Gaming goddess Roz Clarke has posted an interview with me about my part in the first Homeworld game, and the relationship between gameplay and narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever gone on record regarding my experiences with Homeworld, beyond simply saying that it changed my life. But now the full story can be told.
Well, last year I missed the Campbell nominations for Best New SF Writer by one measly vote, so for my final year of eligibility I’m throwing caution to the winds and announcing my unofficial non-campaign to put me over the top. It’s bad form to campaign TOO hard for those things (though you have until March 13th to vote here). Meanwhile I have a team of strategists digging up dirt on my competitors. For example:
Erin Cashier: who I went to Clarion with. . . she can switch across the breadth of SF (and beyond) with astonishing skill, and is as happy writing about wizards as robots. If I tried to write about wizards, it would be embarrassing, and I would create crap like “Fred the Magician and his Magic Fucking Hat.” And Erin writes about planet-sized spaceships too: her “Cruciger” remains one of the best stories I’ve ever read, and can be found in last year’s Writers of the Future Anthology.
I’m not doing a great job of character assassination, am I? Ok, how about:
Jenny Rappaport: not only was she the agent extraordinaire who sold my Autumn Rain trilogy to Bantam, but she also is a top-notch writer in her own right; stories include “The Sock Thief,” and my personal favorite, “The Untimely Demise of the Quack Quacks,” which she wrote when she was in the third grade, and which still cracks me up every time I read it. So technically her eligibility really ought to have passed by now. Besides, when I was in the third grade I was largely preoccupied with picking my nose and no one ever thought of giving me a prize for it.
DB Grady: who served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan (!), and whose writing combines two of my favorite things: Mars and noir. And from the looks of his website, the man’s as big a Raymond Chandler fan as I am.
Ian McHugh: guy writes fab stories, and won Writers of the Future altogether last year. And he’s Australian too, which clearly gives him an advantage in that that’s where this year’s convention is. At least I sure hope it does, because I’M HALF AUSTRALIAN MYSELF AND AM DESCENDED FROM A FUCKING CONVICT WHO GOT HORSEWHIPPED BY THE BRITISH SO VOTE FOR ME DAMMIT. (That’s actually true. And thanks for letting me get it off my chest.)
And the most vulnerable target of all:
Gail Carriger: who is so commercially successful these days that there’s no way she could be a good writer too. Because that would be too much for my heart to bear. <Leafs through Gail’s debut novel SOULESS while weeping >
Anyway, here’s the ballot, which you have until March 13th to fill out. . though my razors hacked Aussiecon’s computers so that you can’t submit it without putting my name on there. Because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re descended from convicts.
So the bad news is that there are no more ARCs for THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT available. Re-reading the rules of yesterday’s contest, I note I didn’t do anything smart like say “while supplies last” or “the first three to respond with the correct answer win”, so I’ve had to piss off everybody who wrote in clamoring for their well-deserved copies. Alienating my diehard fans—I’m smooth that way. Stay tuned, guys, I’m doing what I can to get more.
In the meantime, the good news is that you CAN get ahold of Book Three right now, in bookstores. Only it’s the Book Three of a totally different trilogy. . . for the last few years, fellow D.C. writer David Louis Edelman and I have been busy cranking out our respective trilogies, with our own dramatically different takes on the future of cyberpunk; well, he’s crossed the finish line first with GEOSYNCHRON, which brings the acclaimed (and quite brilliant) Jump 225 Trilogy to a halt. Featuring gorgeous art by Stephen Martiniere, who you know and love as the guy who drew the cover of BURNING SKIES. So what are you waiting for? That’s what I thought.
The JUMP 225 TRILOGY
The first ARCs of THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT have arrived. Each one containing the terrible final secret of Autumn Rain. No bullshit fake endings, no lame stealth set-ups for a fourth book . . this is it.
You want a copy, send me an email by Friday to djwATautumnrain2110.com and name at least two members of Autumn Rain.
UPDATE: folks, we are fresh out –congratulations to the winners (Mike C. of NY, NY; Andrew K. of LA, and Justin K. of Houston, TX) and stay tuned for more offers for free stuff. I hope to have more ARCs in soon. . .
