Archive
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.
- 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)
Changing the World
Written by Susan Palwick
I tell this story a lot; if you know me, you’ve probably heard it. But a lot of you don’t know me, and even if you do, the tale bears repeating.
In 1973 I was twelve, a gangly kid who got beaten up in school every day and loved Star Trek. My best friend, only slightly less of an outcast than I was, loved Star Trek too. We saw an ad for a Star Trek convention, and decided to go.
If you’ve seen GalaxyQuest, you know what that convention looked like.
One of the speakers was Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura. This lovely woman looked out at an audience of several hundred nerdgeekfen, and smiled, and said, “People make fun of you because you love Star Trek. They think Star Trek is only about bad acting and cheesy special effects. But you’re the people who know that Star Trek is about more than bad acting and cheesy special effects. You’re the people who know that Star Trek is about love and truth and peace and justice. And that’s why it’s your job to change the world.”
I cried. My best friend cried. I’m pretty sure most of my fellow nerdgeekfen cried. That speech made me want to be a writer; it made my friend want to be a scientist.
Did we change the world? If we did, would we know? I have no idea. I don’t feel like I’ve changed the world, but I do know that the stories I’ve loved in my life—Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn and The Last Coin—have helped me get through very hard times: not just being beaten up by bullies in junior high, but illness and bereavement and despair. They’ve done this not by helping me escape the real world, but by reminding me that it’s beautiful, worth fixing even or especially when it’s broken. They remind me that abstract nouns like love and truth and peace and justice can, with work, become real and tangible, and that people who know this have a responsibility to do something about it.
This is a point that critics who dismiss science fiction and fantasy have a hard time understanding. How can science fiction and fantasy speak to the real world when they aren’t real themselves?
Four years ago, Tor asked me to write a mainstream novel. I wrote Mending the Moon, about a group of people trying to understand the world after a senseless murder. Several of the characters follow a fictional comic book called Comrade Cosmos. Cosmos, a more-or-less ordinary guy, helps communities rebuild after their worlds have been ripped apart. His nemesis, the Emperor of Entropy, counsels fatalism. Nothing you can do, buddy. Everybody’s going to die. Everything’s going to decay. Stop fighting it. Relax and have a donut.
Comrade Cosmos, on the other hand, advocates action. For this instant, right now, you can make things better. You can restore order. You can change the world, even if you can’t fix everything in it that’s broken, even if what you fix won’t last forever. Here’s a hammer; here’s a can of paint.
Kirkus Reviews liked the realistic sections of the novel, but was completely bewildered by Comrade Cosmos. Their verdict was that the book will only appeal to people who go to Comic-Con.
Oh, Kirkus. You say that like it’s a bad thing.
…………………………
From the Tor/Forge May newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.
…………………………
More from the May Tor/Forge newsletter:
Four Songs for Stealing Planets
Written by Dan Krokos
I’m lucky enough to have my dream job. But even though I make up stories for a living, I still seek inspiration outside of books. Music gets me inspired more than anything. I like everything (except for some things). My favorite band is TOOL, but I will rock out to Rihanna. I’d prefer some NIN, but you know what? That Katy Perry song “Who Am I Living For?” is pretty good. It’s actually really good. Don’t look at me like that.
Whenever I sit down to write or revise The Planet Thieves or its sequel, The Black Stars, there’s a core list of songs that keeps me going. When I don’t see what I’m supposed to write next, I’ll throw on one of these songs and they help me sink back into Mason Stark’s world.
Leaving Earth – Clint Mansell
I’m a gamer. My favorite series of all time is Mass Effect. It’s one of the greatest SF stories ever told, and also happens to be an enormous inspiration for The Planet Thieves. This music plays after the first level of the final game. Earth is being invaded; there’s destruction everywhere from machines as tall as skyscrapers. Watch the sequence of Commander Shepard leaving Earth. If you don’t get chills, check your pulse.
