Suzanne Collins’ ‘Mockingjay’ is the real deal as trilogy finale
Source: usatoday.com
A simple question — “Real or not real?” — haunts the key characters in Mockingjay, the suspenseful final book in Suzanne Collins’ best-selling Hunger Games trilogy that has triggered a boom in dystopian fiction for teens.
Set in a future dictatorship in which teenagers are forced to fight to the death on television, the series is a kind of realistic fantasy, a blend of sci-fi, mythology, horror and romance.
The realism is supplied by Collins’ teen characters — everyday kids thrown into a nightmare not of their making. The grown-ups tend to be plot devices, but they move the action along.
Mockingjay won’t make much sense if you haven’t read The Hunger Games (2008) and Catching Fire (2009), but Collins’ fans, grown-ups included, will race to the end.
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Hear the first chapter of Mockingjay
Source: tor.com
Can’t get to a midnight release for Mockingjay tonight? Soothe yourself with a reading of the first chapter by series author Suzanne Collins, courtesy of Scholastic Books!
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Does science fiction inform research, or is it always fiction?
Source: asunews.asu.edu
“And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little, and at times eating although without any keenness of appetite, but for the most part in a sort of quiescence that was neither waking nor slumber, we fell through a space of time that had neither night nor day in it, silently, softly, and swiftly down towards the moon.”
Fans of H.G. Wells will recognize those words as being from Wells’ novel, “The First Men in the Moon,” written from 1899-1901, when traveling to the moon was just a dream in the mind of the earliest science-fiction writers.
Science fiction is entertaining, of course, but does it serve a larger purpose? Does it inform our thoughts of the future, inspire us to discovery and research?
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Goyer’s Sci-fi Trilogy Set
Source: mania.com
Screenwriter David Goyer (Batman, Blade films) is moving into the novel market with his first genre book Heaven’s Shadow and yet he’s still getting it to the silver screen. Deadline NY reports that Warner Bros. has grabbed the theatrical rights to his first science fiction novel, with the option to turn it into a possible trilogy franchise for the studio.
The first novel will hit book stores July 2011 with its sequels “Heaven’s War” and “Heaven’s Fall” set for 2012 and 2013 releases. Goyer is currently working on the next Superman revision for the studio.
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What draws you to the Hunger Games trilogy?
Do you think scifi should have a research componant in it – or are you happy for it to be all fantasy?
Join us in the forum to discuss!
