Why Robin Sloan is the future of publishing (and science fiction)

By Eric Rosenfield at io9

Science fiction writer Robin Sloan tried to raise $3,500 from people wanting to read his novelette, but instead he wound up raising $13,500. It’s just one of the ways he’s successfully breaking all the rules of publishing.

[Annabel Scheme is ] just under 28,000 words long or a hundred pages or so (depending on the font). Conventionally, there’s just no market for a work of that length. Generally, it’s too long for magazines and fiction websites (which usually top out at 10,000-15,000 words) and too short for books (which start at 50,000 words). It’s not that someone might not want to read a 100-page work of fiction-why not?-but the infrastructure just doesn’t exist to get it into people’s hands. So Robin turned to the Internet, specifically Kickstarter, a website full of people trying to raise money for art projects, independent film, theatre, magazines and so on. He created PBS-style pledge levels, offering, for different levels of “membership”, PDF copies, print copies, surprise gifts, your name in the acknowledgements even behind-the-scenes peaks at his work on the novella (as he wrote it!). He said if he raised his goal of $3,500 for the work, he would release a PDF of the book free for everyone. Shockingly, he raised $13,942 dollars by almost 600 donors, more than most novelists get as an advance on a first novel. Not bad for a self-published, unpublishable novella.

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I AM LEGEND: THE DARKEST POST-APOCALYPTIC BOOK EVER WRITTEN?

by Terry DeHart for Orbit

What is it about early postwar sci-fi that makes its worlds seem so dark and realistically shabby? Proximity to nuclear annihilation? The poorly forgotten horrors of World War Two? The rote mediocrity of peace after the time of global death and flame ended, the famished beginning of the age of mass consumption? Or is it only that we’ve been conditioned by the black-and-white movies of that time?

Whatever it is, Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND is shot through with it. This book is wonderfully dark. Neville drinks. He sweats and laughs and cooks and eats and cries and, in between bouts of near-insanity, he kills people. It seems as if killing is the most rational thing left to do. And Matheson puts the reader right there with him.

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The Chronicles of Amber: Nine Princes in Amber

By Rajan Khanna at Tor

Welcome to a look at the first book in Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber. Be aware that beyond the jump there are spoilers, lots of them. If you’re interested in reading the book, please do so first. This will be here when you’re done.

I’ve always admired Zelazny for the way he opens Nine Princes in Amber. We start off with an unnamed protagonist waking up in a hospital, with no memory of who he is and how he got there. We are carried along by the sheer charisma of the narrator’s voice and because of his lack of memory, we’re starting out on similar footing. As he figures things out, so do we, and this carries us through the majority of the novel.

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I love seeing the way the internet is changing the way we read books. It’s nice to have the option of getting books instantly, and allowing authors to gain readership who never would have seen the light of day before.

Have you read I Am Legend? Do you like post-apocalyptic books? What do you think the internet will do to reading in the future?

Through the Lands of Fantasy: A Conversation with Lev Grossman, Author of The Magicians

By Christy Corp-Minaniji at Seattle Pi

When not in the hallowed space at the front of the store, The Magicians leads a dual life from one bookstore to the next – sometimes residing with fantasy, sometimes with literature. The split life of this novel relates directly to its creator’s crusade against the cultural ostracism of genre fiction from the realm of literature. Though the literary critic for a bastion of mainstream intellectual thought, Lev Grossman rails against the view of popular fiction as lowbrow or unworthy to be classed with literary fiction. “It shows how bizarrely inverted our literary culture has become that this is controversial…There’s been such a stigma with popular fiction that it wasn’t appropriate at Time, before I came to work there, to review the type of book that readers of Time actually read.” Though Grossman’s careful, modulated voice never raises, indignation laces his words. “Fiction that emphasized plot fell into disrepute… we’re finally seeing a reversal of that trend.” Grossman cites authors such as Clarke and Neil Gaiman as leading this reversal. “They write novels that confound attempts to classify them. Seeing them do that made me feel that I could and should write The Magicians.”

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Justin Cronin dissects vampire lore

By Lauren R. Harrison at The Chicago Tribune

There were vampires. Scientists. A virus. A father-daughter relationship. And endless narrative possibilities.

“I kind of want to write outside of a category because I can. … I’ve always tried to do more than one thing at the same time,” he said, adding that was true of his book “Mary and O’Neil” (2001) for which he won a PEN/Hemingway Award and Stephen Crane Prize, and of “The Summer Guest” (2004).

