When Amazon.com's SF audiobooks imprint Audible Frontiers launched earlier this year, we were interested in the potential of something new to entertain us on our morning commutes. With the line now in its third month, we checked in with Audible's director of content, Steve Feldberg, to see whether it looks like there's a future in this whole "books in your ear" thing.

The Audible Frontiers imprint has been around for a couple of months now. What has the audience reaction been like so far?
We’ve gotten a good deal of positive response, and much of it centers on how Audible has really focused on expanding the number of SF&F books available in audio. In fact, that’s probably our biggest accomplishment so far – just increasing the selection.

Specifically, we’ve enjoyed great reviews for our productions of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series; Robert J. Sawyer’s novels, including the Hugo-winning Hominids (as well as the other books in his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy); Mike Resnick’s Starship series; Hugo-winning novellas by Connie Willis, Harry Turtledove, Joe Haldeman, Allen Steele, as well as Resnick; and sci-fi classics like Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal and Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time.

What was the basis for the creation of the imprint in the first place - Is Audible planning to create sub-stores for each literary genre, or is there something special about SF that demanded its own space (If you'll excuse the pun)?
There were two key factors. We’ve seen consistent growth in SF&F – yet we also heard from customers that they wished the selection were better. So it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out that we needed to improve the breadth and depth of our catalog.

Audible Frontiers is the biggest part of the strategy, but we have two other current initiatives that are highly relevant. First is our long-standing partnership with Harlequin, under which we produce 4-6 titles per month. These have consistently included fantasy titles by Maria V. Snyder, Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Armintrout, Gena Showalter, and other great authors. Second is our relatively new partnership with HarperCollins to produce some of their great SF&F titles. The first wave includes the Acorna’s Children series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough; Star Strike by Ian Douglas; Hunter's Run by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham; and Matt Ruff’s Bad Monkeys... The only minor distinction is that we don’t brand any of our co-produced titles as “Audible Frontiers”. The key point is that we’re looking at all aspects of SF & Fantasy – contemporary sci-fi, classic sci-fi, epic fantasy, paranormal fantasy, you name it.

How did Orson Scott Card come to be involved with the site?
Scott is, of course, a big best selling author and an icon in the field, and a special favorite among Audible listeners. But what was most important to us is that he’s an avid audiobook fan – and he really gets the value of the audiobook experience. So when we were looking for an author whose opinion would be most valued by Audible SF&F listeners, he was a natural choice. It all turned out to be pretty simple; we reached out, Scott agreed, and we were off to the races. What’s been most gratifying is that Scott takes the time to craft a detailed review of each “Selects” title and record it in audio. That really brings his reviews to life for our listeners.

What's planned for the future of the imprint? More original works? More guest columnists? Any surprises coming up?
We have dozens more titles coming this year under the Audible Frontiers imprint. For me, the most exciting current project is that we’re bringing Fritz Leiber’s entire, classic swords-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to audio for the first time. But even better than that – Neil Gaiman has recorded exclusive introductions to each of the seven books. Gaiman is a huge Leiber fan, which truly comes out in his introductions. The Guest Editor program will continue to be a monthly feature. Robert J. Sawyer is our Editor for July, S.M. Stirling is on board for August, and we’ll go from there!

Past that, over the next few months we’ll be offering great contemporary SF&F like David Drake’s complete RCN/Daniel Leary series; Kay Kenyon’s critically-acclaimed The Entire and the Rose novels; Allen Steele’s Coyote trilogy; Sharon Shinn’s Twelve Houses series, E.E. Knight’s complete Vampire Earth series; and lots more. Plus, we’ll be bringing into audio for the first time classic award winners by Clifford D. Simak (CITY and WAY STATION); Roger Zelazny (LORD OF LIGHT); and John Varley (TITAN, WIZARD, DEMON and more). And we’ve got a few surprises that we can’t quite reveal yet!

