The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

 

• It’s been a week of trailers, including one for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. We can’t wait to get a full-on view of Smaug.

• One of the other trailers that went up this week is for Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium. It looks truly amazing.

• Want to be totally creeped out by your food? BoingBoing found this amazing cinnamon-vanilla Sandworm bread. I know what I’ll be baking this weekend. Or attempting to, anyway.

• Lifehacker tackles the question of why we feel guilty when we don’t finish a book or game. Do you feel guilty?

• Did you get excited watching The Hobbit trailer? Probably not as excited as these fans, since Peter Jackson posted the actors’ reaction to their reaction!

• Next time I’m in Portland, I’m definitely visiting the Lovecraft Bar. Where do you want to go? Know of any other bars to add to the list?

• Cosplay Piano has a new video up. This time, they take on Game of Thrones, and it’s fantastic.

And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• eBook Sale: Building Harlequin’s Moon, by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/21)
• Goodreads First Reads: Drift by Jon McGoran (Ends 6/21)
• Goodreads First Reads: Mist by Susan Krinard (Ends 6/24)
• Goodreads First Reads: Replica by Jenna Black (Ends 6/25)
• Goodreads First Reads: Storm Riders by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes (Ends 6/26)
• Goodreads First Reads: Traveling Light by Andrea Thalasinos (Ends 6/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: Extremities by David Lubar (Ends 6/28)
• Goodreads Giveaway: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (Ends 6/28)
• Goodreads Giveaway: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 6/30)
• Summer Grab Bag Sweepstakes (Ends 6/30)
• Goodreads First Reads: Kitty in the Underworld by Carrie Vaughn (Ends 7/1)
• eBook Sale: The Affinity Bridge, by George Mann, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 7/5)

The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

 

• Check out the book trailer for The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson’s new young adult novel! Now we really want to see this as a movie. Don’t you?

• Because some weeks, a hilarious cat video is necessary. Luckily, this week, Mary Robinette Kowal found us an absolutely perfect one. Apparently cats can, in fact, levitate.

• Have you seen these Star Wars pulp covers? Artist Timothy Anderson did a whole series of them, and they’re truly amazing.

• This week marks the anniversary of Ray Bradbury’s death. In honor of one of the titans of genre fiction, why not read some of his work to inspire you? Tor.com has five story suggestions to start with.

• The San Francisco Public Library has chosen Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother as its One City, One Book selection for 2013!

• With Matt Smith’s upcoming departure from Doctor Who after this year’s Christmas special, bookies are already taking odds as to who’ll be cast as the next Doctor. Who do you think it’ll be?

The Tor/Forge newsletter went out this week! Check out these fascinating articles from our authors:

• The Children Who Inspired Battle School by Aaron Johnston
• Krakens: What’s Not to Love? by S. M. Wheeler
• Summer Grab Bag Sweepstakes

And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• Waiting on Wednesday: Replica by Jenna Black (Ends 6/11)
• Goodreads First Reads: Thieves’ Quarry by D. B. Jackson (Ends 6/12)
• eBook Sale: Lamentation, by Ken Scholes, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/14)
• eBook Sale: Building Harlequin’s Moon, by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/21)
• Goodreads First Reads: Drift by Jon McGoran (Ends 6/21)
• Goodreads First Reads: Mist by Susan Krinard (Ends 6/24)
• Goodreads First Reads: Replica by Jenna Black (Ends 6/25)
• Goodreads First Reads: Storm Riders by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes (Ends 6/26)
• Goodreads First Reads: Traveling Light by Andrea Thalasinos (Ends 6/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: Extremities by David Lubar (Ends 6/28)
• Goodreads Giveaway: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (Ends 6/28)
• Goodreads Giveaway: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 6/30)
• Summer Grab Bag Sweepstakes (Ends 6/30)
• Goodreads First Reads: Kitty in the Underworld by Carrie Vaughn (Ends 7/1)
• eBook Sale: The Affinity Bridge, by George Mann, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 7/5)

Summer Grab Bag Sweepstakes

Sign up for the Tor/Forge Newsletter for a chance to win this collection of books:

About our newsletter: Every issue of Tor’s monthly email newsletter features original writing by, and interviews with, Tor authors and editors about upcoming new titles from all Tor and Forge imprints. In addition, we occasionally send out “special edition” newsletters to highlight particularly exciting new projects, programs, or events. Read a sample here >>

If you’re already a newsletter subscriber, you can enter too. We do not automatically enter subscribers into sweepstakes. We promise we won’t send you duplicate copies of the newsletter if you sign up for the newsletter more than once.