Taking from genres like gothic horror, Western and apocalyptic fiction, “The Passage” asks “what if all the vampire lore … actually had a scientific and historical reality in some way and what would it be like?”

Clever details about mirrors and crosses emerge as part of that answer by no mistake. “I’m not a writer who sits down and says, ‘Let’s see what the angels say today.’ I’m very much a planner,” Cronin says.

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Transworld Publishers Announce Exciting New Collaboration Between Sir Terry Pratchett And Stephen Baxter

via Book Trade Info

Sir Terry Pratchett first developed his vision of a chain of parallel worlds, The Long Earth, in an unfinished novel and two short stories in 1986, after writing Equal Rites, the third novel in what would turn into the hugely successful  Discworld series.  Now, at last, this long-gestating concept  is to see the light of day in two as-yet-untitled books written in collaboration with Stephen Baxter, author of Flood, Ark and the Time’s Tapestry  and Destiny’s Children series.

‘Our Earth is but one of a chain of parallel worlds, each differing from its neighbours by a little (or a lot) in an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And you can just step from one world to the next…’

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Blast from the Past: A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ

by Terry DeHart at Orbit Books

Summer is a great time for science fiction fans to indulge their inner Eeyores. After reading Mira Grant’s latest, what could be better than stretching out under all that depressing sunshine with a classic book of the post-apocalyptic genre?

A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ covers a large swath of time as the human race attempts to put itself back together after a no-hold-barred nuclear war. It begins many hundreds of years after the game of fun with fusion was played, but the setting is still deliciously scorched and barren and humankind is poor and superstitious and still a wee bit mistrustful of science.

The protagonists of each of the three sections of the book are associated with the Abbey of Leibowitz, which has been charged with the preservation and interpretation of knowledge from ancient pre-war times—the wondrous times in which we now live. Much of the book explores the primary objective of people living in times “simplified” by lack of technology—to get the lights back on.

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Canticle for Leibowitz has been on my (long) list of stuff I want to read, but after this article reminded me what it was about, I may move it to the top of the pile. The new Terry Pratchett book sounds good too, I’ve read Good Omens (a collaboration with Neil Gaiman) and I just started the Discworld series, so I know I like his style. I’m still going to wait until The Passage comes out on paperback, but I am looking forward to reading it.

What do you think of fantasy and science fiction becoming more mainstream? What are your favorite vampire myths?

“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray than each one that had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath…He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

The Road is the ultimate survival story, with a father living solely to protect his son after the world has essentially ended and there is little life, hope, or sanity left in the world. After an unspecified disaster destroys all the plant and animal life, along with most of the human population, they must travel south in order to survive the elements. The two travel through the desolate landscape, scavenging food when they can and taking everything worth keeping in an old shopping cart. Their goal is to make it to the coast and follow it south from there, where they hope there are more people and some food left. But they aren’t the only ones on the Road, and the others pose an unimaginable threat.

Besides the actual story of survival, both the book and the movie touch on what it means to survive in a world beyond hope. What keeps someone going in a world like that? Can you struggle to survive day to day and watch horrors take place all around you and still be a good person? The book and the movie touch on these is slightly different ways (because of the various limitations of each mediums) but both get the same message across: just surviving isn’t enough, you need that something more or you lose your humanity.

This is one of the most accurate Book to Movie transitions I’ve seen. I think it helps that the book is just over 200 pages, and the average screenplay is about as long. It’s so good, in fact, that with one exception when two scenes are switched around, you could follow along with the book.

The book takes place in post-apocalyptic America; and the entire movie was shot outside (something pretty rare nowadays) and entirely in the US: Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana. Some shots were made more gray to appear more desolate, but locations were chosen for their severity, to appear as accurately as possible.

I was incredibly impressed by the casting. Charlize Theron plays the mother, and the actor playing The Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) looks just like her; he’s perfect for this part. Viggo Mortensen is excellent (as always), and the movie is studded with famous actors. Viggo Mortensen and author Cormac McCarthy spoke on the phone while Mortensen was preparing for the movie. The two talked about their sons, and after hanging up Mortensen realized he hadn’t asked a single question about the book. But the book is actually dedicated to McCarthy’s son, and was the inspiration for it. Cormac McCarthy and his son were present on set, and their dynamic was clearly influential. Director John Hillcoat said he was shocked to see them having some of the same conversations in the same tone as The Man and The Boy in the book.

