Tomorrow Through the Past
Source: tor.com
Reading biographies always makes me nostalgic, and I am going to be out of town for the first couple of days of this discussion, so I thought I’d just get the nostalgia out of my system in one fell ignorable swoop, rather than attempting to be profound while wondering where the insect repellent is and why I still don’t have my own suitcase.
I first read Heinlein when I was very young. I don’t remember my first Heinlein novel as I remember my first Norton, but since the reverberations of “Wow, I sure was a naïve kid” seem strongest when I reread Red Planet, it may have been that one. I remember wishing there was more about Jim’s sister Phyllis in that book. She seemed just as interesting as Jim. I liked Meade in The Rolling Stones too, but I didn’t want to be her because she seemed to be saddled with an inordinate amount of babysitting and cooking. I adored Hazel Meade Stone, but I didn’t think I could be like her, because she was an engineer, though she’d quit being one because she had hit the glass ceiling and got fed up.
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Hunger Games:
Waiting for Mockingjay
Source: blog.newsok.com
A Facebook friend posted a tantalizing photo on her wall the other day. It was a picture of herself happily sitting with an advance copy of Suzanne Collins‘ hotly-anticipated Mockingjay. (Yes, she was “mocking” all of us who would give our eye teeth to get our own advance read!) This sent librarians into a Facebook comments frenzy for a bit, and then the FB friend eliminated all traces of the photo and conversation. All is calm again, except 99.9999999% of us are still waiting for Mockingjay, which won’t be officially released until August 24.
Why the anticipation? Hunger Games and its sequel, Catching Fire, are the first two tomes in Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy—a science-fiction adventure aimed at young adults, but discovered and devoured by adults as well. The first book is an award-winner, has sold 800,000 copies, is available in 26 foreign editions, and has been optioned for a movie. No, we’re not talking anywhere near the success of Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight novels (and don’t even think Harry Potter territory). What we have here is a dark horse that received positive buzz online, and lots of reader-to-reader recommendations. I knew it was hot with young adult librarians, but when Chicago Tribune TV Critic Mo Ryan sent out tweets about how great and suspenseful the work was, I knew I had to give it a try myself. I’m glad I did, and now I recommend it to friends and family.
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The Vampire Chronicles: A Conversation With The Passage Author Justin Cronin
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
A few weeks ago I got on the phone with The Passage author Justin Cronin to talk about his 766 page (first of three volumes!) contribution to the vampire cannon. Despite the current obsession with blood suckers, Cronin insists the draw of the genre is old as bones. The Passage is no Twilight or True Blood. Cronin’s vampires (or virals, as he calls them) don’t sparkle in the sun or fall in love; they hide in the dark and rip their victims in half. Makes for a lively conversation.
One of the most haunting aspects of the book is how plausible the doomsday scenario is, from the military’s involvement in creating the virals, to the way the civilian world collapses after the creatures escape from the compound and take over. What kind of research did you do?
Every writer needs a lawyer and a doctor, and I don’t mean just to write your will and give you drugs when you have a cold. But as research, people you can ask questions to who can steer you even further down the road to get more help. I did every kind of research for this book, and I also traveled every mile of the book. I made sure that I physically occupied all the spaces that my characters occupied. I really made sure that it was all very authentic American landscape because that’s the kind of writer I am, and because the book was also very much about the North American continent in this depopulated state that’s being experienced by people for the first time — in some ways like the first settlers almost. One of the great subjects of American literature is the initial encounter with the wild openness of the continent. And my characters were going to have that experience so I wanted to be as authentic with it as I could.
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Are you looking forward to Mockingjay?
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