<![CDATA[io9: Kage Baker]]> http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png <![CDATA[io9: Kage Baker]]> http://io9.com/tag/kage baker http://io9.com/tag/kage baker <![CDATA[Read a new Cugel the Clever story, written by Kage Baker!]]> Cugel the Clever is one of the great archetypal figures in SF literature, the vain trickster in Jack Vance's post-apocalyptic Dying Earth stories. Kage Baker wrote a new Cugel story for a Dying Earth anthology, and it's up at Tor.com. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5698486&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[The ultimate guide to October's science fiction awesomeness!]]> October is a science fiction thrill ride, and here's your survival manual. The io9 calendar for October includes the returns of Caprica and Sanctuary, the launch of The Walking Dead, and Iain M. Banks' new Culture novel. Plus conventions galore! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5651350&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Strange cities and weird ordeals in 2010's World Fantasy Award nominees]]> If you're looking for some awesome tales of the fantastic to check out in the last days of summer, then the 2010 World Fantasy Award's shortlist has arrived just in time. There are stories of bizarre cities and harrowing adventures. Here's the complete list, via Locus: More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5621123&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[We can't wait to go to Mars next April]]> A new anthology of Mars stories, coming from Viking next April, includes just about everybody you'd want to see in its table of contents. Kim Stanley Robinson, Kage Baker, Alastair Reynolds, and more. And the cover looks stunning. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5584641&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[This Year's Nebula Winners: Bacigalupi, Baker And Foster!]]> Steampunk made its mark on the Nebula Awards this year, with the best novel award going to Paolo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl and the best novella going to Kage Baker's Women Of Nell Gwynne's. Full results below. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5540152&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[2009's Best SF Novelists: Kage Baker, Nancy Kress, Cherie Priest, Robert Charles Wilson And Kim Stanley Robinson]]> Locus Magazine announced the finalists for its reader-selected Locus Awards — and the five best science fiction novels of 2009 include three female authors. The winners will be announced during the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 25-27, and tickets are still available. Here are the finalists: More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5520415&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[io9 Book Club Meeting Is In Session: Kage Baker's "Sky Coyote"]]> In the seventeenth century, immortal cyborgs try to rescue the New World from Europeans. This week we'll be discussing the book Sky Coyote, by Kage Baker, in io9's book club meeting. Going on right now in comments! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5505123&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Reminder: io9 Book Club Meeting Next Week]]> Next week, we'll be meeting here to discuss our March book club pick, Kage Baker's Sky Coyote. This is a book set in her "Company" universe, featuring immortal, time-traveling cyborg historians. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5500226&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Missing Kage Baker 1952-2010]]> This past Sunday, Kage Baker lost her year-long battle with cancer. We science-fiction readers have lost a brilliant author and a dear friend. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5462764&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Kage Baker Hospitalized, Please Send Your Cards And Best Wishes]]> All our best wishes are going out to Kage Baker, the author of the Company series of novels. She's been hospitalized with uterine cancer, and is undergoing treatment, but it's already metastized to her brain. Click the link for details about where you can send cards and letters. [Tribe.net] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5451232&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[In Which Some Steampunk Novels are Discussed]]> Goggles, gaslights and gears, oh my! Steampunk is a steadily growing subgenre of speculative fiction. We review four current and forthcoming books that have been affixed with that label... in an elegant copperplate hand, naturally. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5334141&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Steampunk Brothel Spies And Million-Year Quests, In June Books]]> Whether you want a fun beach read or a sweeping philosophical epic, June's books have you covered. You can encounter witches in Toronto and killer courtesans, or you can delve into America's dismal future, or Alastair Reynolds' eon-spanning colonization saga. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5302981&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[The Brits Win the Space Race in "Empress of Mars"]]> In the closing years of the 23rd Century, the British Arean Company, a private corporation, establishes first human colony on Mars. How do the Brits get there first? Find out in Kage Baker's new novel. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5251448&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Secrets Of Great Characters, According To 6 Science Fiction Authors]]> Click to viewAmazing stories need great characters. And when you're writing a story set in a futuristic or fantastical world, it's more important than ever for readers to be able to relate to your characters. It's also harder than ever, because your characters' lives and experiences will be totally different than your readers'. How do you make people identify with someone who lives in the future, or on another planet? How can your main character stand out, against a bizarre and colorful backdrop? We asked six great science fiction authors for their advice. Get to know them as individuals, rather than types. If your characters are cut off from all the present-day cultural references, like "lawyer who went to Harvard," then it's even more important to think of them as individuals, says Elizabeth Bear, Campbell- and Hugo-winning author of Carnival and Undertow. "Try very hard to know them as people," she urges. "That goes for any setting, past or present or future - or alternate reality." In particular, you should think, "'This is a person who happens to have the following traits, and all that they imply,' rather than 'this is a nuclear physicist