Concept Design for One Extra Life

Hey folks, just a quick update to let you know what’s going on. By now, you might have noticed that I haven’t tied up in my 2011 Year In Review yet, due to an unpleasant stomach flu that I got this past week; that’s why you haven’t seen the rest of it yet, even though it should (by now) be concluded. And, if the next two weeks are anything to go by, my brief silence will probably elongate.

There are two reasons for this.

First off: school. I am now in what I like to call “The End-Term Data Crunch”, in which a number of major time-consuming zombie assignments all pile on top of me in lieu of teachers wanting to collect the final marks for the ending of the semester, and threaten to take my sanity. Seriously, if I’m going to do well, I have to prioritize here, and regular blogging is one of those things that has to take the fall, at least for the next two weeks that this is going on.

Secondly: secret projects. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you might have noticed I have thrown around the term “secret projects” here and there. Well, I can indeed say that I’m working on things for this site that will make it look better, work better, have more (with the inclusion of the One Extra Life podcast) and be all around, shall we say, ‘badassyer’.

Cough.

Hopefully, if everything comes about nicely, Literary Musings’ next evolution will be a nice step up in content and quality that I hope you will be satisfied with. Alas, that’s all I can say for now.

When I do return, this is what you will see. Think of the bullet-points as a sort-of website specific New Year’s resolution.

• We will wrap our Year In Review, with a Miscellaneous post focusing on blogs, publishers, cultural news, ideas, quotes, person and Flame War/ Internet Argument of the Year. We already have a contender for 2012, you know.
  
• We will talk about what we want to be consuming in 2012. And I’m not meaning food.
• (Following that brief awkward silence), we will be growing the podcast with a wide variety of writing guests in prose, comics, film, and games.
• Reviews: to name a few, reviews of SHADOW POINT by Myke Cole, THE GAMES by Ted Kosmatka, A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by George R.R. Martin, and many, many more!
• Community Group Reads: in which we explore the relevancy of classics I haven’t read, together. More on this in the near future.
• In Other Words: in which I talk about news in various industries, the writing process, nonfiction, and game design. And wonder if anyone will read this.

As a parting note, I want to remind you all that the audio edition of my friend Ian’s book, The Coldest War, will be out on January 17 exclusively on Audible. If you want to experience the book early, I recommend wholeheartedly.

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Games. My combated second love, in comparison to books, with comics, film, and music a few notches below that. I played a lot of games this year, but I didn’t play everything. Note the absence of Saint’s Row 3, Dead Space 2, Skyward Sword, or Bastion- though I have been listening to the game’s soundtrack a lot- which, if the circulating word of mouth is anything to go by, are great game experiences in their own right.

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP dev. Capybara Games

A psychosocial experience from Toronto-based Capybara Games that blends audio and retro visuals to achieve pixel equilibrium, and one of the paragon examples of what the IOS platform can do. Review forthcoming.

Portal 2 dev. Valve

(REVIEW)

I never would have thought Valve could ever come to surpass the experience I had with 2007′s Portal, but they, being the dastardly smart people that they are, did exactly that. This game is one of the funnest games I’ve ever played, by being perfectly executed in how it rolls out the mechanics of puzzle-solving and the different coloured gels, and how it brings a new dimension to the universe of Aperture Science synthetically, contextually, and interactively. Even in environments that are designed to be sterile (such as lab rooms and testing chambers), everything about the game has character and verve. It also might have one of the funniest, most cleverly written stories ever pulled off in a video game.

Outland dev. Housmarque

It took repetition to really get in to this game, because of its inconsistent sporadic difficulty level but it did a lot of things so well as a downloadable product that it would be wrong to skip this. An appreciative Ikaruga-style of switching between light and dark, red and blue, as you side-scroll and traverse through a plateau of generally challenging scenarios that force you to use a combination of reflexes, thinking, and button timing. Housemarque, who dearly disappointed me with the rather lazy Dead Nation, rectifies things with this visually arresting title. Review forthcoming.