Image courtesy Employee Lounge

[Audible Frontiers]

In the Middleman world, there are plastic surgery addicted aliens, gorillas addicted to mafia movies, and more. But the most random thing Morales has had to do throw down with a fish. "The strangest thing I've had to do as Wendy is punching a fish," Morales explained. "As Natalie it would be getting into a fight with a fish that wasn't actually there." What did this fish do to Morales? Apparently it was part of an illegal energy drink conspiracy where evil creators of an energy drink put a venom that turns you into an undead trout zombie into their drink, along with the antidote. The consumer becomes addicted, so if you don't have more of these drinks you become a trout zombie.

In other Middlmania, Morales explained a bit more on Kevin Sorbo's role in an upcoming episode. "Kevin Sorbo was great on the set," Morales said. "He is awesome he is a Middleman that came before Matt [Kessler] and he's come back to help us out on something. Its a really interesting role and the script is amazing... And the villain is really awesome. The villain in this episode is The Candle and he has a ray gun that can melt a melt a whole city." Besides Sorbo, another new face on set was Todd Statchwik (The Riches) who joins the cast for an episode.

Expect more character development from Wendy Watson, including a new love interest in the very next episode, "You're going to see more character development from Wendy, and loads more layers of her personality." Including a deeper look into Wendy's serious Daddy issues. Morales speculates there may be a big cliff-hanger Poppa reveal in the shows finale (which was a large part of The Middleman comic).

We asked why Wendy sometimes wears glasses and sometimes goes without. Said Morales, "It's kind of a Clark Kent thing. Whenever I'm doing Middleman-type work they are off, but sometimes I take them off when I'm not working."

Natalie Morales gets to deliver most of the show's funniest lines, and she also understands what her role means to other girls out there, "I like the fact that they wanted a Latina for the girl, and that I didn't have to play the stereotypical smoking hot Latina. Wendy is a regular girl, like a lot of my friends." Down with stereotpyical characters and up with the fish beatings. Middleman airs on Mondays at 10 PM, on ABC Family.

Experienced in this whole press junket thing, Nate explained the idea behind the straight-to-DVD spin-off:

We were so amazing [in Get Smart] that they were like "Stop the presses! What are we doing? We need more of those two guys!" Not really. We knew from the beginning, the whole audition process, we knew that there were going to be two movies. [Bruce and Lloyd is] written by the same writers as the first movie because it's on the same timeline. Our DVD shows what we're doing back in the lab when Agent 99 and Max go off and do their mission. We end up having to go on a mission of our own. One of our inventions gets stolen, it's an optical camouflage technology is what it's called, OCT. And it's like an invisible blanket. And Max and Agent 99 need it in Russia, so we're trying to get it back for them. There you go.

For those of you with a more theatrical bent, Masi translated:

So Get Smart is Hamlet but we get to do Rosencrantz and Gilderstern Are Dead. We didn't get to play the questions game, which is the sad part, though.

Despite Get Smart's TV history, the duo weren't that familiar with the concept before signing up for the movie, as Nate explained:

I loved it, I loved it... I was just too young. I remember teething and watching it and thinking "I wanna be on that..." No, It was, what, the sixties? So it was a good twenty years out, or fifteen years out, before I saw it. I saw it in reruns and didn't actually know too much about it.

Maybe it was the chance to act out his apparently-real-life inventor fantasies that lured him in:

The gadgets in the movie were pretty cool. We have exploding dental floss, which is pretty amazing, a Geiger counter watch, knockout spray that comes out of a cellphone... that's a good one. I like that one. If I were a mad scientist, I'd do knock-out and then I'd have something that could change it, and then it could just be perfume or, like, mouthwash. You know, like a breath spray. I just like that it's already up there [by your mouth], it just sprays in the mouth. "Oh, I actually physically have to talk to someone now." Look at that! Banaca! Someone write that down. It could go far.

Of course, now that the movie's "a summer smash," inventing is but a distant, non-lucrative second place to acting. Does the success of the movie mean that we should expect to see more of CONTROL? Masi spilled the beans:

I know the writers are actually already beginning to write it. The box office just kind of determined how big our sets are going to be, whether it's going to be a very small telephone booth or a very big telephone booth.

