations), Elizabeth Bird (Fuse #8), and Eisha and Jules (Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast) to respond to the following:

8 Words: About Why You Blog
7 Words: About What You Blog About
6 Words: About What Makes Your Voice Unique
5 Adjectives: Used By You or Others to Describe Your Blog
4 Adverbs: About How You Write/Blog
3 Words: Culled From Your Comments
2 Words: Any Words
1 Noun

And here's one of the responses, from Jules (and she explains her noun in the interview that follows)...

   

 

--Heidi

Today marks the beginning of a holiday... (don't grab your jacket and bolt out the door yet)... Will Smith Weekend. That's right. Hancock, which opens today (and which you can already sign up for to be notified when it's available on DVD), marks the fifth Will Smith film to during Independence Day weekend. As you map out which screening will not be sold out (though reviews are less than favorable (Rotten tomatoes' verdict: "Though it begins with promise, Hancock suffers from a flimsy narrative and poor execution."), we've scheduled a Will Smith marathon to help you pass the time.

Wednesday, July 2nd
7 p.m. - Too early to catch Hancock, but in the mood for some action comedy? Sounds like a Bad Boys/Bad Boys II double feature! Realize halfway through Bad Boys II's second "climax" that this may not have been a good idea, as it's 147 minutes long and you still have to go to work in the morning. Still, go to bed chuckling.

Thursday, July 3rd
7 p.m. - Feeling non-committal after five hours of shoot-em-up car chases the previous night, you want something light and fluffy, but maybe not Fresh Prince. Time for Hitch!

9:30 p.m. - Now you'd like to wind down before bedtime. Watch The Pursuit of Happyness and sob yourself to sleep.

Friday, July 4th
2 p.m. - Recognize that you're about to stuff yourself at some barbecues. Watch I Am Legend to get your adrenaline racing (and hit the gym after you've envied Will's physique in that film).

8 p.m. - While waiting around for the fireworks to start, you get in a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon discussion with your friend. This makes someone go, "Hey, wasn't there a movie called Six Degrees of Separation?" Curious, you watch this 1993 drama that legitimized Smith's dramatic acting skills in Hollywood, because before that he only had "crying about his daddy abandoning him on Fresh Prince" to his name. (Seriously, watch that scene. You'll cry.)

11 p.m. - Watch Fresh Prince the rest of the evening, doing the Carleton dance with your friends.

Saturday, July 5th
2 p.m. - Still feeling sleepy from the night before, pop in Independence Day and Men in Black for some light fare and giggles. (Men in Black II would be taking this one step too far, better quit while you're ahead.)

6 p.m. - As you order takeout for a quiet night in, watch Enemy of the State and think, "If this film were released now, no one would have taken seriously Jack Black and Jamie Kennedy as NSA technicians." Suddenly feel paranoid that the government has planted surveillance in your home.

Sunday, July 6th
4 p.m. - In case the government is still watching you, pop in Ali and say out loud, "I'm a real student of Michael Mann's films. And Cassius Clay was truly the iconic sports figure to adapt into a film. It was definitely the role that turned Will Smith from an action star into a real Oscar contender."

8 p.m. - Shake off paranoia, watch I, Robot, decide it's not that bad. -- Ellen

David J. Williams' intriguing Mirrored Heavens is set in a 22nd century in which a space elevator has just been destroyed by a mysterious insurgent group called Autumn Rain. US counterintelligence agents Claire Haskell and Jason Marlowe are assigned to finding out more about Autumn Rain. Superpowers move to the brink of war and Haskell and Marlowe find themselves as much hunted as hunter in this action-packed thriller. The novel comes with glowing endorsements from Stephen Baxter and Nancy Kress, among others. I interviewed Williams recently, via email, to get his thoughts on the future...

Amazon.com: Can you share with Amazon readers where you are as you’re answering these questions?
David J. Williams: Sitting at my desk in my apartment in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C. Where, incredibly enough, the weather is mild enough to allow me to open the windows rather than cower in front of my AC. (Which is probably where I'll be by the time you read this.)

Amazon.com: What is your background, and how long have you been writing?
Williams: The vital stats: born in the UK, but have spent most of my life in the U.S. Former management consultant who's also moonlighted as a video-game writer--worked for Vancouver-BC-based Relic Entertainment, which put out the Homeworld franchise of video games.  And I've been writing since September 2000...though calling what I was doing back then "writing" is to take some liberty with the word.

Amazon.com: What was the spark or catalyst for writing Mirrored Heavens?
Williams: The short answer:  I was desperate to escape the corporate world, and knew I'd better think of something fast before I ended up wondering where the #$# my life went. The longer answer:  I found myself reading a lot of U.S. military planning papers (there's a lot more in the public domain than you might think), and was struck by the extent to which they were anticipating the shifting of the center of gravity of war into space. I started to think about Reagan's SDI initiative, and started to wonder what the world might be like when stuff like that actually becomes possible across the next several decades:  what happens when you really can construct a missile-shield that shoots down 99.9 percent of incoming warheads? What would that mean for strategy? What are the implications of the maturation of speed-of-light weaponry? That led to a future in which a new Eastern superpower arises to challenge the U.S.--and plunges the world into a second cold war that makes the first look like a warm-up act. 