Similarities

• Very true to the book; some foraging for food scenes were cut for time
• All of the dialogue from the book is in the movie, word for word.
• The tone was exactly the same as the book: bleak, bitter, and the smallest light of hope that very nearly died.

Differences

• Two scenes that weren’t in the book were added to the movie, but made up for the few that were cut
• The most gruesome scene (in my opinion) was cut; but for completely understandable reasons
• The Man swore and got angry with The Boy much more in the movie; The Boy was also much more argumentative in the movie-to the point of fighting and hitting his father. They were both much more patient with each other in the book, more like equals.

Accuracy Rating: 4.5 out of 5. The patience of The Man in the book was one of my favorite parts, and that was changed enough to bug me in the movie.

Magic of childhood returns to captivate

By James D. Watts Jr. at Tulsa World
A good story about young heroes and heroines dealing with fantastic creatures is a timeless thing.

To prove it, Random House has re-launched the Looking Glass Library, beginning with four classic stories of fantasy and adventure for young readers.

The original Looking Glass Library first appeared in the 1960s and included novels such as H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds.”

The four books which make up the initial release of the new Looking Glass Library are “Twilight Land” by Howard Pyle, “The Princess and the Goblin” by George MacDonald and two volumes by E. Nesbit: “The Book of Dragons” and “Five Children and It.”

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Where do vampires come from?

By Ford Cochran for Nat Geo News Watch
Long-time National Geographic staff historian Mark Jenkins’ new book, Vampire Forensics, is the basis for a new National Geographic Explorer television special premiering in the U.S. Tuesday night at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel. It’s not quite an interview with the vampire, but Jenkins shares some of what he learned on the trail of Dracula and his kin.

Where did the belief in vampires originate?

Fear of the walking dead is old. Sucking blood isn’t always part of it–sometimes they eat you, sometimes they just beat you up. There’s some sort of deep layer of belief that crops up here and there, possibly something shared once in the Indo-European past that survived when the tribes became separate nations.

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Beyond “Harry Potter”: 5 interesting tales of plagiarism

By Marjorie Kehe
Last week, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling was named as a defendant in a lawsuit in a London court. It’s not the first time that Rowling has faced such charges. This time, the estate of author Adrian Jacobs claims that key concepts appearing in her book “Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire” were lifted from Jacobs’s 1987 book “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard.” Rowling calls the charges absurd; the Jacobs estate, instead, says the suit is “a billion-dollar case.”

Rowling is hardly the first well-known writer to face plagiarism charges. The results of such charges tend to vary widely. Some end up dismissed as without merit, others ruin careers, and yet others seem simply to disappear.

Charges that Dan Brown largely copied “The Da Vinci Code” from an earlier novel. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of the 1987 “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail,” charged that Brown stole some basic elements of the plot of their book for his 2003 blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code”. Baigent and Leigh lost their 2006 caseagainst Random House – Brown’s publisher – in a London court and then were defeated again on appeal. The two were also forced to pay the bulk of Random House’s legal costs. The trial did, however, put “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail” on bestseller lists.

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New Novel: “X-Men Meets Blade Runner”

By Charlie Jane Anders at io9
We see tons of novels about dystopian futures, but any novel that features enslaved mutants in a dystopian future automatically gets onto our to-read list. According to Publisher’s Marketplace, the duology Pandora’s Box and Icarus’ Wings by K.M. Ruiz just got a book deal with Thomas Dunne Books.

The duology is “pitched as “Blade Runner meets X-Men,” about a “Psion” with the ability to channel electricity, and her fight to survive a post-apocalyptic world government.

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The artwork on the new Random House books looks really cool. And I’m excited about the Vampire Forensics, it looks so interesting. And those K.M. Ruiz books look good.

What do you think of our book news today?

Post-apocalyptic / dystopian fiction is a popular genre in young adult literature.  OBS is focusing on young adult literature that fits in this genre, but share one specific element. In all the books featured in this post, children/young adults are the only survivors of a catastrophe and forced to rebuild society and survive on their own.

GONE by Michael Grant (Book 1 in a six-part series)

In the blink of an eye. Everyone disappears. GONE.

Except for the young. Teens. Middle schoolers. Toddlers. But not one single adult. No teachers, no cops, no doctors, no parents. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what’s happened.

HUNGER by Michael Grant (Book 2)

Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day.