Batman: Arkham City dev. Rocksteady

The sequel to a game that blew my mind as a dark horse in 2009, Arkham City tries to do what Arkham Asylum did, but on a bigger, better, wider scale: running with the somewhat ludicrous concept that all the criminals have been moved to a cordoned-off slum section of the city, and are now wreaking havoc within its walls. And it does all that nonetheless, but not perfectly. Review forthcoming.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim dev. Bethesda Softworks

A soul-sucking beast of a game that goes to the freezing north of Tamriel in the Elder Scrolls world, a place called Skyrim. About as inviting as a pack of saber-toothed snow cats pacing an ice floe. Luckily, this is their richest game to date, giving gamers hours of detailed content  that isn’t all filler in a captivating Viking fantasy vein, with dragons no less. I think all of the things that Bethesda have been striving to achieve throughout all these years of work has finally been realized. To even try to wrap your mind around the size of this game is enough to make your head explode. Extended thoughts forthcoming.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings dev. CD Projekt RED

Second only to Skyrim, this compelling RPG (based on the cult fantasy series by Andrzej Sapkowski) from Polish studio CD Projekt RED is my sleeper hit of the year. Having never played the original Witcher or yet read any of the source material, I was astonished at the quality and wealth of substance present in this title.

Plants vs. Zombies HD dev. Popcap Games

An addictive strategy game where you defend a house from hordes of ever increasing zombies. Popcap clearly knows how to hook players in small doses of pure orchestration that makes it always feel addictive and welcoming, as a product that’s very easy to pick up and play. Extended thoughts forthcoming.

LittleBigPlanet 2 dev. Media Molecule

A sequel that is essentially LittleBigPlanet in a new skin at first glance, but is expanded to new horizons with a bigger toolkit to create things, more variety in campaign levels, a soundtrack that bursts with charm and likability, and a tighter knit interface that begs you to dip your toe into the community that makes the game larger than life. Media Molecule, now moving on to new projects, have given LittleBigPlanet a superlative swan song. Review forthcoming.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception dev. Naughty Dog

The third game in a series that is starting to feel stale, Uncharted 3 nevertheless is a worthy game to add to your library. It lacks the polish and clear-headed direction that steered Uncharted 2, but it is still a remarkable visual achievement. Review forthcoming.

Jetpack Joyride dev. Halfbrick

A fun-filled, mindless game of altitude and tempting high scores that pressed me to try just one more time, and then realize I’d spent at least an hour playing it after that. I don’t know a lot of simple games that can burn time away better than Jetpack Joyride, and another is on this list.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution dev. Eidos Montreal

Though questionable design decisions and an inability to thoroughly tackle the issues that the game narrative coughs up scars what could have been an excellent title, Deus Ex: Human Revolution fixes everything wrong with Deus Ex: Invisible War in an appealing golden-coloured cyberpunk world. This is what the acclaimed original deserved, and though it didn’t do everything I had hoped for, trying to give fans an appropriate degree of atonement reserves this game a special place in this list. Review forthcoming.

ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection dev. Team ICO

Two of the greatest PS2 games, classics in their own right, collected for the first time in glorious HD (alongside some bonus content). These, my friends, are two of the finest single-player games ever made, and if you’ve been living under a rock and somehow have never heard of them, do yourself a favor and play this. Review forthcoming.

Humble Indie Bundle 4 dev. Gaijin Games, Team Meat, et al

I might be cheating here, as these games all came out different times- and not all in 2011- but I would be remiss not to mention the time this bundle sucked out of my life this year; in fact, I played some of these games more, and even enjoyed some more, than some of this year’s bigger budget disc releases. A great sampling of indie created games in support of their wanting independent developers, the community that organized it, and charity. What more could you want? Extended thoughts on the Humble Bundle initiative forthcoming.

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So, one more category to go, the ambiguous Miscellaneous category, which I will follow up with a conclusion post and everything that I’m looking forward to in 2012. I now hand off the torch, to ask you: what were your favourite gaming experiences of the year?

A) There’s a lot of talent on the world wide web, if you know where to look.

B) April can’t come soon enough.

