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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Teaser
So, in the plus column we have:
- Agent Coulson (apparently back from the dead – comic book magic in the classic tradition)
- some hot chick (honestly I can’t be bothered to look up who she is but she looks right for the part of “the hot agent” and will likely end up with some sexy bruises and a tiny cut above her eyebrow that makes her look dangerous which is pretty much exactly what we want, no?)
- Joss Whedon producing AND directing the pilot (all hail your Geek Lord and Master)
- cheesy operatic music (can’t do a superhero show without it)
- one very cool S.H.I.E.L.D. mobile command center aircraft (with a sweet 2 tone black S.H.I.E.L.D. logo paint scheme – why do fake military aircraft paint jobs look so much cooler than real military paint jobs?)
- one bad ass Corvette named Lola (that I’ll wager Coulson gets to drive up the loading ramp on the plane while it’s moving a la Knight Rider’s semi truck)
- some super hero-ey stunts (performed by vague super heroes in street clothes – tights are not in vogue it seems)
Strangely, those could all be in the minus column too… except for Joss. Weird.
So, I’m predicting they pull out all the stops for the pilot, which should be really good, then the budget plummets for the successive episodes not directed by Mr. Whedon. Can the show sustain interest after the drop? Yeah, I think so. We’ll lap it up like the geek apologists we all are ’cause we so desperately want to love it. You had me at Joss Whedon. Search your feelings… you know it’s true.
2013 Campbell Award Nominees!
The 2013 John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalists have been announced:
- The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
- Any Day Now, Terry Bisson (Overlook)
- Existence, David Brin (Tor)
- The Rapture of the Nerds, Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross (Tor)
- Empty Space, M. John Harrison (Night Shade)
- Intrusion, Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
- Railsea, China Miéville (Del Rey)
- The Fractal Prince, Hannu Rajaniemi (Tor)
- Blue Remembered Earth, Alastair Reynolds (Ace)
- Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer, Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
- 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
- Slow Apocalypse, John Varley (Ace)
- Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove Press)
The award, for best SF novel, will be presented during the Campbell Conference, to be held July 13-16, 2013 at the Oread Hotel in Lawrence KS.
This makes the 6th award nomination for 2312. One more and it would have tied only 5 other books for most nominations ever received. That’s quite an accomplishment for a science fiction book that doesn’t cross genres.
What do you make of this list? Any personal favorites in there? There seems to be a wide variety of books though I am curious to see what people make of the fact that only 1 in 13 of the books was written by a female author.
SF Manga 101: Twin Spica
Glenn Hough (gallyangel) is a nonpracticing futurist, an anime and manga otaku, and is almost obsessive about finishing several of the lists tracked on WWEnd. In this series on SF Manga Glenn will provide an overview of the medium and the place of science fiction within it.
From the Big Dipper, take the arc to Arcturus. Drive a spike to Spica.
The star Spica in the constellation of Virgo is actually thought to be a binary star system about 262 light years away from Earth. Twin Spica. But even this is in doubt. There may be more stars in that system; it might be up to a quintuple system.
And no, the lead character of Twin Spica is not from this system. It’s where thirteen year old Asumi Kamogawa is looking to go. To the stars.
The publisher says this about Twin Spica:
In a Tokyo of the not-too-distant future a young girl looks up to the stars with melancholy in her heart and hope in her eyes. Thirteen-year-old Asumi Kamogawa’s life has been tied to those stars; her future may very well be among them. And she is not alone… Asumi is one of many young people with ambitions to some day head off to space for Japan’s first manned mission.
Before liftoff, like any true astronaut she must show the right stuff and overcome odds to pass numerous physical and mental trials if she even wants to be considered in the running for a rare spot in the elite Tokyo Space School.
Have you ever sat and talked to or listened to someone on TV who was in their early 20ies or teens during the height of the Apollo era? Do you hear the passion in their voice, still, after all this time? Do you understand that for them, space was not a trivial thing? It meant something. It was a striving, a growing, a throwing off the shackles of the past for something nobody had tried to do before. We’d dreamed of it certainly, but never before had the physics or technical knowledge been ours so that we could try. Space was our future and we were going for it. Space mattered then, in a way it does not matter now. And the spirit we had then, is what moves Twin Spica.
Gravity – Teaser Trailer
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Hollywood movie where the filmmakers actually tried to depict the physics of zero-gravity accurately. And to do so as part of a taut thriller that might give Apollo 13 a run for its money? Looks promising.
Ask N. K. Jemisin Anything – The Interview
This is the first in our Ask an Author Anything interview series and we’re very excited to be kicking things off with N. K. Jemisin, which we are now publishing fresh off of yesterday’s Locus nomination. The way it works, as you may recall from our first post, is that we get questions from our members and visitors who then vote on their own questions. We take the most popular questions asked and send them off to the author. Our goal is to have around a dozen questions but in this case Ms. Jemisin is neck-deep in Deadline Hell working on her next novel so we cut it back to just 6 to ensure we don’t interrupt her work too much.
We arranged this interview through her publicist at Orbit who very graciously has sent along some books for us to give away. Check out the details at the end of the interview for your chance to win. Now for the interview!
WWEnd: First, congratulations on your recent Nebula Award nomination for The Killing Moon. You’ve been getting a lot of those. What is it like for the bulk of your accolades to come from fellow writers? Is it different than, say, the Hugo nomination you received, which was from fans?
NKJ: I don’t really think about it that way. Thus far I’ve had three Hugo nominations and four Nebula nominations, but I had to go look at my own bibliography to remember which was which. The bragging rights — if you want to call them that — don’t come from the number of nominations. They come from the fact of being nominated at all. That first nomination was the point at which my agent/publisher started putting “Hugo nominee” or “Nebula nominee” in my marketing materials (and when I won the Locus and the RT, this became “Award-winning author”), and that’s when I started seeing more sales to libraries and organizations that look for fiction of a certain quality and popular appeal. I don’t think they care how many nominations I’ve gotten, either! Just that nominations exist.
I do have to admit that the Nebula noms give me a little more of a shiny feeling, even though the Hugo award is better-known. I think every professional likes having the respect of her peers; I feel the same way about the World Fantasy nomination. But the Hugo noms mean I’ve achieved a certain level of name recognition with fans, and for someone who’s as early in her career as I am, it’s awesome for that to happen even once, let alone twice.
The 2013 Locus Award Nominees!
Locus has announced the nominees for the 2013 Locus Awards. The winners will be announced at the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle, Washington with Master of Ceremonies, Connie Willis. The finalists in the novel categories are:
- The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
- Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey (AKA: Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank) (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Redshirts, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz)
- The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
- Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
- Hide Me Among the Graves, Tim Powers (Morrow; Corvus)
- The Apocalypse Codex, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
- The Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown; Atom)
- Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen)
- Railsea, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
- Dodger, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)
- The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel & Friends; Much-in-Little ’13)
FIRST NOVEL
- Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed (DAW; Gollancz ’13)
- vN: The First Machine Dynasty, Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot US; Angry Robot UK)
- Seraphina, Rachel Hartman (Random House; Doubleday UK)
- The Games, Ted Kosmatka (Del Rey; Titan)
- Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus)
Visit Locus Online for the official press release and the complete list of finalists in all categories. Congrats to all the finalists and best of luck in June!
The World’s End Trailer
Wow, there sure are a lot of good scifi trailers coming out this week. The World’s End is the last part of a “trilogy” from the makers of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I’m pleased to see The Hobbit‘s Martin Freeman in a supporting role.
Snag a Hugo nominated novel in this crazy two-fer deal!
we decided to put this on the blog STAT.By the way, when I got our Leviathan Wakes bookmark signed by both authors at last year’s Worldcon, I had one sign James and the other sign Corey. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one with that signature (at least they told me I was the first who asked for it that way). Have I just ruined my unique status by letting that slip? Damnit.
Ender’s Game – First Trailer
Them’s some nice-looking special effects. Ender’s Game (also: Amazon, Kindle, Audible) is one of our most popular novels. Let’s hope the film tries to live up to it.