Amazon.com: What are some of the challenges of writing nearly near-future fiction? Most writers either choose a period in this century or far future.
Williams: The biggest challenge is making everything as plausible as possible, while recognizing that you're still going to have folks crawling out of the woodwork nitpicking each and every aspect of your future.  There are people who will sit through endless tales about the singularity and aliens and FTL without batting an eyelid--but claim that Russia might still be a force to be reckoned with a century from now, and suddenly they're frothing at the mouth. But that's an inescapable component of writing about the near-future. It comes with the territory.   

Amazon.com: How does human civilization survive global warming to get to 2110?
Williams: Well, we almost don't. Things stagger downward for pretty much the entirety of the 21st century, until finally the United States and the Eurasian Coalition realize that they've got to put aside their differences and work together before it's too late. (Of course, that's when a new player with a very different agenda hits the scene...)

Amazon.com: What was the most fun about writing the novel?
Williams: They say that Balzac on his death-bed inquired about the health of his characters. That's what's most fun (and scary) about it--the fact that such a delusion is even possible. People who lived in my mind for years and years now live on my pages and in the minds of my readers. 

Amazon.com: What do you see happening in the real near-future of this planet, in terms of politics and globalization?
Williams: Nothing good. I continue to believe that getting into space in a serious way is the only way to break on out of the trap we're stuck in.

Amazon.com: What are you currently working on?
Williams: Building out my website. Which features all sorts of data relating to the Second Cold War and the hunt for Autumn Rain.  Check it out.

Here's another trailer from the upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars for you.  --David

Every Friday, Omnivoracious will turn the spotlight on one or more graphic novels, with future installments also including news and special features. You can let me know who or what you'd like to see featured by commenting on this post.

This time out, I interview Greg Broadmore, author of the sensational Doctor Grordbort's Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory (Dark Horse Comics), which I reviewed in a previous installment of this column.

Who is Greg Broadmore, and why should you care? Well, in addition to having illustrated over 30 children's books, he has worked as a designer and sculptor on, among others, Peter Jackson's King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia. He's also a member of the famed Weta Workshop and a responsible for an awful lot of ray gun designs. In short, Broadmore is one of those multi-talented wretches doomed to spiral off ideas from their giant, imagination-stuffed brains on a daily basis. He's also, as this interview shows, a lot of fun...

Amazon.com: What was your childhood like? Do you remember any early "projects"?
Greg Broadmore: My childhood was good. I was smaller than I am now, and was into Star Wars more... Very little trauma, hardly any beatings. Lived in a coastal town called Whakatane in Aotearoa (New Zealand), which was nice. Yeah, I give my childhood a thumbs up. Early projects? I remember drawing lots of tanks, soldiers, dinosaurs, spaceships, robots... Mostly in scenes of destruction. I suppose that's not really a project. At primary school I did this project where I drew lots of German tanks shooting shit. Not sure what the teachers thought of that. I liked it.

Amazon.com: Was there any definitive point at which you realized, "This is what I want to do with my life?"
Broadmore: I've always known that I would draw and create things. I was totally oblivious to any notion of how i would make a living from it, but I knew that I loved drawing things, making models of things, etc. Luckily I never had any pressure from my parents to figure out a real career.

Amazon.com: Do you think imagination can be taught?
Broadmore: That's a hell of a question. I'm not sure... I can't see into people's minds, unfortunately, but I've always assumed that anyone can imagine, can have amazing visions and concepts. It's implementing them that's the trick, and that I believe can totally be taught. People assume that drawing, sculpting, writing whatever are all natural skills, that they couldn't possibly learn them if they don't already have a "gift" in that way. I don't believe that. I think if you have the inclination and dedication you can teach yourself any of these so called "natural" talents. The key is having the desire to do so.

Amazon.com: What gives you the most pleasure out of the whole process of creation?
Broadmore: That's another tricky question.  I love the almost trance like nature of rendering an illustration, the layers of detail and light. You get a flow going and it's great. Seeing the final piece is sometimes great, sometimes difficult. And a little time always changes my perception of the piece.

The big appeal of working on Dr. Grordbort's and a lot of my film work is seeing the final items made real by model makers and craftspeople like David Tremont. Very cool to pick up a design that you drew rendered into a tangible, tactile object. I get to see all sorts of my concepts become reality--like for Dr Grordbort's, we don't only make guns, we're doing all sorts of things now (which I can't exactly mention yet, because we're doing the big reveals at Comic Con next month). And of course it's amazing to know that people are actually buying our work and putting it in their homes. The guns have been out for just over a year and they have practically sold out, so we know we're on to something. It's good to know you're making something that people are actually genuinely into--enough so that they'll pay their hard earned cash for it.