who grew up in Iowa.'" Try making your characters scientists. Or at least, have them be obsessed with stuff that's relavant to your storyline, advises Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo- and Nebula-winning author of the Mars trilogy and the Science In The Capital series. Having scientists as your characters lets you "explore the setting and the character at once." And it helps if your characters obsess about the mysteries and explanations in your story. They can also be obsessed with a planet, spaceship, new procedure or alien. Base them on people you know. The most realistic characters are often based closely on your friends or people you've met, says Rudy Rucker, Philip K. Dick-winning author of the -Ware novels and Postsingular. That goes double for your aliens, A.I.s and robots, he adds. It's always better to copy your friends than to lift from "received ideas about how SF characters might behave. Who wants to see yet another a humorless talking head with a BBC accent? The absolute worst thing in Matrix III was when Keanu gets to the virtual office of the Big Computer Mind, and he meets, like, a tweedy professor with a white beard. Ugh! At the very least it should have been a fat hacker in a T-shirt, preferably high on pineal extract." Also: to make your characters stand out, try having them say quirky, unexpected things. "Forget your Star Trek memories, and remember your wild and crazy friends - the ones who say things that Make No Sense," Rucker advises. Give them a thought-out world. The more carefully thought out the world you're placing your characters into, the more we'll be able to believe that they live there, says Tobias Buckell, author of Sly Mongoose. And that also makes it easier to "contrast them against this imaginary place." Figure out what they love, and what they fear. Try to find what drives your characters, including what they want and need, Bear urges. And understand what traumatizes them. "I tell people I like to know what they'd want on their tombstone: that seems to give me a really good handle on who they are." She adds:
Characters we can relate to have fears and damage, but moreover, for me they have to be devoted to something - an ideal, a person, whatever. Even villains become much more sympathetic when we're introduced to whatever it is that they love.
Kage Baker, author of the Company novels, agrees: "It isn't the way a person relates to his hovercar that makes him memorable; it's what's going on in his heart." No matter what planet or time you're living in, there will be "certain constants in human existence: struggle against poverty, rebellion against authority, love and desire, loneliness, curiosity. Any reader can relate to those." Make sure your character has loves and hatreds that readers can see themselves in, and the rest will take care of itself. Don't aim for larger-than-life - and overshoot. One pitfall with science fiction characters is that authors sometimes make their characters "bigger than life, or archetypal" to let them compete with the big, brash colorful worlds they live in. A common mistake is veering past archetypal, all the way into "over the top, or maybe somewhat cliche." If you do try for archetypal characters, think of the classics from all genres, like Sherlock Holmes' quirky genius or Captain Ahab's drive. Don't obsess too much about setting and toys. If you spend pages and pages on dense descriptions of your settings and how exactly your hovercar works, you're distracting the reader from your characters, says Baker.
It's enough to say "He climbed into his hovercar" and your reader will get the idea. You don't need to give a geography lesson: "They were sitting in the courtyard drinking fire-palm wine" or "She trudged back from the well, balancing her water jar" or "They looked out across the desert and saw the yellow mountains of Califia before them" all give brief, intense impressions of a place, without stopping the narrative in its tracks or drawing focus from the main character.
Find out who's hurting. If your story involves a new situation or technological breakthrough, figure out who suffers as a result - maybe that should be your main character, says Robinson, quoting from Damon Knight (who was quoting James Blish in turn.) Keep your characters grounded. The stranger the setting, the more ordinary your characters should be, says Terry Bisson, Hugo- and Nebula-winning author of Bears Discover Fire. "For example, in my most recent story, the narrator 'had a job and an apartment, but that was all.' The story wasn't about the setting but about the character." Your characters should be "totally convinced they live in the present, rather than the future. Because, of course, it IS the present to them," says David J. Williams, author of The Mirrored Heavens. Make sure your world, and your characters, both have a believable past, that anchors their present. "As Gibson said, the future's already here, it's just unevenly distributed. Same is true for the past: it's always with us, but sometimes beneath the surface. How one handles that is the key to character." More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5065556&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Awesome Free Stuff On The Internet]]> In The Garden Of Iden, Kage Baker's fantastic novel about time-traveling cyborgs who work for the 24th century Company, is available as a free download. Five-year-old Mendoza is about to be tortured to death as a Jew in the Spanish Inquisition, when she's rescued by the Company and turned into a time-traveling operative — but her first assignment is to the 16th century, uncomfortably close to her own time. It's available in PDF, HTML, or Mobi formats. Meanwhile, the new New Yorker has George Saunders' bizarre pitch for a version of Heroes where people only think they have superpowers. (Although I didn't like the ending.) And the pilot for J.J. Abrams' Fringe is available for viewing on Surf The Channel, and shows no signs of being taken down. [Beam Me Up and New Yorker and Surf The Channel ] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5017667&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Why Is Space Opera Unsung?]]> The New Space Opera, a recent anthology edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, was supposed to testify to the resurgent vitality of the space-opera sub-genre. Instead, it showcases a new space-opera canon that's listless and cut off from the mainstream, argues reviewer Alan DeNiro in Rain Taxi. Find out why the space-opera renaissance doesn't make DeNiro want to sing, and why his review sparked a soul-searching discussion among the authors, below the fold. More »
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