However, he's much less forthcoming about the next season of NBC's Heroes, sarcastically saying "everyone dies in the first episode" when asked what's coming up this September. That said, he did tell us just how evil Hiro will be next year. Kind of:

Masi: On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say about... I don't know, that's an interesting question. Probably about 8.
Nate: That's pretty evil.
Masi: But is 1 evil, or is 10 evil? That's the question.
Nate: Okay, he kills a baby.
Masi: Don't tell!
Nate: But then he brings it back to life. It's a great episode, I've seen it.

And on his cameo in Pixar's Wall-E [His portrait is shown in a scene where we see a wall of portraits of the former captains of the BnL cruise ship that's been in space for 700 years]?

Masi: I'm in Wall-E? I had no idea. I gotta check this out. I had no idea!
Nate: That's awesome.
Masi: Well, I know a lot of the Pixar guys, I used to work at Industrial Light and Magic, so maybe some of those guys put me in there...
Nate: I smell residuals!

In closing, the two actors had a very special personal message to all io9 readers out there:

Masi: I want everyone to buy tickets to Get Smart and then sneak in and see Wall-E. That's what we should do!
Nate: Just keep buying Get Smart tickets. Every movie you see, just buy a ticket for Get Smart and sneak next door. That ten dollars is gonna move the world. That's all it takes.

Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out Of Control

First of all, it's probably no surprise that the people at Pixar are obsessed with Disney iconography and specifically asked Tan to incorporate it into his posters. Tan said:

A lot of the creative leads up at Pixar are huge fans of the Disneyland attraction (or ride) posters. A lot of the ones from the 60's were done in this very simple, colorful style. In fact, you always come across a few pinned up on the walls when you walk through the halls of Pixar. I've always been a big fan of those too and when it became a point of discussion during prep work for the Incredibles posters, I thought it made perfect sense. That film felt very retro as far as design aesthetic and I felt the posters evoked that and would work nicely as inspiration. Once we got to Wall-E, they brought up the same posters again! Which shows how hung up on them they are. The ad twist was something I thought would give them a point of difference from the Incredibles posters.

I was curious about whether Tan favors some historical periods over others, so I asked him if he would do something like a Terminator 4 poster in an eighteenth century style. Turns out the eighteenth century isn't on his agenda.

He replied:

I LOVE the Terminator flicks! I guess I got into graphic design and wanted to create posters of my own once I saw the work of Alphonse Mucha at the San Diego Museum of Art. His work was so gorgeous and he mixed everything I was learning in school at the time (typography, illustration, color, and design) so seamlessly. After that, I got really into film posters from Europe. They were really doing some experimental and striking stuff in the 40's and 50's. I do use these for inspiration in my own posters, but only if they make sense. An Indy poster would be based in the mid 30's western/adventure era and Ratatouille could only fit within the world of A.M. Cassandre.

Pixar is a company whose production methods are cutting edge, and their movies are often about futuristic or scifi topics. So why would they favor retro styles in their posters?

Tan mused:

I think retro advertising might work because they're based in something we're all used to seeing. There's a comfort in that. There was a defining look to past decades that immediately brings you back to those days. If our job as artists/communicators is to evoke a feeling and/or emotion out of a piece, it's a good way to instantly bring the viewer that feeling of nostalgia.

He said:

Currently, I'm working on some work for Up (the next Pixar film), a video-game inspired piece for a gallery show, and a Beastie Boys poster (I'm a HUGE fan of theirs).

I can't wait to see Tan's next retro-futurist confection.

You can see more of Eric Tan's art on his blog.

Keeslar explained the darker and sad side to Middleman, pegging him as a "rugged individualist," forced into solitude. Keeslar says the audience, "will see how Middleman is kind of trapped by his job. That he has a hard time having a life outside of fighting comic-book evil. He's sort of hemmed in by the impractical life of constantly having to save the world. So when relationships develop, he often has to cut them short. He can't devote his attention to anything other than his work."

