Another Wastelands interview

Loyal readers of this blog might recall a nice review Wastelands received from The Quiet Earth a while ago. Well, now, they’ve followed that up with an interview with me. If you’re a loyal reader of this blog and are not yet sick of reading interviews in which I talk about Wastelands, (or if you’re not a regular reader), here’s a snippet:

QE: Of course the genre has become very popular with film audiences. Do you think popular cinema has helped or hindered the more literary aspirations of the genre?

JJA: I think that popularity in film always helps out the popularity of literary treatments of the same genre, and authors are rarely find anything from the realm of film to hinder their efforts at telling good stories. If anything, it probably helps, because oftentimes films–especially SF films–explore interesting concepts, but often fail to capture what’s truly great about them (or don’t think them through all the way); this results in a lot of writers writing sort of "rebuttal" stories to things they’ve seen on film.

As for post-apocalyptic film in particular, I’m not sure how big an impact it’s had on the literature. A lot of people have asked me what my favorite post-apocalyptic films are, and I’ve had a hard time coming up with a list of things I honestly think are great. There are the iconic progenitors of the sub-genre like The Road Warrior, but is it a great movie? There’s great stuff about it, sure, but it’s very flawed. And that’s true about almost all post-apocalyptic movies I can think of.

There are probably more films that employ post-apocalyptic elements or imagery, but are not primarily post-apocalyptic–what I think of (and describe in my "for further reading" appendix in Wastelands) as being of "associational" relevance to the sub-genre. I’m thinking here of films like 12 Monkeys–one of my favorite SF films of all time–which is perhaps the best portrayal of a post-apocalyptic world on film.

There’s a new film coming out (or may be out by the time this interview is published) called Doomsday. When I saw the trailer, about halfway through it, I was thinking that it had a real shot at being the best post-apocalyptic movie ever. But then the cliché post-apocalyptic punks showed up and my expectations took a serious nose-dive. I think that’s a large part of what’s wrong with post-apocalyptic cinema–too much of it doesn’t try to do anything original, and is just copying what they liked about The Road Warrior.
 

Go here to read the rest.

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Face the Fiction

Next Saturday (March 8), I’ll be appearing at The Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey‘s monthly "Face the Fiction" event, where I’ll be talking about Wastelands, as well as other genre-related stuff. It’s held at the Borders located at:

Borders
Garden State Plaza, Suite 2200
Paramus, NJ 07652
Phone: 201.712.1166
Fax: 201.712.1250

If you’re in the area, please feel free to drop by! Admission is free and there will be copies of Wastelands on hand to buy and/or have signed.

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Cover update & blurb!

Note the slight update to the Seeds of Change cover. On Sean Wallace’s blog, Patrick Nielsen Hayden rightly pointed out that my last name looked a lot like ROAMS instead of ADAMS in that font. So Stephen Segal tweaked the design to make my name more clear (by changing it from capital letters to lowercase).

Also, you might note the nice blurb provided by Robert J. Sawyer, which says "A first-rate anthology of provocative stories." Which was redacted down from:

"Isaac Asimov said science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the responses of human beings to changes in science and technology.  His definition put humans in a reactive role, and essentially had science and technology changing on their own.  But we can also be proactive, actively making the future what we want — or what we dread.  A first-rate anthology of provocative and disturbing stories gathered by the always reliable John Joseph Adams." — Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of HOMINIDS
 

That means a lot to me, especially coming from Rob Sawyer. I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time–really ever since I seriously got interested in science fiction.

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Books Received

Heroes Adrift: Moira J. Moore: Books

ISBN: 0441015980
ISBN-13: 9780441015986

Dead To Me: Anton Strout: Books

ISBN: 0441015786
ISBN-13: 9780441015788

Goblin War: Jim C. Hines: Books

ISBN: 0756404932
ISBN-13: 9780756404932

Alliance Space: C. J. Cherryh: Books

ISBN: 0756404940
ISBN-13: 9780756404949

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Lunacon schedule

I’ll be attending Lunacon next month (March 14-16), and just got my panel schedule. Here it is:

FRIDAY, MARCH 14TH
Track: Craft of Writing
Start Time: 03/14/2008 8:00:00 PM End Time: 03/14/2008 9:00:00 PM
Room: Poplar
Title: The Art of Criticism
Description: Experts review the state of the "art" of fantasy review and criticism. Is there too much out there? Too little? Are reviews helping or harming the field? Where can a reader go for reliable reviews? And, of course, what practical things can a writer do to insure a fair review? If you write
reviews, what is the best way to give an honest review without alienating either the readers or the author in question?

Participants: John Joseph Adams, Peter Heck, Kim Paffenroth, Steven Sawicki [M], Ian Randal Strock,

SATURDAY, MARCH 15TH
Track: Track 51
Start Time: 03/15/2008 3:00:00 PM End Time: 03/15/2008 4:00:00 PM
Room: Odelle
Title: How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Love the Post-Apocalyptic Story
Description: John Varley said "We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn’t, why would there be so many of them? There’s something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell’s pork and beans, defending one’s family from
marauders." Why *do* we all love after the bomb stories? What is it that makes them so compelling? Subconscious cultural anxiety? Is it Thanatoses,
schadenfreude, or something else entirely? There is no track 51.  Move along.