Amazon.com: What role does humor play in your work?
Broadmore: I work on a lot of movies, a lot of Sci-Fi and  Fantasy projects, and most of the time these are played really straight, taking themselves very seriously. But most Sci-Fi, not all but especially movies and TV, are full of ludicrous inconsistancies and breaks in logic. This is easy to see in retrospect, which for me is a big part of the appeal of classic Sci-Fi. If we look at older science fiction we see the grandiose assumptions of the day, and the details that get missed that break the whole illusion. In twenty or more years we'll be able to look back at current Sci-Gi and see the incongruities with better clarity. So Dr. Grordbort's kind of revels in retro Sci-Fi as well as poking fun at it. It's almost always tongue in cheek, playing with the hokey science and backwards cultural assumptions of those bygone eras.

You can meet Greg Broadmore and find out more about his upcoming projects at Comicon in San Diego, July 24-27.

         

Check out these Broadmore resources:

The King of Fat Boss

More on the Good Doctor

Weta Workshop Profile

Broadmore Galleries

The newest Futurama movie, The Beast with a Billion Backs (check your favorite online reference if you don't know what "the beast with two backs" means), came out this week. Watch their shout-out to Amazon customers followed by a clip from the film below.  --David

Orbit recently published Jeff Somers' second action-packed near-future novel, The Digital Plague, a follow-up to his first novel, The Electric Church. "A strong techno-thriller," (PW) Digital Plague continues the adventures of Avery Cates, killer-for-hire. As the press release reads, "He's probably the richest criminal in New York City. But right now, Avery Cates is pissed. Because everyone around him has just started to die - in a particularly gruesome way. With every moment bringing the human race closer to extinction, Cates finds himself in the role of both executioner and savior of the entire world." The novel was also recently featured on io9, with Annalee Newitz writing, "If you like nano-noir (and who doesn't?), you won't want to miss [it]."

In an Amazon exclusive Jeff Somers has been kind enough to share with our readers TOP TEN REASONS MY DYSTOPIAN VISION OF THE FUTURE IS BETTER THAN YOUR DYSTOPIAN VISION OF THE FUTURE...

1. We went out of our way to make it super double extra dystopian.

2. In The System of Federate Nations, you don't need to worry about saving for retirement, since you're unlikely to live past the age of thirty.

3. Profanity is not only accepted, it is pretty much the only way to make yourself understood.

4. Physical violence is not only not frowned upon, it is expected. And often enjoyed.

5. They finally have something very like flying cars. Although generally they are used to snatch people from the street so they can be beaten and imprisoned. But still.

6. Starvation is a thing of the past thanks to tiny white pills called Nutrition Tabs. Unfortunately, hunger remains since all you're eating are tiny white pills that barely keep you alive.

7. Everyone drinks and smokes, and no one worries about liver damage or cancer (see point #2).

8. Just about every major technological breakthrough is pretty much guaranteed to become murderous and genocidal. Because technology is like that.

9. There are few problems that can't be solved with a judicious bullet in a well-chosen ear, which is the lesson of most great literature, if you think about it.

10. No more annoying elections = more free time for begging in the streets.

11. In The System, everything goes to eleven.

This past weekend, Locus Magazine announced the winners of its annual awards for SF and Fantasy. Winners included Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union for best SF novel and Shaun Tan's marvelous The Arrival for best art book.

Locus Online editor Mark Kelly has a detailed post about the awards weekend in Seattle, which includes this insight into an interview with William Gibson:

Gibson talked about how he reads so little genre SF in part because the packaging is so ugly; how he's native to SF, but not a nationalist; how JG Ballard has always been far more important to him than RA Heinlein; how he's liked recent books by Charles Stross, Junot Diaz, and Michael Chabon; and perhaps most interestingly, how his own novels start with tiny seeds and then grow, like an accumulation of rubber bands into an ever-enlarging ball with a single knot at the center, in order to 'explain' and justify the initial image.

Are you excited about the next Stargate SG-1 movie, entitled Stargate: Continuum? So are we, and part of the reason is that it'll be the first Stargate in Blu-ray! Here's a short trailer to watch.  --David

OK, so they've actually been around since 1990.  But 1,000 issues of any magazine is something to celebrate, and EW is doing it in style, with their trademark: lists, lists, and more lists. "The New Classics: The 1,000 Best Movies, TV Shows, Albums, Books & More of the Last 25 Years" is great fun, and ranks every form of media you can think of since 1983, with input from both editors and celebs. Where else could you find a magazine cover with Harry Potter, Maggie Simpson, Edward Scissorhands, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer?  And lists written by Jodie Foster, Neil Gaiman, and and Liz Phair? 

Here's a list from none other than Viggo Mortensen, who reveals his top 10 pieces of advice he's heard on movie sets.  There's something for everyone here, I think.  (True, I'm biased because I adore him. But I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.)

1. ''One job at a time, and each job a success.''

2. ''Whatever you are feeling at this moment can be useful, no matter how far removed or even distracting it may seem from the scene you are playing. That is as close to 'real' as you will ever get.''

3. ''There is no way in hell that's going to work. That is the worst idea I have heard today — perhaps ever. Are you trying to single-handedly ruin my movie?''

4. ''Try it — what's the harm? It's only film and time.''

5. ''No hay dolor.'' (''There is no pain.'')

6. ''All you really need to play the m