(SOURCE)

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Drive dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

(REVIEW)

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again; Drive is one of the best action films I have ever seen, mostly because it’s an action film that knows its own limitations and has a lot of soul and kinetic thrust. I could see this film deteriorating into a grind-house mess; everything about it reeks of Tarantino sadism, and the ultra-violence will definitely be off-putting to some, but Refn is such a commanding director that none of it falls apart or feels ridiculous. Everything he does adds to the feel of the film; it knows what it is, unlike most of the action films I’ve seen this year, and never strays from it. Every touch, from tight corner shots to the orange tint that glazes the screen to the soft retro 80′s beats that pulse from Cliff Martinez in the background add up to “…a beautifully produced action film that always has one foot to the floor and both hands firmly on the wheel.”

50/50 dir. Jonathan Levine

The director of 2008′s Wackness nails it in this movie, about a young man named Adam Lerner who is told he has cancer and tries to live life the way he wants to before he is expected to die. It sounds sad (and it is) but it’s the emotional, honest, and clever ways that the director lets his acting talent do their part that allowed this film to truly shine with light. Take for example, Lerner’s best friend (played by Seth Rogen) or his young inexperienced psychiatrist; they all deal with his cancer in different ways, whether it be Seth’s vulgar shoulder-punching humour trying to hide the scared feelings of possibly losing a best friend, or the subtle on-screen signs of Anna Kendrick’s character’s eating disorder from either low self esteem or nervous inexperience in talking to him about it, or the detritus strewn about her car that Adam later cleans up. These are real complex people with real complex problems, flaws, emotions, reactions, and thoughts, and I never stopped being convinced by the realness that made it all click. It’s simply lovely. Review forthcoming.

Contagion dir. Steven Soderborough

(REVIEW)

A chilling, icky film about a fatal disease outbreak that struggles to merge Crash-style perspectives of the virus into a cohesive whole and deliver the irony of a punchline turned into a sick accident as we trace the dots (somewhat literally) back to its source. With that being said, Contagion left a sour taste in my mouth for days and made me wash my hands twice as often. That is why, despite having things I didn’t like, this film burrowed a spot into this list like the contagious organism it was based on.

X-Men: First Class dir. Matthew Vaughn

From the director of Kick-Ass and Stardust (two films of one which I liked, one not so much) comes a film about the X-Men. “Blah,” I hear you say. “Who needs another superhero movie? Everybody’s doing them!” But then I say to you: “Well, what if I told you that Matthew Vaughan doesn’t give a shit about ‘official’ canon and throws it all out the door?”

You’re listening now, aren’t you? I thought you might be.

You see, X-Men: First Class doesn’t try to act like it’s part of anything (it shoots itself in the foot by having the origin story of these heroes set in the Cold War, in the time of Soviet Russia and nuclear strikes) and it doesn’t care about being all that serious even when it is at times, or neither does it try to fit in with the comics history before it ( you especially know that when Charles Xavier walks into a bar and Wolverine tells him to “fuck off”, who isn’t around until years later). It’s just a fun little movie with a fuzzy sense of awareness, humour, believable acting, and some well-done action sequences, one that I approve of for taking risks in an industry that doesn’t see a lot of it.

Game of Thrones dir. David Benioff, D.B. Weiss

The adaptation of one of the best fantasy series ever written has a comfortable home in HBO. It does some things that the book handles better (in spades) and it does some things better than the book (in spades); whatever the case may be, I think HBO is as mighty a hope A Song of Ice and Fire is ever going to get for critical success as a series. Review forthcoming.

Community dir. Dan Harmon

This NBC-produced show has come into it’s own with its quirky brand of “in house” jokes and its “pick-your-topic” episodic format, and it has really begun to grow on me in its own endearingly funny way.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 dir. David Yates

You know I just had to put this somewhere, didn’t you? It’s sad to see it go, especially something that had such a major influence on me when I was a kid, but I’m glad the last film did the ending as much justice as it did. Climatic and powerful, the final movie of the most successful young-adult book series about a boy wizard comes to a fitting close. It’s been great knowing you.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes dir. Rupert Wyatt

A modern revival of the classic space apes movie, now trying to be a movie purely about animals, through and through. I was surprised of how much I enjoyed this film, which I think was fostered around the actually solid plausibility of its premise (a working cure for Alzheimer’s gives birth to disturbingly lifelike, extremely intelligent chimps) and Andy Serkis, who holds everything together and performs mesmerizingly in motion capture as Ceaser, the main chimp. Everything is brought to a bittersweet conclusion while at the same making room for sequel possibilities. At this point, I’m happy with wherever it goes.