Participants: John Joseph Adams, Terri Osborne, John J. Pierce [M]

SUNDAY, MARCH 16TH
Track: Media
Start Time: 03/16/2008 1:00:00 PM End Time: 03/16/2008 2:00:00 PM
Room: Maple
Title: The Golden Age of Piracy
Description: The 18th century–the so-called Golden Age of Piracy–saw many parts of the world (not just the Caribbean) subject to merciless raids, unthinkable violence, and paralyzing terror. Today, we are living in another kind of Golden Age of Piracy–a Golden Age of Pirate Entertainment. Movies, novels, TV, video games–pirates have infiltrated seemingly every medium. Why is it pirates have so captured the imagination of genre writers, and what are the best examples of such fiction and/or film?

Participants: John Joseph Adams, Ellen Asher, Andrea Kail, Alex Wittenberg [M]
 

Yay for pirates and post-apocalyptic panels!

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Anthology: Seeds of Change

imageHere’s the cover copy and the full table of contents of my forthcoming original SF anthology for Prime Books, Seeds of Change.

Imagine the moment when the present ends, and the future begins–when the world we knew is no more and a brave new world is thrust upon us. Gathering stories by nine of today’s most incisive minds, Seeds of Change confronts the pivotal issues facing our society today: racism, global warming, peak oil, technological advancement, and political revolution. Many serve as a call to action. How will you change with the future?

These nine stories sow seeds of change across familiar and foreign territory, from our own backyards to the Niger Delta to worlds not yet discovered. Pepper, the mysterious mercenary from Tobias S. Buckell’s Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, works as an agent for change—if the price is right—in “Resistance.” Ken MacLeod envisions the end-game in the Middle East in “A Dance Called Armageddon.” New writer Blake Charlton imagines a revolutionary advance in cancer research in “Endosymbiont.” Award-winning author Jay Lake tackles technological change and the forces that will stop at nothing to prevent it in “The Future by Degrees.” Other stories by K.D. Wentworth, Jeremiah Tolbert, Mark Budz, Ted Kosmatka, and Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu range from the darkly satirical to the exotic. All explore the notion that change will come.

Will you be ready?

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction by John Joseph Adams
  • N-Words by Ted Kosmatka
  • The Future by Degrees by Jay Lake
  • Drinking Problem by K. D. Wentworth
  • Endosymbiont by Blake Charlton
  • A Dance Called Armageddon by Ken MacLeod
  • Arties Aren’t Stupid by Jeremiah Tolbert
  • Faceless in Gethsemane by Mark Budz
  • Spider the Artist by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  • Resistance by Tobias S. Buckell

The cover features a very nice blurb provided by Robert J. Sawyer, which says “A first-rate anthology of provocative stories.” Which was redacted down from:

“Isaac Asimov said science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the responses of human beings to changes in science and technology. His definition put humans in a reactive role, and essentially had science and technology changing on their own. But we can also be proactive, actively making the future what we want — or what we dread. A first-rate anthology of provocative and disturbing stories gathered by the always reliable John Joseph Adams.” — Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of HOMINIDS

Now available! Visit the website at www.seedsanthology.com.

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Organize Me

Does anyone have any good recommendations for keeping track of notes and/or task management? Basically, my problem is this: I take a lot of notes during the day, usually when I’m reading slush, because a thought will pop into my head and I jot it down so I don’t forget. Sometimes this is something I need to remember to do later, sometimes it’s just some idea to follow up on. But the thing is, I end up with all these pages of notes on my desk when I get home, and I want to get rid of them, but I don’t always have time to cross off every item on a list. And as a result, I end up with more paper on my desk than necessary, which leads me to sometimes forget to actually take care of items on my list that were more important.

So, what to do? Transcribe the list onto the computer when I get home? Using what? I’ve tried doing that with Outlook’s "tasks" feature, but it doesn’t work — I end up just ignoring everything that’s in there. Similarly, I’ve tried using the Google Notebook feature, which doesn’t seem to work for me either, despite the fact that I can keep it open in a tab at all times. 

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Alignment — good or evil?

Not that kind of alignment, D&D players. What I’m talking about is text alignment.

One of the annoying variances in manuscript formatting that tends to annoy me as an editor–or rather as a reader who happens to be reading something in manuscript format–is when writers put their name and/or any other information in the header aligned to the left margin. You see, there is a reason that standard ms. format dictates you put your name/title of the story/page count, etc. on the right. Well, there might actually be more than one reason, but the one that seems obvious to me, having read so many thousands of mss. over the years is that when that information is left-aligned, the reader trips over it every time he/she turns the page. If you look, you’ll notice books never do that either–so when you flick your eyes to the top of the next page, the first words you see are the continuation of the text, rather than being interrupted by the title of the story or the name of the author.

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