Category: Uncategorized

How do science fiction authors predict the future? Do you want to write a book but don’t know where to start? Cat Rambo, J.S. Dewes, and I will try to answer these and other questions for you at two panels at FanExpo Chicago on Saturday, August 12, at the Douglas E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont. You can also enjoy cosplay, celebrities, comics, anime, shopping, fan meet-ups, workshops, artists, tattoo alley, family-centered events, and gaming..

Writing the Future with Sci-fi Authors, 12:30 p.m. in Fandom Panels Room 11. Join authors Cat Rambo (You Sexy Thing, Devil’s Gun), J.S. Dewes (Divide series, Rubicon), and Sue Burke (Semiosis, Dual Memory) with moderator Meg Bonney as we chat about our books, inspirations, and building strange new worlds in science fiction. Plus, bring your books and stay after the panel for a free signing.

Sci-fi Authors Signing, 1:30 p.m. in Fandom Panels Room 11. Cat Rambo, J.S. Dewes, and Sue Burke.

Ask Me Anything: Writing Advice from Science Fiction Authors, 4:00 p.m. in Workshops Room 4. Want to write a book but don’t know where to start? Have a question about the age-old debate of plotting vs. pantsing? Or maybe you just want to know more about where inspiration comes from. Then this panel is for you. Join authors Cat Rambo, J.S. Dewes, and Sue Burke with moderator Meg Bonney and get your burning questions answered.

While I was at Pemmi-Con, the North American Science Fiction Convention on July 20 to 23 in Winnipeg, Canada, I succumbed to encouragement and entered the Masquerade. This is a kind of costume contest often held at science fiction conventions since 1939.

Masquerades can be intimidating. Some costumers put breathtaking effort into them, and all I had was a Doctor Who scarf. But it was no ordinary scarf: It meant something. I entered it as “Tangible Artifact,” and when I went on stage, the convention’s toastmaster, Tanya Huff, read my story:

“When I first started going out with Jerry, neither one of us wanted to go out on Friday nights, and eventually one of us admitted: ‘Well, there’s a TV show I like to watch. It’s kind of odd. It’s called Doctor Who.’ ‘Oh, I love Doctor Who!’ Soon, I asked my mother, who loved to knit, to make a Doctor Who Scarf for my boyfriend as a gift, and I got her the official BBC pattern from a fan club. She watched the show to get the colors right, and she loved it, too. Eventually Jerry and I got married, and a year later Mom died, but the scarf remains as a tangible artifact of the love that flows through fandom.”

The audience was touched, although I wasn’t the best in show, obviously. You can see the winners here and admire the master-level craft in the costumes. Still, I won two awards: an Honorable Mention in the Novice Class for Stage Bravery, and a Workmanship Award for my mother’s exceptionally skillful knitting. We miss you, Mom!

As you know, I love plants, and I’ve found an ally in my quest to make you a plant-lover, too.

Shepherd is a site where authors can share their favorite books — and here are the ones that I hope will change the way you look at the greenery around you: The best books to make you love plants.

That’s not all you can find at Shepherd. For example, you can see an expert list on how to keep your houseplants alive. You can view a whole shelf of the best plant books picked by other authors.

You can also browse book recommendations for all kinds of topics in both fiction and non-fiction, by genre, author, age of reader, or books that are like one of your favorite books. Unlike some book-selling sites, these are recommendations for readers, not for corporate profit. Maybe you’re interested in history, parenting, mysteries, or cooking. If you like to read, this site is worth bookmarking.

If you’ve read the novel Dual Memory, you know how it ends — and then what happens? For fun, I wrote what might be the next scene. You can read it here.

If there’s a next scene, is there a next book? Honestly, that depends on sales of the first book, and bigger sales are always more encouraging when it comes time to make a hard business calculation. If you enjoyed the novel and want a sequel, recommend Dual Memory to your friends and leave a review wherever you can.

The best sales technique is word of mouth: person-to-person buzz. You can accomplish what no one else can.

My latest novel, Dual Memory, drew very vague inspiration from the Dutch tulip bubble in the 1630s (the real tulipmania, not the hysterical pseudo-history). Because naming characters is hard (as Rebecca Makkai explains here), I decided to name as many people, places, and things as I could after tulips.

The available choices seemed close to infinite. One of the sources I used was the US National Gardening Association listing. Some of the names are unexpected because whoever develops or finds a cultivar of a plant gets to name it, and people can be moved by whimsy.

