Big Idea Category
The Big Idea: Seth Shostak
Posted on June 18, 2009 26 Comments
Science fiction writers such as myself live in a state of wariness about the concept of alien intelligence truly existing. On one hand, how cool would it be to finally know we’re not alone in the universe — every science fiction writer in the world would be vindicated. On the other hand, we’d also be […]
The Big Idea: Jay Lake
Posted on June 11, 2009 21 Comments
Normally I write a bit about each of the Big Idea authors, but here’s all you need to know about Jay Lake, one of my fave people in science fiction/fantasy and a Hugo co-nominee with me for METAtropolis: He’s awesome. His new book Green? Also awesome. His Big Idea piece? Totally completes the awesome trifecta. […]
The Big Idea: Tom Levenson
Posted on June 9, 2009 23 Comments
Issac Newton: You know him as the man who invented calculus and described the physical world with a model that persisted until Einstein. But there was another side of Newton: Crime-fighter! No, he didn’t wear a mask and a cape; it’s not that kind of crime fighting. Rather, in 1695 Newton left the academic life […]
The Big Idea: John Joseph Adams
Posted on June 2, 2009 17 Comments
It’s not just authors who have Big Ideas: Editors sometimes get them, too. For example, John Joseph Adams, who has been recently been making a name for himself in speculative fiction by editing a string of compelling anthologies, including the best selling zombie anthology The Living Dead. His latest anthology, Federations, aims to evoke the […]
China Miéville on Crime Novels
Posted on May 26, 2009 42 Comments
China Miéville’s new novel The City & The City hits the stores today, and it’s a novel that simultaneously fulfills Miéville fan expectatation and is something that they never would have seen coming. Fans of the author almost certainly expected a complex and satisfying tale of a fantastic city real enough that you get the […]
The Big Idea: C.C. Finlay
Posted on May 22, 2009 41 Comments
Surprise: Everything you thought you knew about the American Revolution is wrong! Well, actually, not wrong, but if author C.C. Finlay has his way, you’ll come to believe it’s woefully incomplete. Why? Because in Finlay’s Traitor to the Crown trilogy, of which the latest, A Spell for the Revolution, has just come out, it’s not […]
The Big Idea: Greg van Eekhout
Posted on May 19, 2009 71 Comments
How does one get from Los Angeles to Ragnorak? If you said “take a left at Albuquerque,” you’ve watched too many Bugs Bunny cartoons, and also, you’re not Greg van Eekhout, the Nebula-nominated writer who is making his novel-length debut with Norse Code. Along with knowing how to write the sort of apocalyptic fantasy that […]
The Big Idea: Sarah Prineas
Posted on May 12, 2009 9 Comments
“What if you could do magic by blowing things up?” This is the question author Sarah Prineas is asking in her The Magic Thief series, of which the second, Lost, has just hit the stores. My answer: Man, if I could do magic by blowing things up, I’d be the happiest wizard ever. But there’s […]
The Big Idea: Edward Willett
Posted on May 5, 2009 12 Comments
As much as I like the title of this feature here, not all books originally spring from a big idea. Just ask Edward Willett, whose latest book, Terra Insegura, is part of a series that sprang originally from a quick and dirty writing exercise. But from that humble beginning, Willett’s done well: Marseguro, the first […]
The Big Idea: Michael Z. Williamson
Posted on April 21, 2009 48 Comments
Authors, the next time you whine and moan about your difficulties writing at home (or in a coffee shop or whatever), spare a thought for Michael Z. Williamson, whose latest book Contact With Chaos got done not in the comfort his home office or his local Starbucks, but while he was deployed in a war […]
The Big Idea: Robert J. Sawyer
Posted on April 9, 2009 20 Comments
What would we do if the World Wide Web became sentient? I, for one, would welcome our new LOLcatting overlord, and would ask it to kill every spammer it could find, in its mercy. But then I’m thinking about the idea rather shallowly. Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer, however, has been thinking […]
The Big Idea: Kaza Kingsley
Posted on April 8, 2009 16 Comments
One of the nice things about going to a science fiction convention is that sometimes you meet new authors with interesting stories about their path to publication. When I was at Millennicon this year, I met Kaza Kingsley, whose story of her Erec Rex series of young adult books was interesting indeed: Kingsley built her […]
The Big Idea: Julia Angwin
Posted on March 31, 2009 19 Comments
Hey, folks, this Big Idea piece is a huge thrill for me to present to you because the author, Julia Angwin, is an friend of mine back to our college days, when she was an editor at the Chicago Maroon, the newspaper at which I was the editor-in-chief. We both went into newspapers, but unlike […]
The Big Idea: Carrie Ryan
Posted on March 10, 2009 20 Comments
You know, it’s not very often that the mere title of a book scares the crap out of me, but I have to tell you, The Forest of Hands and Teeth gives me the willies just looking at it. And as for the book itself, well, it comes with the coveted Kristine Scalzi Seal of […]
The Big Idea: S. Andrew Swann
Posted on March 3, 2009 17 Comments
The bad news is that today I have a sick kid at home, so I have to focus on her, and not all of you. The good news is that in my absence, you get a Big Idea piece, this time from S. Andrew Swann, talking about Prophets, the first book in his new science […]
The Big Idea: Daniel Fox
Posted on February 27, 2009 21 Comments
To wrap up this Week O’ Big Ideas, here’s Daniel Fox with Dragon in Chains. They say travel broadens the mind, but for Fox it did rather more than that: It gave him an idea and an inspiration to write about the place to which he’d traveled, one that in this case has paid off […]
The Big Idea: Brian Evenson
Posted on February 26, 2009 7 Comments
On the list of “two great tastes that go together,” the genres “detective mystery” and “religious fiction” might not be on the top of your list of things to combine — but then, you’re probably not Brian Evenson, whose latest novel Last Days does just that, bringing a former detective together with a very odd […]
The Big Idea: Paul Melko
Posted on February 25, 2009 13 Comments
Our informal Week ‘O Big Ideas continues today with an appearance by Paul Melko, member of the Ohio SF/F Cabal (motto: “There’s more of us than you think”), whose latest multiverse-hopping book The Walls of the Universe is getting the sort of starred reviews (“With imagination and sympathy, Melko makes the journey genuinely exciting” — […]
The Big Idea: Catherynne Valente
Posted on February 24, 2009 29 Comments
Today begins a very busy week of Big Ideas here at Whatever — I’ll be dropping in a new Big Idea every day between now and Friday, because, you know what, I don’t think you’re reading quite enough these days, do you? Yeah, see, that’s what I thought. And to start us off, here’s one […]
The Big Idea: Margaret Ronald
Posted on February 5, 2009 13 Comments
Hey look, a Big Idea twofer this week! It’s because I love all y’all so much. But also, because I want to introduce you to Margaret Ronald, debut novelist. I met her last year while I was teaching at the Viable Paradise writing workshop, and she was on staff. As it happens, she’s also a […]
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