Breaking Bad dir. Vince Gilligan

In my quest for good drama television, I stumbled upon Breaking Bad upon the recommendations of friends, and gosh, I wonder why I didn’t find it sooner. An absolutely marvelous show with some of the best writing around, and this year’s season was, in my honest opinion, the show’s best yet. Review forthcoming.

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So, that was my year in visual entertainment. A tremendously good one, don’t ya think? And I still have much more to watch, with films like Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Artist, Hugo, and Another Earth. In conclusion, I ask you: what are your favourite films and television shows of this year?

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Among Others by Jo Walton

(REVIEW)

This is a gem that slits open the world like an egg and parts the magical and the mundane to tilt it sideways and upside down. As one of the first books I read in the year, this quietly surreal book made its mark on me as a wonderful little story, and it’s something that has lingered with me long after I read it.

The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham

(REVIEW)

Little can go wrong with Daniel Abraham’s second fantasy trilogy after The Long Price Quartet; hell, little can go wrong with anything he writes! Abraham manages to paint a crisp faux-European fantasy world in intelligent strokes of subversion and fantasy fidelity with a focus on economics, politics, and characters dowsed in ambiguity. And if his first series is anything to go by, the next books in ‘The Dagger & The Coin’ will be even better.

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

(REVIEW)

(INTERVIEW)

A lion-like first publication; bristling with savage intensity, but an animal that holds a stance and power so mesmerizing you cannot look away, even as it rips out your throat. Lawrence achieves more in this slim novel than most fantasy authors ever attempt in a 800-page tome. As I stated in my review, our protagonist “…progresses from being an amoral and vile killer to an amoral and vile killer that you understand more at the end than from the start. He doesn’t try to make up an apology [for what he does].”  This signals Lawrence as a writer to watch; a debut that is brutal, bloody, yet somehow beautiful, and certainly not for the faint of heart.

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

Definitely the most anticipated fantasy novel of the decade, the 5th book in George R.R. Martin’s magnum opus goes where all the other books have went; it just goes deeper, deeper and deeper into each character’s signature brand of hell. A few pacing hiccups aside, anything from Martin in considered a good thing in my opinion. Review forthcoming.

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

(REVIEW)

A fast-paced plot where galaxy travel is still a distant pipe-dream, that brings out the best of what old-school space opera has to offer; sprinkled with dead space horror, wise-cracking cop drama, and parallels to the crew chemistry found in stuff such as Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, Leviathan Wakes manages to have the complete package of enjoyment (unpredictable story, interesting locales, and endearing characters) while not mimicking any of those and never losing the charm it somehow attains. One half of Corey is already on this list (Daniel Abraham) and the other, Ty Franck, gets full marks for bursting out of the gate with a strong co-authored first try. I’ve said that Leviathan Wakes ” made me remember exactly why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place” and I stand by that point: this book is unrestrained science fiction escapism at its best.

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

A magnificent debut that balances on the misty shores of folklore and the turgid waves of reality, telling the tale of a Yugoslavian girl and the stories she was told from her late grandfather. It’s a lyrical, stunning, beautiful piece of work scribed by a goddess, and I have a feeling that this will remain in the ether of my thoughts for a long time. Review forthcoming.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

One of the biggest things to happen this year was the passing of a technological icon, when Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, passed away on October 5th, 2011. His authorized biography is a fascinating look into of the world’s boldest influential entrepreneurial minds. Extended thoughts forthcoming.

Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock

A commanding collection of stories that basically came unknown into my life, which I picked up on a whim from the advice of a friend. Emotionally poignant, raw, and utterly compelling, Heathcock has a voice comparable to McCarthy as he presents the fictional farming town of Krafton; a place peppered with rough characters who make bad choices and have even worse luck, with the conclusion of pronouncing that most intimate of our psychological cores, while manipulating you and pulling your heartstrings in the process: the preservation, survival, and adaption of the mind. Review forthcoming.

