Archive for December, 2007

Other NPR Coverage of I Am Legend

Apparently, today, there was a different radio piece by Neda Ulaby, talking with the screenwriter and director of I Am Legend. You can listen to that one here. That one doesn’t have anything from me in it; apparently the piece with me was supposed to air today, but was bumped til tomorrow. Also, you can listen to a review of the film, by critic Bob Mondello.

Oh, and here’s something you can read right now that quotes me (and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman), a prose piece by Neda called "A ‘Legend’ of a Tale, Remade Era After Era."

Read More

Listen to Me on NPR’s All Things Considered

NPR reporter Neda Ulaby has a piece on I Am Legend that will air tomorrow on NPR’s All Things Considered. She interviewed me about the book, the previous adaptations, and the story’s relevance to post-apocalyptic fiction in general.

I’m not sure how much of my contributions will make it into her piece, but we talked for about 45 minutes, and I think I gave her some good quotes. (And she seemed quite happy with the results.)

If you’d like to listen to the piece, it’s supposed to air tomorrow. In the New York City area, it looks like it airs at 4 PM on WNYC 93.9 FM. For other areas, check out NPR’s broadcast schedule. Or, if you just want to listen to it online, the show should be available at 7 PM. Once it’s available, you should be able to find it here, or via the archives page. Theoretically, this should be the permalink (or at least will be once the show airs).

We pre-recorded my contributions to the piece last Wednesday at the Rutgers Livingston Campus TV studio (in a sound booth in the studio; they didn’t film me or anything). Since Neda’s in Washington, D.C., she called up on the phone and they piped her voice into the headphones they gave me to wear. So her sound was recorded on her end; my sound was recorded on mine, files are sent around, and production magic happens.

I’m curious to hear how it turned out.

Read More

Shimmer — The Steampunk Parable Issue

Shimmer has announced next year’s special double-length themed issue–The Clockwork Jungle Book, guest-edited by George Mann of Solaris Books .

Think “Steampunk Fables.” We’re looking to explore the steampunk sub-genre through a series of short, succinct fables, preferably using a variety of animals to give the issue a particular feel and theme.

Like any well-written fiction, good steampunk will blend adventure with speculation, wonder with insight, and fun with a sense of appropriate gravitas. This is all true of the stories we are looking to publish in this special issue of Shimmer.

Your story can be a steampunk re-imagining of a classic fable (such as those attributed to Aesop), or something entirely new. The animals do not have to be simple steampunk-inspired ciphers of their real-life counterparts (ie: we don’t want fifteen stories about clockwork chipmunks), but we encourage you to find imaginative ways to explore the topic. You may decide to write about a real-life, biological animal in a steampunk setting, a pseudo-bionic experimental monkey, a clockwork Pinocchio-like creation, or a world where intelligent rats have taken over the universe. We’re looking for an eclectic range of stories.

 

It’s scheduled for release in Autumn 2008. For more information, check out the writer’s guidelines.

Read More

Books Received 12/13/07

0439837766Fall Of The Templar
Author: Derek Benz, J. S. Lewis

Book Description: The epic battle between the Grey Griffins and forces of evil continues, as Max, Harley, and Natalia face off against Morgan La Fey and Lord Sumner. The friends also struggle to find a way to save Ernie, who remains trapped in an enchanted coma, and Max must come to terms with his father’s most wicked betrayal. The Grey Griffins and the Templar knights stage the last stand-off to save the world and the Land of Faerie….

 

0345480309Dragon Harper
Author: Anne Mccaffrey, Todd J. Mccaffrey

Book Description: Life in the Harper Hall is busy for best friends Kindan, Nonala, and Kelsa. As the only female apprentices, Nonala and Kelsa are the butt of jokes and easy targets for the bully Vaxoram and his cronies. But when Kindan springs to Kelsa’s defense, he winds up in a fight for his life against the older, bigger Vaxoram – a fight that will lead to a surprising friendship. | Meanwhile, in nearby Fort Hold, a clutch of fire-lizard eggs is about to hatch, and Lord Bemin’s beautiful young daughter, Koriana, is determined to Impress one of the delightful creatures. At the hatching, Kindan Impresses a fire-lizard of his own . . . and wins the heart of Koriana. But Lord Bemin mistrusts harpers and will not hear of a match between his daughter and the low-born Kindan. | Then fate intervenes in the form of a virulent plague as fast-spreading as it is deadly. Arising suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the contagion decimates hold after hold, paying no heed to distinctions of birth. In this feverish crucible, friendship and love will be tested to the breaking point and beyond. For with Threadfall scant years away, the Dragonriders dare not expose themselves to infection, and it will fall to Kindan and his fellow apprentices to bravely search for a cure and save humanity. | The price of failure is unthinkable. But the price of success may be even harder to bear.

 

0316020575Another One Bites the Dust
Author: Jennifer Rardin

Book Description: Jaz Parks has enough trouble in her personal life. What she doesn’t need is more trouble with her vampire boss and another mission. This time she has to retrieve a vital piece of biotechnology by killing the maniac who stole it: an ancient Chinese vamp. Their cover in this mission: professional entertainers at the Corpus Christi’s Winter Festival. The crew’s all here: a psychic, a techno-wizard, a singing vampire, a juggling PI, and Jaz. Holy crap in a bottomless well, Jaz is going to bellydance. It’s definitely, probably, quite possibly going to be the end of the world as we know it.

 

0345458559Tales Before Tolkien
Editor: Douglas A. Anderson

Book Description: Terry Brooks. David Eddings. George R. R. Martin. Robin Hobb. The top names in modern fantasy all acknowledge J. R. R. Tolkien as their role model, the author whose work inspired them to create their own epics. But what writers influenced Tolkien himself? Here, internationally recognized Tolkien expert Douglas A. Anderson has gathered the fiction of authors who sparked Tolkien’s imagination in a collection destined to become a classic in its own right. | Andrew Lang’s romantic swashbuckler, “The Story of Sigurd,” features magic rings, an enchanted sword, and a brave hero loved by two beautiful women— and cursed by a ferocious dragon. Tolkien read E. A. Wyke-Smith’s “The Marvelous Land of Snergs” to his children, delighting in these charming tales of a pixieish people “only slightly taller than the average table.” Also appearing in this collection is a never-before-published gem by David Lindsay, author of Voyage to Arcturus, a novel which Tolkien praised highly both as a thriller and as a work of philosophy, religion, and morals. | In stories packed with magical journeys, conflicted heroes, and terrible beasts, this extraordinary volume is one that no fan of fantasy or Tolkien should be without. These tales just might inspire a new generation of creative writers.

 

0756404657Fellowship Fantastic
Editors: Martin H. Greenberg & Kerrie Hughes

Book Description: The bonds of friendship and fellowship are key to many fine fantasy and science fiction novels, most notably Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Now top tale-spinners offer their own unique takes on fellowship in thirteen original stories, featuring a girl who finds her best friend through a portal to another world, an adventure on an alternate Earth where a not-quite Holmes and Watson take on a fascinating challenge, a group of urban mages playing the "True Game" for high stakes, a squire determined to help his master’s ghost fulfill his final mission, and more. Together, these stories dramatically illustrate how fellowships can alter destiny and change worlds.

Read More

links for 2007-12-13

Read More

Grasping for the Wind interview, SF Signal Mind Meld, with me, wonderful me

Yesterday, Grasping for the Wind posted a review of The Pirate Issue, and now they’ve posted an interview with me:

GFTW: You were recently invited to be a guest editor for the Pirate Issue of Shimmer Magazine. What was your approach to choosing stories for this issue?

JJA: One of the things I wanted to do with the Pirate Issue is have a broad range of pirate stories, which took some liberties interpreting the term "pirate." Of course, there are some stories in the issue that are your typical iconic Caribbean-style pirate, but it was important to me to have a certain diversity represented. So that was one factor.

Other than that, I was really just judging the stories on their own merits as I would judge any story. In fact, that was the only way I could judge them, really, because Shimmer employs a "blind" reading system, in which the names of the contributors are stripped off of their manuscripts before the editor sees them. So when I read each story, all I had was the title and the text. It was kind of a liberating feeling to read each story with absolutely no preconceptions, not even subconsciously, about what I might think about the story I was about to read. (And this was only enhanced by the fact that I read all the submissions electronically, so every submission looked exactly the same to me–there were no variations in manuscript formatting or other things like that to get in the way of me engaging with the story.)

The only other time I’ve ever read a story anonymously, as far as I know, is when I read Neil Gaiman’s "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" for F&SF. The manuscript didn’t have Gaiman’s name on it, just the title. I kind of felt like I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t put my finger on who it was. After I got to the end, I saw Neil Gaiman’s name, and so I learned who wrote it. But I was glad to have read it that way, and I enjoyed reading a whole slush pile’s worth for Shimmer that way.

 

Click to read the whole interview.

Also, SF Signal asked me to participate in their new Mind Meld feature, in which they get a bunch of knowledgeable folks and ask them to chime in on a certain issue. So click through to read my thoughts about online book reviewing, along with thoughts from folks like David Hartwell, Niall Harrison, James Patrick Kelly, and others.

Read More

Sanderson to Complete Jordan’s Wheel of Time

Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to complete A Memory of Light, the final volume in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time sequence. And to think, NONE of you voted for him in my awesome poll. Press release below:

Tor Books announced today that novelist Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to finish writing the final novel in Robert Jordan’s bestselling Wheel of Time fantasy series. Jordan–described by some as Tolkien’s heir–died Sept. 16 from a rare blood disease. The new novel, A Memory of Light, will be the 12th and final book in the fantasy series which has sold more than 14 million copies in North America and more than 30 million copies worldwide. The last four books in the series were all #1 New York Times bestsellers.

Harriet Popham Rigney, Jordan’s widow and editor, chose Sanderson to complete A Memory of Light–which Jordan worked on almost daily for the last few months of his life–and will edit it. Rigney said some scenes from the book were completed by Jordan before his death, and some exist in draft form. "He left copious notes and hours of audio recordings," she said. He also revealed details about the end of the series to close members of his family.

Sanderson, who acknowledged Jordan as an inspiration to him as a writer, has established a loyal fan base as the author of three fantasy novels: Elantris, Mistborn and The Well of Ascension (Tor), as well as a YA novel, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Scholastic Press). Sanderson said, "I’m both extremely excited and daunted by this opportunity. There is only one man who could have done this book the way it deserved to be written, and we lost him in September. However, I promise to do my very best to remain true to Mr. Jordan’s vision and produce the book we have all been waiting to read."

A Memory of Light is scheduled for publication in fall 2009.

Read More