I’ve never heard something so sad and full of hope at the same time. When I listen to this, I can’t help but slip into that mindset, no matter what I was feeling before. At the end of this sequence, I sat in front of my computer, completely stunned. The game had barely started.
Radioactive – Imagine Dragons
This song is special because I don’t like anything else by this band. When I listen to it, I see a movie trailer in my head consisting of the most exciting parts of my book. If I listen to it a few times in a row, I might add something to that trailer, which I can either discard or keep if it fits into the story.
Lyrics usually don’t matter so much, but these really resonate with me regarding Mason Stark’s path.
Primavera – Ludovico Einaudi
This song is here because it’s timely. I was listening to it just yesterday on a crowded subway, plotting the final moments of The Black Stars with the notes app on my phone.
I am grateful to this song for allowing me to crack something that had been troubling me for a year. This is one I can put on and just let my mind wander. It makes me see new things, and it’s one of the few songs that doesn’t just supply images, but the emotions attached to those images.
I first heard this song while watching a seven minute fan-made trailer for the TV show Fringe, one of my all-time programs. I immediately added the song to my library, and it has never let me down.
Lateralus – TOOL
I have said this before: “Lateralus” is my favorite song of all time, it doesn’t matter what I’m writing. This video is pretty cool. It explains why TOOL is the best band in the world and it shows the lyrics to the song. Just listen to it. It’s almost ten minutes long, so if you want to, you can start at the 5:00 minute mark. This is widely regarded as TOOL’s most important/emotional/complex song. Fans of TOOL have been waiting for a new album since 2006. Take pity on us. Enjoy.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Journey to the Line – Hanz Zimmer
Injection – Hanz Zimmer
What If We Could? – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
…………………………
From the Tor/Forge May newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.
…………………………
More from the May Tor/Forge newsletter:
Goodreads First Reads: The Navigator by Michael Pocalyko
About The Navigator: Wall Street comes to Washington in Michael Pocalyko’s The Navigator.
On the darkest night of 1945, a 20-year-old B-24 navigator assists in the liberation of a German concentration camp. His haunting trauma is prologue to destiny.
Flash forward to present-day Manhattan. Warren Hunter, reigning master of the financial universe, is poised to close the world’s first trillion dollar deal. ViroSat is the Street’s biggest-ever technology play—an entirely new worldwide communication system. It will catapult his investment bank and the global economy into a bright future . . . if the deal goes through.
In Washington, ViroSat captures the attention of Senate political aide Julia Toussaint. Meanwhile, battered tech start-up veteran Rick Yeager has just landed his dream job at a mysterious but well-connected financial firm whose partners want a piece of the action.
Warren, Julia, and Rick are caught in a web of intrigue, money, power, and dangerous secrets. Coincidences are not what they seem as the past collides with the present in a way that will change their lives forever.
A gripping story written by a consummate insider from both Washington and Wall Street, Michael Pocalyko’s The Navigator is a furiously-paced parable of our troubled age.
Enter for a chance to win here!
(Ends May 22)
2013 – The Year of the Virus
Written by Joshua Alan Parry
Pandemics have always captured our imagination and rightfully so. From the Spanish Flu to Small Pox, plagues have ravaged our populations on a consistent basis since we came into existence. Viruses are one of the last great natural predators of man.
And now they are getting a helping hand.
In Virus Thirteen, humanity is once again set upon by worldwide pandemic, but this time the blame lies with a group of bioterrorists who have released a genetically altered super-flu more virulent than anything mankind has seen before.
I wish I could say the above scenario was far-fetched science fiction. In 2012, a moratorium was placed on controversial experiments using the H5N1 bird flu virus after virologists discovered gene mutations that could transform the normally harmless virus into one capable of infecting ferrets, a laboratory model for humans. When the researchers announced their results, it sparked a great controversy. Many people questioned the wisdom of releasing a recipe for a genetically altered flu virus that could potentially infect humans.