Stories for Nighttime & Some for the Day by Ben Loory

Filled with whimsy and dark delight, this quaint collection of night stories and day stories read disarmingly simple, but seem to have a remarkable amount of complexity underneath. Loory is a master at penetrating the uncanny, mysterious, and the odd aspects of living in an imperfect world, which is why this was one of my favourite collections of the year. Review forthcoming.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

The best young adult novel I read all year, despite being the smallest one at just over 200 pages. The author takes a departure from the thought-jumble of his tense Chaos Walking trilogy to tell a heartfelt story of loss, love, and truth. This is a book that everyone, young or old, should read. Review forthcoming.

Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

A moving account of a man’s life, in which brothers Ba and Moon combine their creative talents to offer a window in this man’s life of specific events that are, was, or could be. It starts out bizarrely, but new insight is often given as it goes along, making this a very rewarding experience for the reader. Daytripper hits all the right notes as it touches on everything, from the habitation of memory to the fragmentation of how time makes strangers of us all, which all leads to the most recondite of themes: existence itself. Review forthcoming.

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen

This mammoth book is the result of what Nilsen has been working on for ten years; a metaphysical exploration of a bird story rooted in classic fables. Rather than lending its world meaning, “Nilsen’s parable lets the questions wander where they will” in poignancy. Review forthcoming.

Batman: The Black Mirror by Scott Snyder, Mark Simpson (Jock), and Francesco Francavilla

Scott Snyder cements his status as one of the best writers working in comic-ville today, supported by two of the best artists to splatter their vision onto the page. Forget one of the best superhero graphic novels of the year; this is perhaps one of the best (and creepiest) Batman arcs ever told. Review forthcoming.

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So that about wraps it for what I specifically enjoyed in books this year, folks! So now I ask you: what are your favourite books you read this year, fiction, non-fiction, or otherwise? Leave a comment below, and expect my recommendations for film and media in the coming days.

The 4 categories are:

• Books (this includes books of fiction, non-fiction, speculative fiction, anthologies, poetry collections, short stories, comics, graphic novels).
• Video Games (well, um, video games; independent or otherwise, for a variety of platforms).
• Film (again, another self explanatory category: stuff like TV, animated films, trailers, movies, etc).
  
• Miscellaneous (this includes surprise, cheeky things like web-comics, podcasts, music, blogging, Person(s) of the Year, Greatest Use of Plagiarism, gadgets, memes, trailers, art, Favourite Personal Moments etc).

Before we get started through the coming days, I should indicate that I’m not going to rank these things. As it has been said, one man’s treasure can well be another man’s garbage, and since I simply did not have enough time to try everything out there in the world of creative entertainment in 2011, I’m not going to try to fool myself in pretending like I did.

And then, when everything’s said and done, these lists will be concluded with what I’m looking forward to next year, um, this year, in their respective categories.

Happy New Year’s to you all!

Says the master:

“The chronology, as usual, is tricky. This chapter will be found eventually at the beginning of WINDS, but as you will be able to tell from context, it actually takes place before some of the chapters at the end of DANCE.”

“FYI, there will be a different sample chapter from WINDS OF WINTER included at the end of the paperback edition of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS when that is published next July.”

Which, my dear readers, is why I asked Rob to pop by and talk about himself, what he wanted to achieve with Seed, and future projects. Enjoy.

Hello, Rob. Thanks for taking some time to stop by and do this interview.

Thanks for having me.

You pretty much came out of the blue with SEED. You have very little (from what I can see) published short works to your name, so can you give readers an idea of who you are and what you write?

I can see why it seems that way. I haven’t tried to publish much.  But my experience is that it’s been a long road. I’ve been dedicated to fiction writing for nearly twenty years. It became a focus for me back in college, and I’ve been working at it ever since. Only in the last couple of years have I reached a point where I want people to read my stuff. Seed is actually the third book I’ve written, just the first one I’ve liked enough to carry through to something resembling completion.

Your debut novel has been described as “a military version of The Windup Girl”. Is this an apt description?