There’s a certain strand of geek culture that seems to almost pride itself on being unable to see the wood for the trees. In particular, it’s pretty funny to watch Aint It Cool News firing away at Avatar after having hailed the latest Star Trek movie as the second coming earlier this year. Yet there’s not even a comparison. The one was warmed-over triumphalist nostalgia, the other a totally original visionary freight-train. Avatar’s storyline is being derided as thin in some quarters; for me, it was stripped down to its archetypal essentials, and all the more epic as a result. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that featuring a physically disabled lead character is in many ways as groundbreaking as the 3-D lushness that makes this movie something you could get so lost in. As of this writing, 3-D tickets were outselling 2-D tickets two to one, though the movie itself did well under a hundred million in the States. Which doesn’t really matter when it raked in more than $150 million overseas, and looks set to have strong legs, in part because the snowstorm that blanketed so much of the east coast acted as a considerable downer on box office performance. Unless next week’s Sherlock Holmes becomes a ticket-stealing juggernaut, Avatar looks set to roll back and forth over the holiday box office like one of those killdozers from the first Terminator movie.
To be fair, I think what might have pissed off some at AICN is Cameron’s high-handed tone, which drifted perilously close to eco-preachiness. This didn’t bother me, partially because I think that regardless of the specifics, he’s right on the fundamentals (we ARE going to be a planet bereft of green if we keep this up), but also because I really got into the idea that the moviemaker who took human-eating aliens to a whole new level back in the 1980s has now turned the whole equation on its head: now humans are the invaders, and the notion of alien becomes relative. “The aliens went back to their dying world”, concludes Sam Worthingon’s voiceover . . . but movies are never going back after this.
As Boing Boing reported earlier today, Canadian SF author and friend Peter Watts was assaulted/arrested at the U.S. border, and then released into Canada in the dead of winter with all his possessions confiscated (including a winter jacket). He now faces assault charges in a U.S. court.
Please consider making a donation to his legal fund. I know times are tough, but for Watts right now they’re way tougher. Please also pass the word on.
UPDATE: the donation can be made via Paypal to donate@rifters.com; the Boing Boing post has some other methods, but for whatever reason I can’t access it right now.
Per her announcement of yesterday, my agent Jenny Rappaport has closed up shop. She is the reason I made it into print—she took a chance on me when no one else would—and I owe her a very great deal. I wish her all the best in her new endeavors; her departure is symptomatic of the extent to which this industry is under ever-mounting pressure.
As to what happens next, not sure. I’m not actively seeking representation at this time, but hope to have a New Direction/Overall Strategy in place by . . well, why don’t we say next decade. Stay tuned.
I’ve been AWOL doing the pre-copy edit round of revisions on Book Three, but now all normal programming resumes. And what better way to get back into the swing of things then by revealing the cover for the final book of the Autumn Rain trilogy, THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT? Release date: May 2010. Stay tuned!
It’s been ten years since Homeworld was released, and Uberjumper over at Relic News has a great thread to commemorate it. It’s tough for me to express how honored I am to have story concept and co-writing credits on the game; the comment thread is a moving testament to the game’s emotional impact. It certainly had an impact on me—my involvement in the game was all moonlighting while I was in Vancouver trying to escape the banal reality of my corporate job back in D.C., and in the wake of Homeworld, I had to wonder why I was stuck doing P&L spreadsheets while friends of mine were inking space-fleets for a living. In many ways, that was the motivation for what ultimately became Autumn Rain . . . and it seems like only yesterday me and Rob Cunningham were poring over spaceship drawings in his warehouse-loft over Hastings Street trying to figure out what the thread was that tied it all together while junkies howled and gibbered in the alley beneath us and we contemplated endless galactic suns.
Gail and I met at the LA WorldCon in 2006—in a Starbucks line, as I recall, and jesus were those lattes overpriced. We were both Outsiders Looking In at that point: manuscripts in hand that we were desperate to peddle to the powers that be. Three years later, we’ve both succeeded; Gail’s SOULLESS was just released by oh-so-cool Orbit to great critical fanfare—and how could it not be, given that it’s a comedy of manners set amidst vampires in Victorian London? In addition, she maintains a great blog where she offers readers fashion tips as well as thoughts on how to fight off vampires. I think she’s the next big thing; at least I hope so, as I could use some friends in high places. SOULLESS is available at Amazon and other fine bookstores (and presumably one or two cruddy ones as well).