Sign up for your chance to win today!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins June 1 at 12 a.m. ET. and ends June 30, 2013, 11:59 p.m. ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. For Official Rules and to enter, go here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

The Children Who Inspired Battle School

Written by Aaron Johnston

Those of us who grew up reading Ender’s Game have always been enamored with the idea of Battle School. What’s that you say? A school for brilliant kids who fly around in zero-G playing laser tag all day? Sign me up. (And please ignore the fact that I’m neither brilliant nor especially coordinated.)

I was so in love with Battle School, in fact, that I would imagine Hyrum Graff showing up at my parents’ house and saying, “Mr. and Mrs. Johnston, we’re taking little Aaron with us.” And my mother would dab at her eyes with a tissue, and my dad would take a knee in front of me and put a hand on my shoulder and say, “Knock ‘em dead, squirt. Make us proud.”

But of course this is fantasy. Not only because I’m not Battle School material, but also because Battle School could never exist in the world we live in. Our government would never allow such a thing. Parents would riot in the streets. None of us would let the military take away our children.

And yet when we read Ender’s Game, we accept the idea of Battle School without a second thought. That’s just how the world is now, we tell ourselves. Terrible things happened in the past, and now parents give up their children. We hate doing it, but what choice do we have?

When Orson Scott Card and I set out to write the story of the first two Formic wars, we knew we had to connect these two realities. The events of the first two invasions had to take us from a world like ours, where Battle School could never exist, to a world very different from ours, where Battle School must exist.

That’s a dramatic shift in public opinion and military theory. And Scott and I knew that such a shift could never occur unless two things happened first. One, Earth must face a threat so powerful and so overwhelming that the military is forced to consider new and unconventional methodologies. The strategies and tactics of the past no longer apply. We’re fighting a new enemy, with tech far superior to ours. If we don’t reinvent ourselves militarily, if we don’t consider every resource at our disposal, we are all going to die. The Formics will win.

Two, the military must believe without a shadow of doubt that children are the answer. It’s not enough for the military to see great potential in children, or for them to believe that children can be as smart as adults. No, the military must believe that children can be better than adults. Children can be more strategically minded, more apt to take risks, more willing to break convention, more able to adapt to new tactics and threats. The generals of the world must see children as our last great hope.

That’s why the story of the First Formic War includes brilliant, Enderlike children. The military must witness with their own eyes what gifted children can do. They have to see it happen. Otherwise the military would never in a million years believe it possible.

In Earth Unaware, we met seventeen-year-old Victor Delgado, an ingenious mechanic who risks his life to warn Earth. We also met his cousin, fourteen-year-old Edimar, who discovered the Formics’ approach.

In Earth Afire, we meet Bingwen, the most Enderlike child yet — a dirt-poor, eight-year-old farm boy from a tiny rice village in southeast China. Through his association with Bingwen, Mazer Rackham comes to realize what children truly have to offer. And the rest, as we say, is history. Or in our case, the future.

…………………………

From the Tor/Forge June 3rd newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

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More from the June 3rd Tor/Forge newsletter:

• Krakens: What’s Not to Love? by S. M. Wheeler
• Summer Grab Bag Sweepstakes

The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

Gender-swapped LotR

• LiveJournal user October_26 cast a gender-swapped version of The Lord of the Rings. Some of them are utterly brilliant. Who would you cast?

• Want to know what’s coming up at Tor Books? Here are some of the highlights of our Summer and Fall seasons!

• Tor.com’s Carl shares what we’ve learned about Words of Radiance from Brandon Sanderson’s tour for The Rithmatist.

• We’re very sad to say that this week has seen the loss of both Jack Vance, a giant of genre fiction, and Father Andrew M. Greeley, an outspoken priest and prolific mystery writer. Gentlemen, you will both be missed. Rest in peace.

• On a more positive note, at the Houston Comicapalooza this weekend, Sir Patrick Stewart gave a heartfelt and passionate speech about domestic violence and PTSD. Worth watching the entire seven minutes. With a tissue.

• And, last but definitely not least, two extra stories from John Scalzi’s The Human Division are now available for free on Tor.com.

 
And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• The Ultimate Urban Fantasy Sweepstakes (Ends today!)
• eBook Sale: The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/7)
• Goodreads First Reads: Thieves’ Quarry by D. B. Jackson (Ends 6/12)
• eBook Sale: Lamentation, by Ken Scholes, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/14)
• eBook Sale: Building Harlequin’s Moon, by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/21)
• Goodreads First Reads: Drift by Jon McGoran (Ends 6/21)
• Goodreads First Reads: Mist by Susan Krinard (End 6/24)
• Goodreads First Reads: Replica by Jenna Black (Ends 6/25)
• Goodreads First Reads: Storm Riders by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes (Ends 6/26)
• Goodreads First Reads: Traveling Light by Andrea Thalasinos (Ends 6/27)
• Goodreads First Reads: Extremities by David Lubar (Ends 6/28)
• Goodreads First Reads: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (Ends 6/28)
• Goodreads Giveaway: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 6/30)
• eBook Sale: The Affinity Bridge, by George Mann, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 7/5)

What’s Coming Up for Tor

Between BEA (Book Expo America), Phoenix Comic Con, and the upcoming San Diego Comic Con and New York Comic Con, we’ve been thinking quite a bit about some of the books we’re excited for this Summer and Fall. So we put together a list of just some of the highlights we have coming up. We hope you’re as excited as we are!

