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The Big Idea: Joshua S. Levy

Posted on October 7, 2021    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

For Eighth Grade Vs. The Machines, middle grade author Joshua Levy decided that there was a certain concept that he wanted to put at the core of his middle-school-in-space tale. Was it action? Adventure? Laser Hamsters? (Also, how cool would laser hamsters be?) No, something even more fundamental than that, from which those other concepts could flow. Here’s Levy to tell you what it is.

JOSHUA S. LEVY:

Fun.

Is that a “big idea”? Fun? It’s certainly what drove me most as a kid reader. (Still does as a grown-up, here and there.) And, from the beginning, it’s been the guiding light for my wacky middle grade sci-fi series, starting with Seventh Grade Vs. The Galaxy (first published in 2019; paperback out now) and continuing in its sequel, Eighth Grade Vs. The Machines.

When I first got the nugget of the idea that would morph into these books, I was a flailing middle school teacher. (By far the most difficult job I’ve ever had.) I was presiding over a mock social studies debate relating to the “classroom community.” I can’t quite remember the topic. Something like: “For and against hand raising.” Or maybe: “What is the best color of whiteboard marker?” But I do remember how it felt—hilarious. The room was bursting with rowdy, funny, creative, frenetic energy. (This is possibly why I didn’t make the best middle school teacher.) And the aspiring writer in me thought: this. My book needs to feel like this.

So I took a bunch of (fictional) rowdy, funny, creative, frenetic middle school kids and threw them onboard a “public school spaceship” in the future. (The PSS 118. Ganymede District. Unfortunately, not the most well-funded PSS in the solar system.)

Like any school, the PSS 118 has classrooms (head aft from the command bridge, can’t miss ‘em), homework (Language Arts, math, intro to thermonuclear physics), and a gym (zero-g dodgeball is a school favorite, and not only because you can’t always count on the ship’s spotty gravitometric field generators—down the corridor from the teachers’ lounge).

Eighth Grade Vs. The Machines picks up right where the first book left off, galaxy-wide alien conspiracy in full tilt. I don’t want to spoil anything here (not when the stakes are SO HIGH!). Suffice it so say…the stand-up comedian robot (Chucklebot 7) who the kids and teachers meet early in Book 2 is not who you think it is! And while the stowaway pet hamster (Doctor Shrew) has a new semi-autonomous exoskeleton—it’s not just for catching carrots. (Okay, fine. It’s just for catching carrots. But, like, really hard-to-catch carrots. Guy can jump fifteen feet in the air now, so.)

It’s a series about people on a spaceship, having high-stakes adventures across vast distances. So sometimes, I’ll get a review that tags the books as “Space Opera.” But applying that term to Eighth Grade Vs. The Machines (and Seventh Grade Vs. The Galaxy before it) is a pretty good joke in and of itself. (Someone tell Chucklebot 7.) The books are not so much “opera” as they are…the last hour of a middle school talent show? So maybe “Space Recital” is a better label.

Anyway: fun. Action. Adventure. Humor. More all-school assemblies than the kids would prefer, given that THE FATE OF THE GALAXY HANGS IN THE BALANCE. But hey, at least the cafeteria food printers have a pizza option this year.

I’m not sure I’ve got enough (or any) authority to declare this The Golden Age of Middle Grade. But from my perspective, there’s little question that the category is currently producing some incredible books. Inarguably important books. Mirrors and windows for kids across the astronomical spectrum of readers. Eighth Grade Vs. The Machines …is not one of them. It’s a little escapist fiction, which I think there’s still room for (despite the times) and which I’m so delighted to be putting into the world (solar system, galaxy, universe).

A friend of mine gave Eighth Grade Vs. The Machines the following (100% biased, very possibly made up) review: “My kid was reading it after he was supposed to be asleep, laughing the whole time.” That’s about the best a Space Recital author can hope for.

Eighth Grade Vs. The Machines: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|IndieBound|Powell’s

Visit the publisher’s site or the author’s site. Follow the author on Twitter.

The Big Idea: Caitlin Starling

Posted on October 5, 2021    Posted by John Scalzi

There’s a central, motivating emotion at the heart of The Death of Jane Lawrence, and despite what the title may imply, that emotion is not “fear.” No, it’s something that, under the correct set of conditions, can be much worse. Here’s author Caitlin Starling to reveal and explain.

CAITLIN STARLING:

The Death of Jane Lawrence is a book about shame.

The shame of not fitting neatly into society. The shame of losing a patient who might have been saved, if you’d only been faster, more clever, more ruthless. The shame of surviving a devastating attack which claimed the lives of many more. The shame of making decisions from a place of perceived strength and mastery, only to realize that all the strength and mastery in the world can’t cheat death.

There’s a difference, you know, between shame and guilt. Guilt is over something you have done; shame is over something that you are.

Shame is heavy. It collapses. It constrains. It suffocates.

Shame is the cornerstone of gothic horror; secrets are its mortar. Shame doesn’t require secrecy, but it thrives in its embrace. Shame begets secrets to hide the source of that shame, and secrets create shames of their own, hidden things that must not be mentioned – or what will the neighbors think?

(It is both very challenging and very easy to write about shame. We’ve all felt it. Sometimes it feels like my life is governed by it. It’s familiar and raw, and putting it on display, even through the lens of fiction, feels like being flayed alive.)

From the beginning of the book, Jane knows she’s strange. She sees and moves through the world differently. She’s the adult ward of two friends of her long-dead parents, reliant on them for her survival. When at last she decides to marry, she does so out of the crushing conviction that she is, and always has been, a burden.

The man she courts doesn’t see her that way. But he coaxes something else out in her: a revelation of her capacity for coldness, her desire for control over everything and everybody around her. She sees in herself a monster, either born fully formed or forged in the wreckage of a city she barely remembers, in the deaths of parents she blames herself for having survived.

And her husband? The dashing, compassionate surgeon willing to go heroic lengths to save his patients? He carries his own humiliations, his own dark stumblings. A doctor is not a god, after all; he has a body count of his own, of those he failed to save, and those his interventions likely killed. Those he has lost cling to him relentlessly.

And then there are his private shames. A woman buried in haste two years ago. A crumbling manor outside of town. A cellar with four heavy locks. There are rules: Jane must not visit Lindridge Hall. Jane must never spend the night there.

And Augustine must always return.

But when they wed, despite their best efforts at strictly defining the path of their life together, the careful winding between dark holes in the floors of their selves, they begin to mix. To blur. The paths wander off, the walls come down. His secrets become hers, staining her life before she even knows what horrors they hide. And her shame, when planted in the wreck of Lindridge Hall, flourishes. It threatens to tear her apart.

And something in the rooms of Lindridge Hall is hungry for all of it.

The Death of Jane Lawrence: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Visit the author’s site. Follow her on Twitter.

The Big Idea: Stephanie Burgis

Posted on October 4, 2021    Posted by John Scalzi      7 Comments

With a title like Scales and Sensibility, you might be forgiven if you thought that you knew the primary influence on Stephanie Burgis’ new novel. But, as it turns out, you’d only be scratching the surface. Burgis is here today to help you dig deeper.

STEPHANIE BURGIS:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Regency romances are even better with pet dragons involved…or at least, I had an awful lot of fun mixing up those ingredients in Scales and Sensibility, my new Regency fantasy rom-com! But it all began a very long time ago with my parents’ wonderfully over-full bookcases.

There are so many advantages to being raised by voracious readers. For one thing, every time I ran out of books from the library (despite our weekly visits!), I had a whole house-full of interesting options to devour. I discovered SO MANY major f/sf writers on those bookshelves, from Roger Zelazny and Lord Dunsany to Emma Bull, Terry Pratchett, and Ellen Kushner.

Maybe best of all, though, before I had even hit the age of ten, my dad had already read me The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Pride and Prejudice as bedtime stories – and really, that statement explains so much about all of the books that I’ve written as an adult!

I’ve been a huge fan of dragons, fantasy novels, and comedy-of-manners historical romances ever since. Scales and Sensibility combines all of those personal obsessions into one sparkly Regency romp. Despite the title, it’s as much an homage to Mansfield Park as it is to Sense and Sensibility (with my poor heroine – the sensible oldest sister – stuck in the home of thoroughly unpleasant wealthy relatives) – but it was also heavily influenced by my love for Terry Pratchett’s Guards, Guards, for all of Ellen Kushner’s Riverside books, and even for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smaug, who first made me love dragons with all my heart (even though Smaug would look with disdain upon all of the tiny – but surprisingly magical – dragons in this book).

There are some books that break my heart as I write them – and then there are the books that fill me up with joy just when I most need it. I laughed so much as I wrote this story, throwing my perfectly sensible and practical heroine into the most outrageously impractical and desperate situations. I loved forcing pragmatic Elinor into a dangerous magical masquerade at a house party of doom, with the perilously unpredictable “help” of her mischievous new dragon causing even more trouble along the way. But I also loved writing Elinor’s way through all of those challenges to discover just how bold, strong, and daring she could be. I had so much fun as I surrounded her with an eccentric cast of characters that pushed her to her limits.

Then I had even more fun sharing this novel, week by week, with my subscribers on Patreon as I serialized it across 2021 in what turned out to be the sweetest part of my year. Every week, my patrons’ comments and reactions – and even, from time to time, their passionate arguments over the ethics of different characters’ actions! – filled me with the delight of a truly shared adventure. In a year where our family was dealing in real life with long covid and other hard, draining health issues, I really can’t over-emphasize just what a difference it made to be able to escape into that frothy world of fun and magic and share that kind of reading joy every week.

Now, Scales and Sensibility is officially out – today! – as both an ebook and a paperback, so I’m looking forward to sharing it far more widely. Nearing the end of another pandemic year, I think we can all use some frothy escape-reading and comfort – and let’s face it: dragons just make everything better. :)

Scales and Sensibility: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Apple Books|Kobo

Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s site. Follow her on Twitter.

The Big Idea: Steven Leonard

Posted on September 30, 2021    Posted by John Scalzi      4 Comments

If you like your Big Idea pieces full of science fiction metaphors and similes, I’ve got some good news for you: Today, editor Steven Leonard has jammed this essay full of them. And for good reason: Science fiction, and its lessons for power, projection and conflict, are at the heart of his anthology, To Boldly Go.

STEVEN LEONARD:

For many of us, some of life’s enduring lessons often come with a seemingly random pop culture reference. For me, those references were never all that random and they always circled back to science fiction. How many of us have invoked SkyNet or the three laws of robotics when cautioning the emergence of artificial intelligence? Or maybe quoted Darth Vader as a reminder of the seductive nature of unchecked power? And who hasn’t pondered the possibilities of time travel without considering the broader ethical implications of tampering with history?

For me, science fiction was the glue that cemented those lessons in my mind.

The Big Idea behind To Boldly Go evolved from a dinner conversation with Australian Major General Mick Ryan at West Point in 2018. Mick, who contributed the book’s foreword as well as chapter on grand strategy and Old Man’s War, pondered like The Watcher, “What if… we used science fiction as a metaphor to capture those lessons?”

It made perfect sense to me. My mental image of a bold leader had always worn a gold tunic, led from the front, and fought with a singular, distinctive style. Kirk Fu? Yeah, it’s a thing. Since boyhood, my concept of strategy had been framed around the science of psychohistory in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Citing Hari Seldon during planning meetings was always a sure way to get weird looks. From The Twilight Zone to Planet of the Apes, science fiction defined much of how I perceived and interpreted the world around me.

However, this Big Idea was bigger than two people. A lot bigger.

If we wanted To Boldly Go to achieve the promise of the opening monologue of the original Star Trek series, then we needed to seek out other perspectives, other ideas. We needed to take The Big Idea where no one had gone before. Our efforts reached for the final frontier: a diverse, global collective of writers whose shared love of science fiction forged a common bond that transcended, well… a pandemic.

If you thought contending with amorous tribbles in deep space was challenging, imagine coordinating an anthology project during a viral outbreak with writers spread from one end of the world to the other. That was fun.

But the end result was phenomenal. The writing came surprisingly easy, the words seemed to flow effortlessly. For me, the lessons I wanted to share had been a part of me since my father let me stay up late to watch reruns of Star Trek and Lost in Space. I didn’t just quote those reruns; I framed my thoughts around them. And, it turns out, so do a lot of other people.

As Jonathan Klug – my fellow editor and author – and I began to pull the threads together that would eventually form the tapestry of this anthology, I rediscovered my childhood obsession for science fiction. I found myself contemplating the burdens of Captain Avatar, leading an impossible mission with an imperfect crew aboard an improbable vessel. I was back aboard the Battlestar Galactica, re-exploring Adama’s interactions with President Roslin. And, appropriately enough, I was reconsidering the lessons drawn from Captain Trips, the manmade virus that killed nearly all of humanity in The Stand. As pandemics go, that one was brutal.

In the end, good writing – really good writing – draws you back to the source material. To Boldly Go is more than a pandemic-fueled labor of love. Every chapter had me re-watching or re-reading a classic work of science fiction, seeing it again for the first time through a different set of eyes. That’s an indescribably feeling. And a lot of fun.

To Boldly Go: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|IndieBound|Powell’s

You can follow Steve Leonard on Twitter @Doctrine_Man.

The Big Idea: Charles Dellheim

Posted on September 28, 2021    Posted by John Scalzi      3 Comments

For today’s Big Idea, Boston University history professor Charles Dellheim delves into Nazi stolen art — and from whom it was stolen — as an introduction to his book Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern.

CHARLES DELLHEIM:

After more than two decades of intensive scrutiny, it would stand to reason that the resurgence of concern with the fate of Nazi stolen art would fade. Nothing of the sort has happened, however. Family ties, Jewish pride, love of art, and material interests all come into play in battles to regain, or retain, disputed works. Nearly eight decades after the end of the Second World War, we continue to struggle with the tension between remembrance and restitution, between honoring stolen lives and returning stolen art.