Tulip names tapped for the novel include:

Thule, a kind of Triumph tulip (see picture)

Antonio Moro, a pink Triumph tulip

Par Augustus (now extinct; tulip cultivars naturally peter out)

Cedonulle

Devenish

Miss Fanny Kemble

Ollioules

Ginrei

Ho Tcho

Ibiza

Koningin

Macx

Marathon

Moniuszko

Mussi Knol

Nico

Toproy

Oscar

Pinky

Romero

Goya

Switzer

Tetry Vivi

Valentinier

Wirosa

Antraciet

Bronzewing

Chatelaine

Marathon

Quidam

Swan

Upstar

Hocus Pocus

Rosella

Fontaine

Blanka

Grand Rapids

Farness

Wrestlemania (seriously?)

As you know, Stevland is a character in the novel Semiosis, specifically a bamboo tree. The bamboo was named after a colonist who died on the way to the planet Pax, and that colonist was named after the musician and singer known as Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder’s real name is Stevland Hardaway Morris. But how do you pronounce “Stevland”?

Now we know for sure. In this clip from a television special in about 1970, Diana Ross introduces him with a breathy “Hello, Stevland.” She says “STEEV-land.”

You can see the greeting in the opening minute at https://youtu.be/mxs2nRekH2w. But listen to the whole thing as Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross sing “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.” Stevland (the namesake on Pax) loves music, too.

My novel Semiosis is set on a distant planet called Pax where iron is a scarce element in the planetary crust. But plants need iron, so some of the plants on that planet find ways to hunt and kill animals, which are a rich source of iron. This becomes a problem for the humans who arrive to colonize Pax.

Here on Earth, iron is a common element in the surface in most places — but the soil in flowerpots can become depleted. I’m taking no chances. This is the label of the plant food I give to my houseplants. They get all the iron they need, and I can sleep soundly.

This is a coleus in my living room. I think it’s gorgeous, and I use this photo as wallpaper on my phone.

Photos are an art form. I spend most of my time writing, which is also an art form. And one of my hobbies is houseplants — which is to say indoor gardening. It’s occurred to me that gardening, too, is an art form.

I’m hardly the first to have this thought, nor am I the first to believe that we can all make art, many kinds of art. Art and creativity get defined too narrowly, limiting “artist” to someone like Picasso, not the person who doodles in the margins of a letter. (But Édouard Manet doodled in his letters, and he’s a “real” artist, so logically, marginal art is “real” art.)

I make art with water, dirt, time, sunshine and a collaborating plant.

What art do you make?

My new novel, Dual Memory, has now spent two weeks out in the wild world! Thank you to Volumes Bookcafé for hosting the launch, to Richard Chwedyk for leading a conversation with me at the launch, and to my husband, Jerry Finn, for all his support. And thanks to everyone who has bought it, and especially those who have reviewed it. Reader reviews at places like Amazon, Goodreads, and LibraryThing, as well as word of mouth, are the only sure ways to sell books.

Paul Semel interviewed me for his site about Dual Memory, and among his other questions: What inspired the novel? How did Par Augustus get its name? Would the story make a good game? (As a game, I think it would ruin friendships.)

During the discussion at Volumes, I remembered that one of the novel’s characters, so to speak, the Marathon Building, was inspired by an incident that stuck with me from another science fiction work, 17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future. This is a serialized multimedia narrative by Jon Bois. In Chapter 19, the machines in the story share a eulogy for “our dearest ancestor.” But read the entire story! It’s free online. 17776 is a daring experiment in storytelling, and you don’t need to like football to enjoy its wild inventiveness.

***

By the way, if you’re at Goodreads and you haven’t read Semiosis yet, here’s your chance to get the book for free. Five copies are up for grabs. Giveaway closes June 6. Limited to United States. Sign up here.

The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Is anyone out there? Of course we want the answer to be yes. We want to believe we’re not alone in the universe. Jamie Green has hopes, too, and she’s a smart and experienced science writer, so she knows how to look for answers.

She takes us on an investigation. She talks to a lot of scientists, discusses a lot of science fiction, and answers a lot of questions. Would an alien have an anus? (Maybe, maybe not.) How weird could alien life be? The question, she says, “challenges us to imagine something beyond what we know” — but what exactly do we know? What would alien life be like? How about intelligent alien life? Would it even be understandable? Why or why not? What are some examples from science fiction?

If you’re interested in science and science fiction, you’ll learn something from this book and have a good time learning it. If you write science fiction, you’ll come away with good ideas — maybe even inspiration.

View all my reviews