New Books in Literature

Kameron Hurley has been honored for her mastery of numerous forms. Her first novel, God’s War, earned her the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer and the Kitschy Award for Best Debut Novel. Her essay “We Have Always Fought”–about the history of women in conflict–was the first blog post ever to win a Hugo Award. And although her tweets haven’t won awards (yet), she is also an animated and articulate presence on Twitter. Hurley has lived with some of the concepts and characters in her newest novel, The Mirror Empire (Angry Robot, 2014) since she was 12. But it took patience and lots of hard work (including multiple revisions) for the story about mirror worlds on the brink of genocidal war to emerge. Although her first book was a success, the other two books in the series, Infidel and Rapture, were hurt by the financial troubles of the publisher. Hurley rallied, finding a new agent and a new publisher, but the path wasn’t easy. As she says in her New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy interview, “You’re only as good as your last book. If your last book doesn’t sell, then you’re not going to sell other work. … This is an up and down business. It’s not a straight trajectory. You have to work very hard, and I think that’s very motivating for me to know I have to work very hard just to stay in the game.” While writing is a solitary affair, Hurley has surrounded herself with a circle of supporters–and advises everyone to do the same. “If you’re going to have a goal in life… You want to be a CEO, you want to open your own business, you want to be a writer [then] you need to surround yourself with people who support what you are doing. And that’s everyone. If your family doesn’t support what you do then maybe don’t see them as much. I hate to say it. And if you have a partner who doesn’t support what you do, then maybe you should look at a different partner. If the agent that you have is not working out and your styles just do not work and you’re not getting what you need from that relationship then you need to find an agent that works.” Related link: * Follow Kameron Hurley on her website and on Twitter. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

This week’s podcast was an experiment. Rather than record the conversation with author Alex London over Skype, I decided to take the subway to Brooklyn and meet with him face-to-face in a coffee shop. I found it liberating to be unchained from an Internet connection, which has been known to fail mid-conversation, but the price of having a barista nearby is boisterous background noise. London’s novels about class conflict, debt, and rebellion are set in a grim future. A significant portion of Proxy takes place in a city where the poorest citizens dwell in a violent shantytown known as the Valve while the wealthy thrive in well-guarded neighborhoods of private speedways, luxury homes, and high-tech toys. The sequel, Guardian, is set in a crumbling Detroit exponentially more decrepit than the Motor City of today. As London explains, the horrors of the Valve are his “futuristic re-imagining” of slums outside of Nairobi, which he witnessed while researching one of his non-fiction books, One Day the Soldiers Came, about children affected by armed conflict. “For a lot of children all over the world caught up in wars and poverty and natural disaster … dystopia is not some kind of fantasy but the day-to-day reality of how they are living,” he tells me. Although the books portray a dark future, the publisher avoids the word “dystopia” in its marketing of Proxy and Guardian. “They call it a ‘futuristic thriller,'” London says. The marketing department also shies away from the science fiction tag, fearing it’s too narrow. But London says he embraces the label. “Science fiction for me implies … an awareness of possibility.” London himself is brimming with possibility. For one thing, he writes under three names. Proxy and Guardian, which are aimed at young adults, bear the name Alex London. But as Charles London, he’s published adult non-fiction about war and the survival of beleaguered Jewish communities around the world. And as C. Alexander London, he continues to write for middle-grade readers about real-life war experiences and fantastical adventures involving squids and dragons. Like any good science fiction writer, London seeks to push boundaries. Proxy explores what would happen if wealthy transgressors rigged a system of debt and credit to avoid punishment for their crimes and instead made the poor (known as proxies) receive the punishment instead. London also pushes cultural boundaries: Proxy and Guardian‘s main character, Syd, is gay, which makes him unusual as the star of a science fiction series geared for young adults. As a result, London has received an outpouring of fan mail from young people seeking advice. “It’s been very touching to see kids who might not otherwise be drawn to explicitly queer books … find their way to Proxy,” he says. Because the books are primarily thrillers, some kids, especially those living in conservative communities, feel safer reading them than gay-themed books that focus on romance or coming out, he explains. “I’ve been getting letters from a lot of actually straight boys writing about their friends and wondering how they can be better allies. Those are my favorite,” London says. Related link: –Keep track of Alex London on his website and tumblr Spoiler alerts: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Astronomy and astrology once went hand in hand: people studied the location and motion of celestial bodies in order to make astrological predictions. In the seventeenth century, the paths of these two disciplines forked so that today astronomy is a well-established science while astrology is allowed only as close to the word “science” as the suffix “pseudo-” allows. Lydia Netzer, in How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky (St. Martin’s Press, 2014), tries to turn back the clock, inventing a world where astronomy and astrology harmonize once again. The novel centers on two best friends (both astrologers), who conspire to raise their children (both astronomers) so that when they encounter each other as adults, they fall hopelessly in love. All this takes place in the shadow of the Toledo Institute of Astronomy, a “world renowned Mecca of learning and culture” that’s as fanciful as Netzer’s fictional Toledo, a city where “astronomers and mathematicians walk arm in arm down the street and discuss philosophy and cosmology,” she explains in her New Books interview. For Netzer, writing is an opportunity to explore every cranny of her imagination. “Every time you write a book, you go into your kitchen and get everything you made, every dish in the oven, everything in the refrigerator, bring it all out, put it on the table because you might not get the chance to write another one, and you just want to say everything you can possibly say,” she says. “Holding back for me is a big mistake.” Among the many topics Netzer addresses in the interview are lucid dreaming, which figures prominently in the novel. While her some of her protagonists gain mastery over their dreams, Netzer, in her own life, has met with less success. “One time … I was able to move a crate of lettuce closer to me in a dream grocery store, which was incredibly disappointing as an outcome. ‘Oh, you’ve managed to control your subconscious, and all you’re going to do is make it easier to buy produce.'” She also discusses the various iterations of How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky, including a first draft without dialogue. “It was terrible, and I don’t have that draft anymore. Thankfully a very kind friend helped me to not share it with anyone else.” Other topics include the mysteries of memory, the differences between first and second novels, homeschooling, and much more. Related Link: * Follow Lydia Netzer on her website and her Facebook page. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @RobWolfBooks   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Before Apollo 11, there was Jules Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon. Before the Internet, there was Mark Twain’s short story From the ‘London Times’ of 1904. In other words, before the appearance of many spectacular technologies, a writer imagined it first. This truth underscores one of science fiction’s abiding strengths: its ability to test concepts, both technological and social, without spending vast sums on research and development. The editors and writers behind Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (William Morrow, 2014) think many science fiction writers in recent years have lost their way in this regard. As evidence, they point to the proliferation of what Hieroglyph co-editor Kathryn Cramer calls “tired dystopias.” Rather than provide “cautionary tales that show us what to avoid,” she explains in her New Books interview, these novels use “dystopias as furniture”–backdrops for a plot centered on a central character’s adventures. In contrast, Hieroglyph seeks something different. “We’re asking for a science fiction that actually addresses problems and tries to solve them,” Cramer says. “And what they [the authors of the 17 stories in Hieroglyph] thought of were the problems is almost as interesting as what they think the solutions are.” Among the topics Cramer covers in her interview are how she overcame her initial skepticism about the Hieroglyph initiative, how she and co-editor Ed Finn selected the writers included in the volume, and how the authors worked with scientists and researchers at Arizona State University to postulate plausible technologies based on current scientific understandings. Don’t forget to follow New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy on Facebook and Twitter, post a review on iTunes, and follow host Rob Wolf on Twitter and his blog. Here are some links related to the interview: * Read more about Project Hieroglyph on its website. * Hieroglyph was inspired in part by Neal Stephenson’s essay “Innovation Starvation“. It was originally published by the World Policy Institute and now serves as a preface to the collection. * Cramer uses the term “neo-Gernsbackian,” which refers to Hugo Gernsback, who published the first science fiction magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

What does it take to be an emperor? That question is at the heart of Brian Staveley‘s debut novel The Emperor’s Blades (Tor, 2014). In this first of a projected trilogy, Staveley focuses on three siblings. They are the children of the assassinated emperor of Annur, a descendant of the Goddess of Fire whose irises look like flames. Kaden, the designated heir, has spent the last eight years training in far off mountains with monks. He’s physically strong and he’s learned to withstand deprivation. He’s also an expert at drawing pictures, capturing images perfectly in his memory and suffering the abuse of his never-satisfied teachers without complaint. But is he ready to take on the responsibilities of emperor, a position that will require him to hold together alliances, manage a large-scale bureaucracy, and foster the admiration of citizens on two continents? In his interview on New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Staveley describes the three types of tension that power good storytelling: psychological, social, and environmental. “If you’re writing a mountaineering story,” he explains, “the psychological tension might be one character’s fear of heights, and the social tension might be that two of the characters on the expedition hate each other, and then the environmental tension would be that there are constant avalanches trying to destroy them. And I think the stories I like … combine all three of those.” Staveley also discusses how his experiences teaching ancient history, world