As the debate intensified, scientists across the globe reluctantly agreed to a temporary halt to their research. Both sides had valid arguments. For the cautious, security was certainly an issue. This information in the wrong hands could prove extremely dangerous. The pro-research camp argued that further studies are needed to better understand what mutations made the virus able to affect mammals, which might enable scientists to develop cures or vaccines. Their reasoning was, research or not, these mutations will happen in the wild, so we might as well do them under the controlled environment of high-security labs.
Now it is 2013. The moratorium on H5N1 research has been lifted and the controversial research has been published in scientific journals. Whether this is wise or not, time will tell. I don’t think obstructing research is the right answer, but I do believe the temporary moratorium was a positive sign of humanity’s prognosis. We are taking the time to contemplate the threats that research may pose and we are asking the difficult questions about how to keep information out of dangerous hands. As we proceed with caution into the future, the reality is we cannot prevent or even predict all of the threats that we will face. These are the hazards of mankind’s hubris. We must not forget that nature plays by her own set of rules. So let 2013 be the year of responsible, illuminating research, and not the year of the virus.
…………………………
From the Tor/Forge April newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.
…………………………
More from the March Tor/Forge newsletter:
Mercury, Leeches, and Cutting Holes in People’s Heads
Written by David Walton
If you ever ride a time machine back to sixteenth century Europe, the first rule to keep in mind is this: Don’t get sick.
You won’t want to visit a doctor, no matter what your complaint. At the very least, he’ll cut you open and drain out some of your blood (or else attach some leeches to do the job more efficiently). He might prescribe a healthy dose of mercury to be rubbed on the offending wound or simply swallowed (they didn’t know it was toxic), or he might give you an emetic to flush out the sickness in an even more unpleasant way. If you had a serious problem, he might cut a large hole in your skull to let the sickness out directly (without anesthetic, of course). This procedure was called trepanation, and was attempted to cure problems ranging from migraines to epilepsy.
Why did they do such horrifying things? Didn’t they notice when their patients died? How could they keep on believing it would work?
Physicians of the day derived their ideas about the body from the symbolic and religious way in which they viewed the world. The concept of actually testing a theory didn’t occur to anyone; you took it on authority or because it logically followed from what you already knew. This kind of thinking led medical textbooks to claim, for instance, that men had fewer ribs than women, since God had removed one of Adam’s ribs in order to create Eve. It wasn’t considered necessary to actually count. (Besides, cutting up a dead body would be witchcraft, and for a doctor to actually touch a living woman or see her without her clothes on would be indecent.)
Physicians who wanted to know the truth—like Stephen Parris in my novel, Quintessence—had a hard path. In most European countries, it was illegal to dissect a human corpse, if not sacrilegious. You could be branded a demon worshipper and lose your practice, your property, or even your life. Early scientists were just starting to value experimentation as a source of knowledge but the field of medicine lagged far behind. No one minded if you messed around with heat or light or magnets or chemicals, but the human body was sacred. As a result, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the germ theory of disease was understood, and well into the 20th century before doctors started washing their hands.
Quintessence is about people who aren’t content with such limits. Like Christopher Sinclair, who tries to distill an elixir that will heal any disease and tests the result by drinking it himself. Like Stephen Parris, who cuts open corpses in an upper room by candlelight, defying the king and risking his own death. Or like his daughter, Catherine, who wants to study and experiment like her father, unwilling to accept the restrictions set on her by society. The truths they seek can’t be found in England, so they travel to the edge of the world in search of the purest form of matter and the source of life: quintessence. The journey is full of dangers: shifting skies and currents, starvation, mutiny, and monsters shaped by quintessence itself.
But it just might be safer than a visit to the doctor.
…………………………
From the Tor/Forge April newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.