What are you most looking forward to reading this Summer and Fall?

Book Trailer: Earth Afire by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

 
Earth Afire by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

One hundred years before Ender’s Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. This is the story of the First Formic War.

Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn’t believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame.

And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.

Fans of Ender’s Game will thrill to Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston’s Earth Afire.

Earth Afire, by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, releases June 4th!

The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.
 

 

• The trailer for Ender’s Game is here!

• In addition to the trailer, check out an interview with star Asa Butterfield as he talks about his space camp regimen.

• Congratulations to all the 2013 Locus Award finalists!

• Help send David Brin to Mars!

• The Los Angeles Times blog Jacket Copy dug into their archives and found a great video featuring Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, and Studs Terkel in conversation.

• I would pay money to see a full movie version of this: Star Wars Episode VII: Return of the Junior Jedi.

• The nominees for the 2012 Shirley Jackson Awards have been announced! Congratulations in particular to Tor’s own Brian Evenson and his novel Immobility.

 
The Tor/Forge newsletter went out this week! Check out these fascinating articles from our authors:

• Four Songs for Stealing Planets by Dan Krokos
• Changing the World by Susan Palwick
• Genre Identity Crisis by Paul Cornell

 
And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• The Ultimate Urban Fantasy Sweepstakes (Ends 5/31)
• Goodreads First Reads: Sandstorm by Alan L. Lee (Ends 5/13)
• Waiting on Wednesday: Solstice by P. J. Hoover (Ends 5/14)
• Goodreads First Reads: Requiem by Ken Scholes (Ends 5/15)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Navigator by Michael Pocalyko (Ends 5/22)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 5/22)
• Goodreads First Reads: Sea Change by S. M. Wheeler (Ends 5/29)
• Goodreads First Reads: Solstice by P.J. Hoover (Ends 5/29)
• Goodreads Giveaway: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 5/29)
• eBook Sale: The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/7)
• eBook Sale: Lamentation, by Ken Scholes, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/14)
• eBook Sale: Building Harlequin’s Moon, by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/21)

New Releases: 5/7/2013

See upcoming releases.

The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

 

• A ten second teaser of the Ender’s Game movie trailer has been released! Plus, here’s an interview with Brandon Soo Hoo, who plays Fly Molo.

• Congratulations to Hank Phillippi Ryan, whose novel The Other Woman won the Mary Higgins Clark Award! And congratulations as well to Ralph Peters, whose Cain at Gettysburg won the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction!

• Kotaku brings up the possibility of…an EVE Online tv show. What do you think?

• Want to get trivia and exclusive info on Brandon Sanderson? Sign up here or text EPIC to 555111.

• Author Hilary Davidson chose her favorite independent book stores while out on tour. Did any of your favorites make the list?

• D. B. Jackson, the author of Thieftaker, has set up a fundraiser to benefit the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.

• Over on Tor.com, Emily has been knocking it out of the park lately. Her recent article on the endurance of Lt. Uhura is another great example.

• I’m sure I’m not the only one who found this both disturbing and fascinating: they’ve found evidence of cannibalism at the Jamestown colony.

 
And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• The Ultimate Urban Fantasy Sweepstakes (Ends 5/31)
• Goodreads First Reads: Sold for Endless Rue by Madeleine E. Robins (Ends 5/6)
• Goodreads Giveaway: A Dog’s Journey by W. Bruce Cameron (Ends 5/7)
• Goodreads First Reads: Sandstorm by Alan L. Lee (Ends 5/13)
• Goodreads First Reads: Requiem by Ken Scholes (Ends 5/15)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Navigator by Michael Pocalyko (Ends 5/22)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 5/22)
• Goodreads First Reads: Sea Change by S. M. Wheeler (Ends 5/29)
• Goodreads First Reads: Solstice by P.J. Hoover (Ends 5/29)
• Goodreads Giveaway: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 5/29)
• eBook Sale: The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/7)
• eBook Sale: Lamentation, by Ken Scholes, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/14)
• eBook Sale: Building Harlequin’s Moon, by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper, is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 6/21)