Any comparison with Bacigalupi is flattering. He’s a fantastic writer, and The Windup Girl is an amazing novel.  And there are similarities, with the bio-engineering tropes and whatnot.  But I view Seed as a quintessentially American book.  Even though it’s sci fi, it’s really a western, Brood’s story in particular.  It’s about the changing landscape of the American west, literally and culturally.  At the book’s heart is a belief in the importance of the individual. I wanted there to be a sense that it was vital for this kid to stay true to his moral compass, even in the face of hard necessity. I wanted those moments when he veers off course to feel tragic, and for small moments of self-sacrifice to feel triumphant. I wanted there to be sense, too, of loneliness in the midst big, wide open spaces, and for that to echo this sort of quixotic notion of disenfranchised people being able to face down situations much larger than themselves. To my mind, these sensibilities are very American, and core to Seed’s aesthetic. So if I were to choose a book for comparison, I’d hope that at its best moments Seed remind people of a military sci fi, bio-engineered version of… All the Pretty Horses, maybe?  But with railguns.

Huh. If I hadn’t already read Seed, I would buy that in an instant.

You must consider yourself pretty lucky to have such a snazzy cover. How much input did have in the creation of the cover? Was Nightshade always high on your list for potential publishers?

Cody Tilson did the cover, and I LOVE it. It’s gorgeous, and visually I think it really nails Seed’s vibe. The folks at Night Shade were kind enough to show me the first version of the design before they went forward with it.  My input consisted of… well, I think I just laughed and did the happy dance for a minute or two. Then I emailed Night Shade with something like, “Yeah, that looks okay I guess.”

Night Shade was definitely high on my list.  I knew a couple of folks who had books with them, and they both had good things to say.  Night Shade’s tastes tend towards the uncompromising, and odd, so I figured we might make a match. It was also really important to me—and this probably isn’t the sort of thing I should worry about—but after all the work of writing it, I wanted Seed to become a beautiful object, physically. And Night Shade does make beautiful books. That definitely factored in to my choosing them.

Bradley Beaulieu described your book as another addition to “ecopunk”. Is that even the right word for it?

“Ecopunk” probably describes aspects of the story, certainly some of its underpinning values. Other descriptors might be…Spaghettipunk. Commandopunk.  Postapocalyptipunk.

I particularly enjoyed your emphasis on people scraping by in the wastes, by showing the DIY details of people splicing automotive parts together, or designing devices to help them survive. It gave a very convincing guts and glue feel to it all. Do you have any knowledge/expertise with construction, and was it a conscious move to make it like this?

Alas, I am not a renaissance man. I barely know how to use a screwdriver. I did a lot of research on photovaltaics, auto mechanics, stuff like that. Some stuff I just made up as I was writing it. It was important to me to make that world feel real. I’m really glad you think it worked.

Seed is set in as grim a future as any, but very little do the characters reflect on wanting to go back to the way it was, or even how exactly they got there in the first place; almost a grudging acceptance of sorts. Why did you choose to make this focus on the present, rather than reminisce or try to explain the past?

Two of the POVs have no experience with the old world. Brood is too young to have any real memories of a time before the migrations began, except a few of his mother, which are dreamlike and very far from his reality.  And Sumedha, he exists in a different world entirely.  Both of these characters are, I guess, stuck dealing with very immediate problems which demand the entirety of their focus.

For Doss, though, the loss of the old world weighs heavily.  Her emotional arc is largely about her coming to terms with the fact that the old world can’t be saved.  Her country, as she believes in it, is…going, going, gone.  Hers is the story of coping with that tragedy.

The book is comprised of three distinct character palettes. Can you go into how these characters came to be created?

Each inhabits a very specific world, all of which are different from one another, and all of which I knew I wanted to braid together. Doss, obviously, was born in the land of military sci fi.  Brood is the badland outlaw from westerns of yore.  Sumedha represents an idea I’ve been toying with for years, of human organization as living organism—in this case, the corporation. Those were my POVs from the beginning. The story I figured out as I moved with them deeper into the book.

In my review, I mentioned how Sumedha was a bit of a cipher, mostly because he acts differently, almost alien-like, from how ordinary people act, and I wasn’t exactly sure what his intentions were. If it’s okay with you, can you talk about him a bit, and attempt to put my uncertainty to rest?

You’re exactly right. Sumedha doesn’t act quite like an ordinary person, because he isn’t one. He’s a genetic construct. He’s designed for a strange kind of pure mentation.  He’s also incredibly sheltered. So when the story deals him a heavy emotional blow, he lacks the humanity to handle it sanely.  Without giving too much away, his story is one of descent.

