Big Idea Category
The Big Idea: James Morrow
Posted on February 3, 2009 21 Comments
James Morrow is one crazy cat, and I say this with great affection. It takes a special sort of person to imagine, for example, using a supertanker to tow the two-mile long corpse of God, as he did in the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Towing Jehovah, or, in his latest, Shambling Towards Hiroshima, to imagine […]
The Big Idea: Carrie Vaughn
Posted on January 27, 2009 26 Comments
Werewolves and radio talk shows? Who’da thought they would be two great tastes that go great together? Carrie Vaughn, that’s who, and a good thing that she did. She’s taken that idea an parlayed it into the New York Times bestselling “Kitty Norville” series, in which a lycanthropic radio host has all sorts of wild […]
The Big Idea: Charlie Huston
Posted on January 16, 2009 15 Comments
Hey kids! I’m stuck in meetings all day long (seriously, from about 8:30 to 6), but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t be having fun. And to help you have fun, here’s neo-noir master Charlie Huston to entertain you with tales of The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, his latest thriller, and […]
The Big Idea: Jim C. Hines
Posted on January 6, 2009 48 Comments
And here we are, with the first Big Idea piece of 2009. And who better to start us off than Jim C. Hines, who having already rehabbed cowardly green fantasy creatures in his Goblin trilogy, now turns his attention to rebooting the stories of three of the most popular fairly tale princesses in The Stepsister […]
The Big Idea: Lesley Livingston
Posted on December 23, 2008 8 Comments
This is a kind of cool thing for me: I met Lesley Livingston back in 2003, at my very first science fiction convention (that would be Torcon 3, for those of you keeping score at home). I was neopro writer whose first book wouldn’t come out for a couple of years; Lesley, on the other […]
The Big Idea: Nick Stone
Posted on December 18, 2008 20 Comments
Personally, I’m not much for fortune-telling… and yet even lil’ ol’ rational me has been known to look at the fortune inside a fortune cookie and be amazed that it contains the right words at the right time. Is it coincidence? An example of the human mind being able to read way too much into […]
The Big Idea: Kelsey Timmerman
Posted on November 25, 2008 8 Comments
And now, the second part of today’s “Big Idea” two-fer, and it’s somewhat special for me, because Kelsey Timmerman, the author, is a fellow citizen of Darke County, the small agricultural Ohio county in which I live. Yes, that’s right, Darke County now has two published authors! We’re all very proud. But while I write […]
The Big Idea: Christopher Barzak
Posted on November 25, 2008 8 Comments
Perspective is a hard thing to come by, even for a writer, whose job description, if one thinks about it for a minute, is all about perspective. And so when Christopher Barzak was almost randomly offered a chance to change his perspective, he jumped at the chance — and had a series of experiences which […]
The Big Idea: Dave Freer
Posted on November 19, 2008 13 Comments
There are a lot of stars out there in space — and as we’re constantly discovering, lots of planets around those stars. But how many of those planets are “earth-like”: that is, good for us? And what will it take to reach them? And what if we get there and discover the planet’s not as […]
The Big Idea: Jordan Summers
Posted on November 11, 2008 22 Comments
Fairy tales and post-apocalyptic futures: Are they two great tastes that go great together? This is the question Jordan Summers tries to answer in Red, in which elements of some of the most primeval of fantasy tales get a whole new science fiction-y spin, with action and romance thrown in to spice it all up. […]
The Big Idea: Benjamin Parzybok
Posted on November 6, 2008 12 Comments
Now that the election is over, it’s time to turn to really important things: Like books about couches and maybe saving the world. And you ask: does such a book truly exist? And I say, why, yes, it does, since Couch, by Ben Parzybok, has hit the shelves this very week. This quirky and delightful […]
The Big Idea: T.A. Pratt
Posted on October 28, 2008 8 Comments
Here’s a small and possibly irrelevant piece of personal trivia about Dead Reign, the third book by T.A. Pratt featuring sorcerer and all around badass Marla Mason: One of my best friends from Ben Lomond Elementary School in Covina, California was named Marla Mason. So when Blood Engines, the first book in the series, came […]
The Big Idea: Phil Plait
Posted on October 23, 2008 14 Comments
The End of the World As We Know It: It’s coming! With big sharp nasty teeth! It’ll do you a treat, mate! Well yes, you say, but which end of the world? Because there are so many on the way — including some that are based on actual science, which is to say, they could […]
The Big Idea: Matthew Stover
Posted on October 14, 2008 33 Comments
Here’s why I know that “handselling” — the act of someone saying to you “Dude, you have to buy this book” and then putting the book into your hands — actually works: A couple years ago, when I did an appearance at the Joseph-Beth bookstore in Cincinnati, the science fiction buyer for the store and […]
The Big Idea: Kenneth Hite
Posted on September 29, 2008 11 Comments
Now that my travels have ended (yay!), it’s time to get back on the stick with the Big Idea features — we’ve got quite a few coming up in the next couple of months, and this week I’ll hit you with at least a double shot. To begin, I’m really excited to bring this next […]
The Big Idea: Julie Czerneda
Posted on September 4, 2008 15 Comments
How do a graduate student’s observations of fish in a laboratory wind up fueling not one but two science fiction series? Well, first, it helps to have that graduate student be Julie Czerneda, who would become the Prix Aurora-winning author of In the Company of Others (also a Nebula Award nominee), and whose latest novel, […]
The Big Idea: Lauren McLaughlin
Posted on August 26, 2008 38 Comments
Every teenage girl has “that time of month,” as it is so euphemistically referred to, but in Cycler, the totally inventive and fun debut novel from Lauren McLaughlin, Jill McTeague discovers that during her time, her body goes through entirely different changes than most girls — specifically, four days a month, she becomes Jack, right […]
The Big Idea: Tobias Buckell
Posted on August 19, 2008 21 Comments
Did you know? Today is the official Ohio is Coming to Kick Your Ass With Science Fiction Day. Why, you ask? Because in addition to some other Ohio-based dude having a book out today, today is the release date of Sly Mongoose, the third in a series of action-packed kick-ass novels by none other than […]
The Big Idea: Jason Pinter
Posted on August 5, 2008 2 Comments
A child disappears one day… and returns five years later with no memory of where he’s been all this time. What’s his story? That would be enough for any thriller, but with The Stolen, author Jason Pinter wants to go deeper, into the background of his main character, journalist Henry Parker, and how his past […]
The Big Idea: Greg Egan
Posted on July 22, 2008 15 Comments
If you like your science fiction hard — we’re talking diamond-scratching hard, here — then you already know that Greg Egan is your man; this Hugo winner’s been spinning tales of hard SF for years that make you think and thrill at the same time. After a six-year break from novels, Egan is back with […]
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