New cases and new controversies continue to surface. On September 2^nd, an unusually controversial exhibit opened at Stadtmuseum Dusseldorf.  “Deprived of Rights and Property, The Art Dealer Max Stern.” This title politely omits the fact that its subject was Jewish. In 1929, Max Stern, who was trained as an art historian, entered the Galerie Stern. Founded by his father, Julius, an erstwhile textile manufacturer in 1913 in Dusseldorf, the Galerie Stern specialized in 19^th century painting, including renderings of Europe’s royal courts, as well as in Old Masters.

Foregoing an academic career in favor of art dealing, Max Stern dreamed of opening new galleries in London and New York. When he took over from his father in 1934, this was out of the question. Already hard hit by the economic turmoil of the Depression that stalled, and threatened to sink, the art market, the very survival of the business (to say nothing of the family Stern) was in question. Banned by the Nazis from practicing his profession, Max Stern was forced to liquidate his collection. He had the good fortune to escape to Britain in 1938.

Even so, his travails were not over: He was interned as an “enemy alien” in Britain and then in Canada. Knocked down but not knocked out, Max Stern started over in Montreal and eventually flourished. He joined the Dominion Gallery, which under his direction became Canada’s finest. Max Stern and his wife Iris bequeathed the bulk of their assets to three academic institutions in Canada and Israel: McGill University, Concordia University and the Hebrew University.

This is only a bare sketch of a life and work, which more than merits an exhibit. Why, then, the controversy? Any  such exhibit taking place in Germany inevitably raises explosive, unresolved issues about the memory and history of the Shoah. As a result, who is allowed, or not allowed, to tell Max Stern’s story, what they focus on and what they screen out, what motivates them and what they hope to accomplish, are fraught questions.

The immediate origins of the controversy go back to the end of 2017. Organized by curators in Canada and Germany, “Max Stern — From Dusseldorf to Montreal,” was slated to open in the Stadtmuseum Dusseldorf in February 2018 and then travel to Haifa before finally arriving, as its subject did, in Montreal. After three years of preparation, Dusseldorf city officials led by then Mayor Thomas Geisel abruptly announced that the show would not go on. This had nothing to do with lack of funding or enthusiasm. It had everything to do, as Mayor Geisel put it, with “current demands for information and restitution in German museums in connection with the Galerie Max Stern.”

Geisel’s limp bureaucratic statement appears to have ensured that the exhibit did not aid or abet claims for contested works of art. Geisel’s unbelievably inept about-face led to sharp slaps in the face from various parties, among them the local Dusseldorf Jewish Community, the World Jewish Congress and the German Culture Ministry.  Consequently, Geisel reversed himself again and announced that an expanded Max Stern exhibit would take place in a revised “form” at a later date. This turned out, for various reasons, to be September 2, 2021. “Deprived of Rights and Property – Max Stern” also was deprived of the participation of the original group of Canadian and German curators, who refused to take part in the new exhibit.

The Max Stern exhibit is more likely to end up as a cautionary tale in a Harvard Business School case-study than in a new version of Profiles in Courage.

What this sorry saga demonstrates above all is the danger of choosing between remembrance and restitution. Honoring dead Jews who were victims of Nazi persecution “looks good,” particularly in Germany for obvious reasons. But honoring victims is no substitute for rectifying crimes. At the same time, the restitution of Nazi pillaged works of art, crucial as it may be, is no substitute for deepening our understanding of, and sympathy for, the Jewish dealers and collectors who loved and lost them.

In my new book, Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern, I turn the story of Nazi stolen art on its head by showing how certain Jewish art dealers and collectors acquired so much great old and modern art in the first place, how these outsiders came to play a pivotal role in the art world, how they joined the ranks of the old masters’ new masters and, above all, became the modernists’ champions, and how their sudden prominence further antagonized antisemites and fueled a violent onslaught by Nazis, who denied their humanity by denying their ability to appreciate, and their right to own, beautiful works of art. I explore these themes in a narrative of the rise and fall of an extraordinary circle of individuals and families – dealers, collectors, and artists

I hope that readers will come away from Belonging and Betrayal with a deeper understanding of, and sympathy for, the fortunes and misfortunes of the people that I write about. But this should not be the end of the story. Remembrance without restitution is futile; restitution without remembrance is hollow. Recapturing stolen paintings cannot redeem lost time, let alone restore stolen lives. But for Max Stern, as for other Jewish victims of the Nazis, it should be a spur to rather than a substitute for scrupulous consideration of claims to Nazi stolen art.

Belonging and Betrayal: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Indiebound

Read an excerpt.