religion and comparative philosophy to high school students helped him with world-building, his method for keeping track of his numerous characters and storylines (lots and lots of Word files), and the difficult task his characters face of separating myth from historical fact. Staveley’s vision is enormous. Not only is The Emperor’s Blades itself intricate and multi-layered, but the author had originally envisioned writing seven books. His editor at Tor limited him to three, and Staveley expects to wrap up the series (known as the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne) with the final installment in 2016. But with four books on the chopping block, readers can expect eventually to hear more about the world in which these events take places. “The world is a large place,” he says. “There are always other stories to tell.” You can learn more about Brian Staveley via his website. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Science Fiction: 101 (Roc, 2014) isn’t just an “exploration of the craft of science fiction” as its subtitle says; it’s also about the impact the stories in this anthology had on the imagination of a young boy. That boy was Robert Silverberg, who was so inspired by the stories he found in pulpy magazines with names like Startling and Thrilling Wonder that he vowed he would one day become a science fiction writer himself. He sold his first science fiction story in 1954 when he was a sophomore at Columbia and never looked back. But lest anyone think the job of writer is easy, one of the messages of Science Fiction: 101 is that “hard work rather than superior genetic endowment is the basic component of most writers’ success.” The collection contains 13 stories, most of which were published in the 1950s and from which Silverberg, in essays accompanying each story, draws lessons about the art of storytelling. The anthology was originally published under a different name in 1987 but has been out of print until this year when Roc re-issued it. In his New Books interview, Silverberg touches on, among other things, his relationship with Isaac Asimov. At first, he knew and admired Asimov from his writing. But eventually, they became not only good friends but collaborators on several books, including the novelization of Asimov’s famous short story “Nightfall.” Ever present in the interview are reminders of the wonder Silverberg felt as a boy reading science fiction. That wonder is all the more poignant now that Silverberg is in the autumn of his career (he says he doesn’t plan to publish any new novels although hasn’t ruled out writing an occasional essay or short story). “Science Fiction: 101 is aimed for the people who, like me, like Isaac [Asimov], like Ray Bradbury were beginners once.” Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Historical fiction, by definition, supplements the verifiable documentary record with elements of the imagination. Otherwise, it is not fiction but history. These elements often include invented characters, made-up dialogue, the filling in of vague or unknowable events and personalities. Through the more or less careful manipulation of historical truth, the novelist seeks to uncover a deeper emotional truth that speaks to both the reality of a past time and the needs of the present. Before and During (Dedalus Books, 2014)–Vladimir Sharov’s exploration of Soviet life and the revolutionary movement that preceded it, skillfully translated by Oliver Ready–pushes historical invention to its limits. Set in a Moscow psychiatric hospital circa 1965, the novel follows a patient identified only as Alyosha as he pursues his self-assigned quest to create a Memorial Book of the Dead, à la Ivan the Terrible, by recording the life stories of those around him and people of importance in his own past. One fellow-patient, Ifraimov, launches into a long and fantastical account of reincarnation, philosophy, revolution, free love, and incest that sweeps from Mme de Staël and Lev Tolstoy to Lenin and Stalin–assiduously recorded by Alyosha. As Sharov’s English-language publisher puts it, “Out of these intoxicating, darkly comic fantasies–all described in a serious, steady voice–Sharov seeks to retrieve the hidden connections and hidden strivings of the Russian past, its wild, lustful quest for justice, salvation, and God.” It’s quite a ride. But if you love Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, this book’s for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Full Fathom Five (Tor, 2014) the third and most recent novel in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, features dying divinities and depositions, idols and investments, priestesses and poets, offerings to gods and options for shareholders. As he explains in the podcast, Gladstone traces his initial inspiration for his Craft Sequence to, among other things, his several years teaching English in rural China, where he saw children of subsistence farmers grow up to become engineers and international bankers. “The thought that that’s really the kind of range that exists in the modern world sort of blew my mind open,” he says. When he came back to the U.S., Gladstone experienced a kind of culture shock. “Coming back to billboards and advertising campaigns and bank account statements and all of that was this huge shock so I was forced to fall back on interpretive tropes from fantasy and science fiction … to grok it all.” Another influence on his writing was the financial collapse of 2008 where the image of governments and banks rushing to salvage failing investment firms inspired him to write about necromancers trying to resuscitate dying gods. Also in the podcast, Gladstone discusses his affinity for female protagonists, the role numbers play in the titles of his books, the risks of hidden bias in world-building fiction, and his new text based game Choice of Deathless. For more about Gladstone, visit his blog here. Here are links to some of people, books and things mentioned in the podcast: * Author Ramez Naam. * Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie * Author Hannu Rajaniemi. * The Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold * The quotation about escape from Ursula K. LeGuin comes from her book The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. The quote is cited in a post on The Tolkienist about escapism as an elevating quality of fantasy literature. * The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, directed by Sophie Fiennes and written and presented by Slavoj Zizek. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Strand a man on Mars with only a fraction of the supplies he needs to survive and what do you get? A bestseller. Andy Weir‘s The Martian (Crown, 2014) has been on a journey almost as remarkable as its protagonist, but instead of surviving on an airless, waterless planet, The Martian has survived the inhospitable environment known as publishing, floating near the top of bestseller lists since the moment it was published. The overall plot is easy to summarize: A manned mission to Mars is scheduled to last 31 days but is aborted in the middle of a life-threatening windstorm. The crew’s botanist-engineer Mark Watney is left for dead as the crew rushes to escape. Watney spends the rest of the book figuring out how to survive while the experts at NASA spend their time figuring out if they can rescue him. Describing Watney’s strategies for survival are a bit more complicated. Everything that remains from the aborted mission is fair game for Watney’s imaginative repurposing. One by one, he turns the supplies and equipment that had been designed for a month-long sedentary encampment into tools to help him last hundreds of days while traveling thousands of kilometers across an airless, foodless terrain. Watney turns oxygen to water, sterile Martian dust into fertile Earth-like soil, a vehicle meant for short roving exploration into a cross-country tow-truck; these and other transformations draw on a deep knowledge of science that puts the “hard” in the genre known as hard science fiction. “I’m pretty nit-picky when it comes to science,” Weir says in his New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy interview. “What bothers me is when there are blatant science errors [in science fiction]… like when someone takes off his helmet and holds his breath when he’s on the surface of Mars.” Just as Weir has infused real science into his fiction, his fiction has returned the favor by transforming his real life into the stuff of fantasy. The success of The Martian has allowed him to morph from a writer-hobbyist, who originally self-published The Martian with zero expectation of financial reward, into a full-time author-superstar whose book is being developed for film by Ridley Scott and Matt Damon. Related links: Here are links to some things mentioned in the interview: * The Egg, a short story by Andy Weir. * A Talk at Google, in which Andy Weir demonstrates a computer simulation he created to determine the precise route of the Hermes spacecraft in The Martian. The demonstration begins around 14:00. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

History is shaped by cultures interacting either peacefully (through trade or art, for example) or violently, through war or colonialism. There doesn’t seem to be any way to avoid cultural intermixing–on Earth, at least. Science fiction is another story. The crew of Star Trek was bound by the Prime Directive, the United Federation of Planets’ regulation that prohibited Starfleet personnel from interfering in the development of alien societies. James L. Cambias explores a similar idea in A Darkling Sea (Tor, 2014), but rather than accept the Prime Directive as an unexamined good, the narrative tackles the issue from a number of fresh perspectives–three perspectives, to be specific. On one side is a team of human scientists who are trying to study a sentient species under six kilometers of a freezing, alien ocean. On the other side are the Sholen, technologically superior creatures who believe it’s their job to police inter-species interactions. And in the middle are the Ilmatarans, the giant crustaceans (think whale-sized lobsters) who the humans are trying to study. Is it OK for the humans and the Ilmatarans to interact? The Sholen say no, and prohibit direct contact. This means the humans can only observe the Ilmatarans from afar. Since the Ilmatarans “see” via sonar, the humans coat their vessels and diving suits in radar-proof material in the hopes of remaining virtually invisible. However, when one of the humans makes contact, all hell breaks loose. The Sholen order the humans to leave the planet; the humans refuse; and the Ilmatarans choose sides. A Darkling Sea asks important questions amidst a page-turning undersea battle: Is it inherently destructive for a technologically advanced culture (or species) to interact with a less advanced culture? When different societies mix, must some groups necessarily win and others lose? Who defines what’s “advanced” and what’s “less advanced”? The greatest danger of superior technology just might be the superiority complex that comes with it. In their hubris desire to prevent inter-cultural contamination, the Sholen are unaware that they’re breaking their own rules. As Cambias points out in the New Books interview: There is a logical contradiction buried in [the Sholen] attitude because they’re trying to prevent advanced species from meddling with less advanced ones; that means that they, as an advanced species, have to go around meddling with less advanced species. Also in the interview, Cambrias discusses the challenge (and fun) of inventing the Ilmatarans’ complex society from scratch, how his job as a game designer has both helped and hindered his storytelling, and space piracy, a topic he plans to explore at length in his next novel, Corsair. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature