Anyone going to ICFA this year? If so, be sure to check out this session:

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast, Episode 6: Steampunk! Sherlock Holmes! Eschatology!

This week we interview Cherie Priest, author of Boneshaker, amateur theologian, and Steampunk aficionado. We explain what Steampunk is, why it’s cool, and where you can check it out.

Alpha grads made a particularly strong showing in this year's Dell Magazines Award, with Rachel Sobel claiming first prize and Rebecca McNulty, Rachel Halpern, and Lara Donnelly all placing in the contest. Congrats!

The deadline for Alpha 2010 is March 1st. Author guests this year are Holly Black, Timothy Zahn, Tamora Pierce, and Mike Arnzen.

Added a "Cats in Victory" info page to my site. Here's a synopsis of the story:

    The catmen and dogmen have been at war for centuries, and Lynx, a young catman, has always been taught that in the last days Cat the Nine-Lived, lord of creation, will return to earth to lead his people to ultimate victory. But when Lynx finds himself present at Cat's return, it's not at all what he expected.

From "Cats in Victory":

    Father Cougar sighed deeply. "As I thought." He leaned forward, his gaze steady. "How many times must I tell you? Curiosity is the gravest of sins. And now you see what your curiosity has cost us. If you had avoided detection, we could have easily located these dogmen and captured them. But now they'll be expecting us, and will move on. The danger to those who track them is greatly increased. And what if the dogmen should slip away? You may very well have cost us the great Victory we have awaited so long."
    Lynx felt ashamed, despondent. Everything Father Cougar was saying was absolutely true.
    Father Cougar shook his head. "Well, there's no helping it now." He turned to the scribe and instructed, "Go to the inn. Fetch the templars." The scribe nodded once, and hurried off.
    Lynx felt awe. "Templars?"
    "Yes," Father Cougar said. "They arrived this morning. Two of them. Pursuing these dogmen you saw. They'll want to question you."
    "Of course," Lynx agreed at once, his shame quickly giving way to excitement.
    Templars! Holy ones, invincible warriors of Cat. In ages past, their order had eradicated the frogmen, the birdmen, and the monkeymen, and now only the dogmen remained.
    The scribe returned a short time later, leading the templars. They were the tallest, most muscular catmen that Lynx had ever seen. Both wore long white tabards, and upon their surcoats were embroidered the holy form of Cat.
    Father Cougar gestured to them. "Lynx, these are our templar friends, Lion and Tiger."
    The templars nodded politely. Tiger was brawnier, stern and dignified, with gray in his fur and black stripes around his eyes. Lion had a great tawny mane and seemed almost to vibrate with barely restrained energy. And he was younger, perhaps only five or ten years older than Lynx himself.
    Lion said quickly, "Tell us about the dogmen."

My short story "Cats in Victory" will be appearing later this year in the new online science fiction mag Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams. For more on the origins of the story, read this post here. Basically the story is a response to some of the stuff that bugs me about the Saturday morning cartoons I grew up with.

And here's a colorized version of Jandan's fan art for the story. This is a prequel image, sort of her concept of what the character Lion might have looked like in his early "Anakin Skywalker" phase, before he turned into the person (er ... cat person) we see in the story.

Harry Turtledove's short story "Vilcabamba," which just went live on Tor.com, features a terrific illustration by Jason Chan. Check it out.

I added a "Family Tree" page to my site. Here's a synopsis I wrote for the story:

    The tree-dwelling Archimagus family is bitterly divided between the descendants of Franklin and the descendants of Atherton. Simon, the Franklin clan's most talented wizard, long ago separated himself from his troublesome relatives. But when he hears that Meredith, the Atherton side's greatest sorceress, has returned home, Simon finds himself drawn back into the tangled web of family politics. As schemes and rivalries swirl around him, Simon must ask himself: Can he defeat Meredith? And does he want to?

So the other day as I was out on a walk, I noticed a car stopped at a green light after all the other cars had driven on. In the car were two well-dressed elderly women. The driver was talking on her cell phone. It appeared the car had broken down. I wandered over to stand beside the driver side window and waved, and the woman opened a door a bit, and I said, “What’s wrong with your car?” and she said, “It won’t start.” I said, “I could try pushing it around the corner there.” She gave me a blank look and closed the door almost entirely and kept talking on her phone. I couldn’t tell from this whether she wanted my help or not, and I really wasn’t sure what to do. I stood there baffled for a while, then started directing traffic while I tried to decide what to do next. (This intersection is three lanes wide in both directions, and the stopped car was in the middle lane, so it was creating an unbelievable mess as people tried to pull around it on either side.) A guy from the nearby P. F. Chang’s wandered over and called, “You want help pushing it?” (He thought it was my car.) I said, “Uh yeah, that’s what I was just suggesting, but...” He came over and waved at the passenger side window until the woman opened the door a bit. He said, “Hello, ma’am. If you’ll put the car in neutral we’ll push you out of the way here.” Apparently he got the same sort of non-response that I had, and the door closed again. We both stood there, perplexed, trying to figure out what to do. Five minutes passed. Ten. The women in the car still didn’t acknowledge us in any way. Finally the guy tried talking to them again. From where I was standing I couldn’t hear was said. Afterward I said to him, “So what’s the plan?” and he just shook his head and shrugged. He said, “They’re on the phone with AAA.” Finally, after about twenty minutes, some guys from the kitchen came out the first guy was somehow able to convince the women that we were going to push the car, and we pushed it through the intersection and onto the shoulder. As we were walking away I said to the first guy, “So what was going on that whole time?” He was fuming mad and muttered something about how the women had been trying to direct AAA to the intersection, but had been giving completely wrong street names, and he had tried to give them the correct information and then they had started arguing with him and telling him he was wrong, even though he was pointing at the street signs which were plainly visible from the intersection. I don’t know. The whole thing was really weird, and I think it did just sort of leave all of us good samaritans feeling like it was probably a good thing there was no cliff nearby or we might’ve been tempted to just push the car off of it.

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast, Episode 5: Crystal Skulls! Alien Abductions! Bigfootology!

The Skeptoid podcast is one of the most popular science podcasts around, with over 50,000 listeners. Brian Dunning, the host of Skeptoid, joins us to discuss critical thinking and its application in everything from alien abductions to medicine in the movies. Dave and John apply a little critical thinking of their own.

Here's an illustration for my short story "Family Tree" (which will be appearing later this year in the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard):

Garrett, Elizabeth, Sebastian (baby), Bernard, Simon

Malcolm, Meredith, Meredith's mother, Nathan

The Tree of Victor Archimagus

    A month later Simon stood and regarded the tree of Victor Archimagus.
    It was gigantic, its trunk as wide around as a castle wall. A good way up, the trunk split into a great V -- the two branches that had grown upon the births of Victor’s sons, Franklin and Atherton. From there the branches continued to climb and divide -- one for each legitimate male heir -- and now over a hundred descendants of the late wizard resided within the tree’s luxurious chambers. (Female children were married off and sent away -- Victor had never been a terribly enlightened sort.) The tree was a virtuoso feat of spellcraft, the first of its kind, and upon its creation Victor had been so impressed with himself that he’d taken the surname Archimagus -- master wizard. Simon was the only one to have successfully replicated the spell. Families that possessed the rare gift of magic seemed always to be afflicted with low fertility, but the fact that Victor’s tree grew larger and grander depending upon the number of offspring had ensured a frenetic effort to proliferate his adopted surname, and had also -- perhaps inevitably -- led to a rivalry between the descendants of Franklin and the descendants of Atherton over who could produce the greatest number of male heirs. At the moment it happened that the two halves of the tree were in perfect balance. Today’s presentation ceremony for Bernard’s infant son would change that.

Note: Firefox has a bug which causes it to display colors wrong, so for the full effect use other software to view these images.

ZOMG WANT TO GO TO THIS SO BAD:

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Episode 4: Superheroes! Romance! Sea Monsters!

This week we talk to the delightful Marjorie M. Liu, writer of Marvel Comics’ Dark Wolverine and NYX and author of the novels in the Dirk and Steele and Hunter Kiss series. She tells us about attending Clarion and writing for Marvel, and Dave and John discuss comics, then and now.

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Episode 3: Robots! War Machines! Robolobsters!

On this week's episode of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, we hear from P.W. Singer, author of Wired for War, on the subject of robots in the military and the intersection between video games and war. John and Dave consider some of the science fiction works that influenced the development of robots as we know them.

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Episode 2: Bacigalupilooza!

You don’t want to miss this week’s interview with Paolo Bacigalupi, author of the critically-acclaimed The Windup Girl, which was named one of Time Magazine’s top ten novels of the year. Paolo talks to us about global warming, the horrors of travel, the current state of literature for boys, and his own forthcoming YA novel, Ship Breaker. John and Dave discuss their own experiences with literature when they were growing up, and how they became science fiction fans.

Here's a terrific piece of fan art for my story "The Skull-Faced Boy" by Allison Jamieson-Lucy, an Alpha grad. Also check out her profile on deviantART.

She writes, "I'd been meaning to listen to 'The Skull-Faced Boy' ever since listening to you read 'The Skull-Faced City,' but only got around to it lately, now that it's cold outside and school is out. I drew while I listened, and it ended up being Ashley, freshly skull-faced."

Here's some more fan art from Blazeblackwing, for my short story "The Skull-Faced City."

So here we have Dustin (the skull-faced boy), Jack (now a decapitated head), Ashley (Dustin's bride), and Park (a former scout sniper who works as a sort of bounty hunter for Dustin and who goes masked when outside the city to hide his skull face):

And here's Park without his mask:

I just finished watching the 4-part PBS documentary In Search of Shakespeare. It's really in-depth and well-done, as host Michael Wood scours England for every instance of Shakespeare's name popping up in the historical record. (If you have Netflix, it's an instant download.)

Here's one story from the movie: The Earl of Essex was hoping to overthrow and replace Queen Elizabeth. Theater was the popular entertainment of the day, and was heavily censored because of its power to incite the mob to violence. Essex paid Shakespeare's company a large sum of money to resurrect Richard II and to add in a key scene making explicit that a bad ruler should be deposed. The plan was that at the end of the play Essex would march out on stage and call for an uprising. Unfortunately, when the time came, he spent too much time trying decide which shirt to wear, and by the time he finally appeared and made his rabble-rousing speech, the crowd had mostly dispersed, and Essex was promptly arrested and executed. Shakespeare's company was hauled before Elizabeth's inquisitors, and the players all took the line that they were just simple actors who had been hired to put on a play and they didn't know anything about any plot. Elizabeth knew they were lying, but by that point -- elderly, unpopular, and without an heir -- she didn't much care, but just to send a message and scare them straight she commanded that they perform their seditious play again -- just for her. Talk about stage fright.

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast, Episode 1: Zombies, Video Games, and the End of the World!

In our premiere episode for Tor.com, your hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley take on zombies and the apocalypse in video games, popular culture, and literature. They discuss Valve Software's history of story-focused video games and interview Chet Faliszek, lead writer for Left 4 Dead 2, then discuss their own strategies for surviving the coming zombie apocalypse, and give their opinions of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Here's some great new fan art I just received. The first piece, by Blazeblackwing, depicts the characters from my story "The Skull-Faced Boy" as they appear at the end of that tale. It's funny, I don't know if anyone remembers what my website used to look like back in 1999, but the main graphic looked almost exactly like the half-skull smiley face on Ashley's T-shirt there.