It’s a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else…

It’s been three months since everyone under the age of fourteen became trapped in the bubble known as the FAYZ. Things have only gotten worse. Food is running out, and each day more kids are developing supernatural abilities. Soon tension rises between those with powers and those without, and when an unspeakable tragedy occurs, chaos erupts. It’s the normals against the mutants, and the battle promises to turn bloody.

But something more dangerous lurks. A sinister creature known as the Darkness has begun to call to the survivors in the FAYZ. It needs their powers to sustain its own. When the Darkness calls, someone will answer — with deadly results.

LIES by Michael Grant (Book 3) – released May 4, 2010

It will be about deception — the lies people tell for greed, the lies they tell for the best of reasons, and the lies they tell themselves. Kids will do some desperate things in LIES. But I’m not giving away any spoilers. Except that some of you are really going to be mad at me for something that… no, wait, I’m not even going to hint.

NEPTUNE’S CHILDREN by Bonnie Dobkin

A day at the fabled amusement park Isles of Wonder turns deadly when a world-wide biological attack kills every adult, leaving behind only the kids to fend for themselves. Isolated from the world, unsure of what lies ahead, the young survivors assemble under the statue of King Neptune, the mythical ruler of the Isles, to form a new society. Led by the children of the park workers, they choose to remain closed off from the outside world living relatively comfortably inside the self-contained park. But when violence from the infested outside world appears to infiltrate their safe zone, one small group discovers a secret society and a hidden system of underground tunnels, and the stage is set for a war that will determine the future of everyone on the Isles.

THE COMET’S CURSE by Dom Testa

When the tail of the comet Bhaktul flicks through the Earth-s atmosphere, deadly particles are left in its wake. Suddenly, mankind is confronted with a virus that devastates the adult population. Only those under the age of eighteen seem to be immune. Desperate to save humanity, a renowned scientist proposes a bold plan: to create a ship that will carry a crew of 251 teenagers to a home in a distant solar system. Two years later, the Galahad and its crew-none over the age of sixteen-is launched. Two years of training have prepared the crew for the challenges of space travel. But soon after departing Earth, they discover that a saboteur is hiding on the Galahad! Faced with escalating acts of vandalism and terrorized by threatening messages, sixteen-year-old Triana Martell and her council soon realize that the stowaway will do anything to ensure that the Galahad never reaches its destination. The teens must find a way to neutralize their enemy. For if their mission fails, it will mean the end of the human race-. When the tail of the comet Bhaktul flicks through the Earth-s atmosphere, deadly particles are left in its wake. Suddenly, mankind is confronted with a virus that devastates the adult population. Only those under the age of eighteen seem to be immune. Desperate to save humanity, a renowned scientist proposes a bold plan: to create a ship that will carry a crew of 251 teenagers to a home in a distant solar system. Two years later, the Galahad and its crew-none over the age of sixteen-is launched. Two years of training have prepared the crew for the challenges of space travel. But soon after departing Earth, they discover that a saboteur is hiding on the Galahad! Faced with escalating acts of vandalism and terrorized by threatening messages, sixteen-year-old Triana Martell and her council soon realize that the stowaway will do anything to ensure that the Galahad never reaches its destination. The teens must find a way to neutralize their enemy. For if their mission fails, it will mean the end of the human race.

COUNTDOWN by Daniel Parker (12 book series)

As the new year dawns, a reported “massive solar flare” causes power failures all over the globe and adults and children everywhere to melt into piles of “black goo.” Only young adults are spared, among them a quartet of drunken high school kids in suburban Seattle, two teens whose fake IDs have gained them entry to a New York City nightclub, a cocky young doctor in a Texas hospital, a pair of tough-talking inmates in a Pittsburgh jail, and Sarah and Joshua Levy who desperately search the ancient scroll of their granduncle Elijah for clues to the apocalyptic event.

FIRE-US by Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher

The Fire-us trilogy gets off to a dynamic start in this first entry set in 2007, five years after a catastrophic virus has apparently killed all the adults and nearly everyone else. Seven children seem to be the only survivors. They live as a family in a run-down house in a small Florida town; none of them remembers much about the Before Time. Teenage Teacher is the oldest and the keeper of The Book, a carefully constructed scrapbook in which she finds inspiration for the group. Mommy and Hunter are also teens; Action Figure, Teddy Bear, Baby, and Doll are younger children. Then teenage Anchorman (dubbed Angerman by the little ones) shows up and convinces the family to join him on a long trek to Washington, D.C., to find a Grown-up called President.