I also like the notion that genre writers are introducing a more diverse portrayal of cultures and ethnicities into their stories.  To state a few, Lauren Beuke’s South African Zinzi December in Zoo City, Nnedi Okorafor’s Onyesonwu from Who Fears Death, Paolo Bacigalupi’s non-Anglophone setting, and your own use of the Hispanic and African American perspectives with Brood and Sienna. Why’d you decide to be part of this, and why do you think it’s important to introduce these perspectives?

To my mind, the perspectives in Seed are very American. Ethnic and cultural diversity are core to this country’s make up. In Seed, I just wanted to reflect that.

Paolo Bacigalupi (yeah, that guy) recently said on Twitter that “ if science fiction isn’t deeply worried about our present, it should be taken out and shot.” What are your thoughts on this?

That makes me smile.  And, mostly, I agree with him.  If ever there was a time when we needed to face our shit, it’s now.  So for my part, I certainly attempt to use the problems of our day to inform the themes in my stories.

But sci fi is also entertainment.  Sometimes it doesn’t need to be more than that.  I, for one, enjoy my space opera, without guilt.

Cody Tilson's for Greg Egan's "hard" space novel, The Clockwork Rocket

What is Rob Zeigler planning next?

I’m working on another book, which I hope to have finished by spring.  It’s about a kid coming of age in a strange, future LA, where media and reality are mostly indistinguishable from one another. A Trainspotting meets Fahrenheit 451 sort of a deal.

Finally, to cap off this interview, what things of significance have you been reading, watching, playing, and listening to in the world of entertainment? Hopefully not as grim as what you have written, for your health and our safety.

Playing Left 4 Dead is about as dangerous as my life gets. I play a little Total War, too, and some Baldur’s Gate. That’s about it for games.  As far as what I’m watching, these days I’m enjoying Californication, Justified, Mad Men. The Walking Dead also hooked me this season. For reading, I just finished Charles Bowden’s Murder City. I’m in the middle of Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood (amazing), and The Big Short by Michael Lewis.  I’m pretty much always rereading Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive and Already Dead by Dennis Johnson. And I just started No Hero by Jonathan Wood, a compadre at Night Shade. My plate is full.

Thanks again, Rob, for doing this interview!

My pleasure. Thank you.

Or is it the other way around?

Whatever it may be, I’ve not been blogging lately. In fact, I haven’t had a good solid splurge of daily posts in up to a month. Well, I’m here to plead- no, beg- readers and publishers to persist a little while longer and stick with me, in context of recent events. I’m working as fast as I possibly can to get the first episode of the podcast out (don’t know what I’m talking about? See HERE) and I’m reading as much as my limited time allows me- everything from relentless idea-filled science fiction to our favourite Westeros tale of false kings and kinslayers related to kingslayers, among other things- but I’m just too busy at the moment to invest considerable time and energy into writing things for the site, or at least things that I would be proud of. The time I do have, I spend on schoolwork, a little more schoolwork, and perhaps a smidgeon of podcast editing/recording. Good things are coming (you might be saying, ‘Good things?! All I get are empty promises) but believe me, there is some cool stuff planned down the road. I just need the time to make this stuff a reality.

So people, since you’ve all been wonderfully supportive, understanding, and kind over the years, I must ask: can you please continue to be wonderfully supportive, understanding, and kind all over? Can you play nice?

Pretty please?

Thanks boys and girls.

Seed

Author- Rob Ziegler

Hardcover

Page Count: 350 pages

Publisher: Night Shade Books

Release Date: November 3, 2011

ISBN-10: 1597803235

ISBN-13: 978-1597803236

In Rob Ziegler’s debut novel Seed, the future is grim. A dust bowl has swept through the Americas, leaving the land parched and weak of resources; life as we know it has officially been left unchecked; the government (if you can call it that) is a pale reflection of what it once was, and the Tet, a disease that resembles tetanus with symptoms similar to that caused by multiple sclerosis, rips through the countryside. Satori is a new global power, a bio-engineering facility that rose up and became a creation of its own philosophy; a living organism of “flesh and skin and bone Frankensteined together with old-world concrete, steel, and plexi.” (p. 314)

Satori makes the seed that feeds a hungry nation, bar-coded and rationed climate-resistant seed that is given out to see most people through the harvest.