…………………………
More from the March Tor/Forge newsletter:
How I Learned to Stop Grumbling and Love Vampires
Written by Carrie Vaughn
I’m best known for writing about werewolves. I started writing about werewolves—made the main character of my series a werewolf—because I was far more interested in them than the other usual supernatural critters. They simply hadn’t had a lot of attention paid to them in supernatural fiction, and when I was starting out, few people were writing books that featured werewolves as main characters. Plenty of people were writing about vampires; I didn’t feel a need to throw my hat into that ring. I didn’t have anything to say about vampires that hadn’t already been said. They were, in a word, kinda boring.
I didn’t want to leave vampires out of my stories entirely. I certainly wasn’t going to pass up a chance to mock them. Or at least mock the usual current vein of stereotypes about them. (No pun intended, I’m sure.) I’m writing supernatural stories, I wanted the full complement of the supernatural world at my beck and call.
But in creating my vampire characters, Alette and Roman and especially Rick, I discovered something. Something that vampires bring to the table that other supernatural creatures don’t: history. One of the first things I do when I create a vampire character is figure out their history. How old are they? Where did they come from? How does their background affect them? Have their values and outlooks changed over the decades, or centuries? That aspect, making vampires these walking repositories of “living” history, finally made vampires interesting to me. If vampires seem strange to my mortal human and werewolf characters, it isn’t so much because they’re bloodsucking monsters—it’s because they often come from entirely different places and times. They’re historical aliens.
One of Kitty’s best friends and closest allies in Denver’s supernatural underworld is the vampire Rick. Rick—Ricardo de Avila—was born in sixteenth-century Spain and came to North American as a young conquistador. He didn’t quite find what he was looking for, though, and was made a vampire instead. This is someone who was raised to be a devout Catholic in a world where Catholicism and the Spanish colonial empire were the dominant powers in Europe. These things were part of his identity. They still are, even though he lives and functions seamlessly in the modern world.
The idea that after all this time as a vampire, unable to go into churches and unable to take part in any of the rituals or symbols of Catholicism, Rick still considers himself a devout Catholic has always intrigued me. I touched on it a bit in his origin story, “Conquistador de la Noche,” found in Kitty’s Greatest Hits. But I’ve always known there was more to his story to that, and that far from being outlandish, I could turn that idea into something wider-reaching than one character’s backstory.
In Kitty Rocks the House, Rick doesn’t just get validation for his spiritual identity as a Catholic—an identity that he believes has kept him sane and ethical for five centuries. He learns of the existence of an entire order of vampire priests. He’s not alone, and that changes everything.
And this is why I love my job. Over the course of writing the eleven novels of the Kitty series, I’ve gone from not really wanting to write about vampires, to having vampires become some of the most intriguing supporting players in my books, to creating an entire order of vampire priests. And that just blows the story wide open, doesn’t it?
…………………………
From the Tor/Forge April newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.
…………………………
More from the March Tor/Forge newsletter:
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.
- Tor.com has announced the Way of Kings reread!
- Out of this world news: NASA has found that ancient Mars could have supported life.
- Can’t wait for Game of Thrones to come back? Check out this amazing artwork from Mondo’s Game of Thrones gallery show, on io9.
- Apparently, cats have been interrupting our reading since 1100 CE (via the Tor and Picador Tumblr accounts).
- Want to eat like Ender and the other Battle School students? Now you can.
And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!
- Goodreads First Reads: London Falling by Paul Cornell (Ends 3/20)
- Goodreads First Reads: Terror Red by Colonel David Hunt and Christine Hunsinger (Ends 3/21)
- Goodreads First Reads: Immortal Trust by Claire Ashgrove (Ends 3/26)
- Goodreads Giveaway: The Gate Thief by Orson Scott Card (Ends 3/26)
- Tor/Forge Newsletter Sweepstakes: Win a collection of Tor Teen titles (Ends 3/28)
- eBook Sale: Hellhole eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 4/3)
- Goodreads First Reads: Hell or Richmond by Ralph Peters (Ends 4/10)
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.
- Have you seen the new trailer for the upcoming Iron Man 3 movie? We admit we’re a little biased – we love super hero movies – but it looks pretty amazing.