Yet little do when the rich or powerful prey upon the weak. Brood is a migrant living on the road with his brother and a man they call Hondo, scraping out survival out in the wastes. Since they cannot really bully their way around, they steal what they can’t trade. It’s a dog-eat-dog world; a world that the characters never asked for, a world equally foreign and familiar to readers – “crumbling concrete domes protruding like the backs of half-buried beasts from farmland gone white with alkali” (p. 11) dotting the dust cities- and a world that they’ve accepted as basic fact. The author takes time to stress this, in the tools they make, the way they speak, the way they act, and the way they view themselves and others. It’s a subtle little characteristic that a lot of readers take for granted, but I really appreciated how every jagged sentence in this book felt like it reflected the dystopic setting in which it is set. The small details (for example, the DIY details showing people creating and splicing what they can find in the arid wasteland) make the inhabitants we encounter along the way seem lifelike and convincingly more adaptive, a supportive part of the world’s connective tissue,

“Hondo’s wagon- the wooden flatbed of a twen-cen cargo truck chopped free from its cab and driven by a series of electric motors geared to the back wheels of three heavy drive chains- jounced and rattled as they rolled west out of Amarillo along the broken track of the old interstate.”

(…)

“ Hondo stood and unhooked the sacks of ancient solid-core twelve volts off which they typically ran the motors. The wagon halted and he ran a chord from the Hercs through an adapter Brood had jerry-rigged from an old stereo amp, and plugged that into the motors. Immediately the wagon jerked forward. Hondo made his way back, joining Brood at the tiller. He pushed the throttle forward. The wagon built speed, the Hercs pushing serious amps from barium nitrate cores.”

(p. 40-41)

Aside from Brood, there are two other perspectives present: a tough African American ex-Ranger turned government agent, Sienna Doss, and Sumedha, one of Satori’s high-ranking Designers.

The first holds the brunt of the book’s crunchy action, reminding me why its publisher has elevator-pitched this as a “military version of The Windup Girl”. (It’s no wonder Seed has been labeled in the same sector as Bacigalupi’s debut; it was his novel that got Nightshade Books turning heads in the first place, and Seed conveniently sits within its radius, in what critics are coming to call “ecopunk”.)

It’s nice to see a female effectively carry the epitome of American hoorah- Doss is positively badass in every fight- yet she is perhaps a bit too indifferent to the whole situation for me to really empathize with all the shit she deals with, even if she does it with the American patriotism of a war vet who clearly puts her country before herself. The pocket of government that she is hired by wasn’t described enough for me to ever really understand its political body (surely it consists of more than two representative people?) their motive, and their purpose in the story; it’s as if the author used them as a means to get Doss to go do something exciting, yet that plot thread resolves as quickly as the time it takes for her to be briefed on the assignment itself, which is all of one chapter. The second (Sumedha) acts as a conduit to give readers a sense of what Satori is and why it exists, exploring genetically manipulated plants and humanity’s reliance to nature, and though the living city stinks of weird and odd estrangement, the truth is clearly science fictional. Sumehda’s chapters are presented interestingly as a bizarre organic mind-trip towards alienation, and while that was interesting enough, he proved to be a cipher as an individual. This lack of connection to his perspective (one that was supposed to be all about Satori’s connection) was slightly frustrating.

However, these flaws are to be expected in a first novel; though looming, they never actually become issues that affect the product in any way, leaving the reader to enjoy a good story that can stand eye-to-eye with the best of the rest of the apocalyptic books that smudge store shelves. Rob Zeigler seems to have come out of nowhere; having little short stories to his name, he completely surprised me with Seed. It has the kind of angry storytelling found in novels that are disturbing but grow on you because of it- a pseudo blending of Paolo Bacigalupi, Harlan Ellison, and Richard K. Morgan- feral prose that, while not exactly ‘pretty’, fits with the decadent dangerousness of the American heartland shown on the page, and a varied, ethnic group of characters that go through their own circles of hell just to fight for the few things they have left worth fighting for.