- There are rumors in the stamp collecting world that the U.S. Post Office is considering doing sci-fi stamps. What American sci-fi authors would you like to see on a stamp? According to the article, only 5 authors, who have been dead for at least five years, will be honored. A tough choice!
- Capitol Couture has begun released portraits of the characters from Catching Fire. Tor.com has collected the images of Effie, Caesar Flickerman, Haymitch Abernathy, Cinna, and Katniss Everdeen herself.
- Fantasy Cafe has announced that once again, April will be Women in SFF Month.
- Suvudu’s 2013 Cage Match has begun!
- On Far Beyond Reality, you can read an excerpt of Brandon Sanderson’s The Rithmatist. Great Friday afternoon reading!
- Tor.com is starting a technical redesign of their site. Help them identify what features you love, and what could use updating.
- And finally…Tor Books has joined Pinterest! Follow us there to see what fun and geeky things we’re pinning.
The Tor/Forge newsletter went out this week! Check out these fascinating articles from our authors:
- Commuting Between Universes by Brian Herbert and Kevn J. Anderson
- Building the World of a Series by Mindee Arnett
- What is Gaslamp Fantasy? by Terri Windling
- Ignoring the Body in the Library: The World of Farthing by Jo Walton
And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!
- Goodreads First Reads: A Time of Change by Aimée and David Thurlo (Ends 3/13)
- Goodreads First Reads: Code White by Scott Britz-Cunningham (Ends 3/13)
- Goodreads Giveaway: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 3/15)
- Goodreads First Reads: London Falling by Paul Cornell (Ends 3/20)
- Goodreads First Reads: Terror Red by Colonel David Hunt and Christine Hunsinger (Ends 3/21)
- Goodreads First Reads: Immortal Trust by Claire Ashgrove (Ends 3/26)
- Goodreads Giveaway: The Gate Thief by Orson Scott Card (Ends 3/26)
- Tor/Forge Newsletter Sweepstakes: Win a collection of Tor Teen titles (Ends 3/28)
- eBook Sale: Hellhole eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 4/3)
Urban Fantasy Sweepstakes
Tor.com
- Sketchy Sweepstakes!
- It’s the End of the World As We Know It: The Beautiful Land by Alan Averill
- AD&D First Edition: the Old Firm
- The Lost Prince (Excerpt)
- Reopening The X-Files: “Nothing Important Happened Today”
- Are the Genre Wars Won?
- Another Journey Into Chocolate: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005 film)
- The Healer (Excerpt)
- Rothfuss Reread: Speculative Summary 20: Watching his Master
- The Way of Kings Reread: Interludes I-1, I-2, and I-3
Heroes and Heartbreakers
- First Look: Molly Harper’s A Witch’s Handbook of Kisses and Curses (May 28, 2013)
- Fire Inside: Exclusive Excerpt
- Watch It!: Voyeurism in Romance Novels
- What Fan Fiction Would You Like to Read?
- First Look: Nancy Gideon’s Prince of Shadows (May 27, 2013)
- Squick Me Out, Part 4: Return of the Moist
- Exclusive Cover Reveal: Cat Devon’s Love Your Entity!
- Shapeshifted: Exclusive Excerpt
- Bad Bromance: The History of Styxx and Acheron
- June 2013 Upcoming Romance Novel Releases Shopping List
Criminal Element
- Nobody Expects the Space Inquisition: Warhammer 40K Tie-in Novels
- Thinking of Manderley: The Strange History of Stonemere
- Art and Science Collide: Be Careful Where You Leave Your DNA
- Why I Believe in Blue Bloods
- Fresh Meat: Wounded Prey by Sean Lynch
- The Dreadful Beauty of Top of the Lake
- Introducing the Criminal Element Book Club!
- Fresh Meat: Transparent by Natalie Whipple
- Car Guy: Does a Minivan Beat a Muscle Car? Maybe, Yeah.
- Memento Mori: Abandoned Victorian Lego Houses