But at least the work is crazy interesting, including fighting trout-craving zombies that Middleman and Wendy have to attack by smearing fish innards all over themselves. I'll take a little loneliness as long as it comes with Middleman's adventures using fighting skills, "which range from WWF to Kung Fu," being used to rough-house with Mexican wrestlers in an Aztec pyramid, (which io9 brought you an exclusive first look at.)

Gibson refers to Godzilla a lot in his work, sometimes casually (a sound in Spook Country is "like Godzilla's footsteps") and sometimes wryly (an earthquake that levels Japan is called Godzilla in his Bridge novels). So I had to know what he really thinks about Godzilla movies.

He replied:

I watched them growing up, and saw the original Godzilla movie. I think of Godzilla as that original character. Even though I saw the [Americanized Raymond Burr version], I thought I picked up on the dark meaning of the original. I thought I knew what they were trying to say with that movie. But I saw all those old monster movies. I was really disturbed by Mothra. Something about the tiny little twins who sang woefully.

Though he grew up mostly in rural southwest Virginia, Gibson has spent his entire adult life living in Vancouver, Canada. And yet in his world-spanning novels, Canada rarely makes an appearance. Until the ending of Spook Country, which takes place in Vancouver. I was curious about where Gibson sees Canada fitting into his geopolitical dreamscape, and where he sees Canada heading in the future.

Gibson said:

Douglas Coupland's descriptions of Vancouver circa City of Glass are closest to my sense of the place. It's hemmed in and separated from the rest of the world by an ocean, a border, mountains. And then there's the unknown and incomprehensible north. Vancouver sits there, insulated to some extent, but picking up influences from across the ocean and across the border. The signals seem to be amplified by those symbolic barriers. Psychogeographically, I identify with greater Vancouver more than I do with the rest of Canada, which I have a fondness for and good feelings for. Vancouver's peculiar culture feels like home.

I like it because I grew up in a really extreme monoculture in southwestern Virgina. I was surrounded by Southern white folks – this was in badass Appalachia, up in the hollers where my mother's family had been forever. Having that experience in a small town made me happiest in big cities. Especially in radically multicultural big cities – as far as you can get from monoculture. I'm happiest where people are generally not even of recognizable ethic derivations. I'm into hybrid vigor.

Canada is set up to run on steady immigration. It feels like a twenty first century country to me because it's not interested in power. It negotiates and does business. It gets along with other countries. The power part is very nineteenth century. 99 percent of ideology we have today is very nineteenth century. The twentieth century was about technology, and the nineteenth was ideology.

I asked him about Spook Country, an explicitly political novel where it seems like ideologies are shaping the way people use technology. For example, the characters repurpose technologies like iPods for the purposes of espionage.

He explained:

In Spook Country, old ideologies hang around and shape the initial phases of a longterm change that it will never be able to keep up with. The digital realm is inherently porous. These days we're all coming to the attention of the authorities as a matter of course. But the really new thing is that the authorities are coming to our attention. It's more difficult for authorities to keep their secrets. it's working both ways. We live in the era of the leak, the document that doesn't get wiped off the hard drive. That drive you thought was wiped shows up in a pawn shop in Vegas. It's equally porous in both directions. But individuals have a better chance of applying transparency to their lives and transactions on the internet than states and corporations do. If we continue in this direction, I believe people in the future will wield unimaginable tools of forensic transparency — and they'll aim them back at history. They'll find out about what every major player did all the way back with tools we can't imagine today. There will be no more lost cities.

Since we were talking politics, I asked Gibson about whether he sees his work as political. After all, he has said that he fled to Canada to dodge the draft. And I wonder if those politics have seeped into his work. He laughed when I brought up the draft-dodging.

He said:

Well, [that was] political and it's also true that I wanted to get laid [with hippie chicks]. I've had to engage in this kind of grudging self-examination because of my ever-changing Wikipedia entry [which mentions early interviews where he talked about being a draft dodger]. When I started out as a writer I took credit for draft evasion where I shouldn't have. I washed up in Canada with some vague idea of evading the draft but then I was never drafted so I never had to make the call. I don't know what I would have done if I'd really been drafted. I wasn't a tightly wrapped package at that time. if somebody had drafted me I might have wept and gone. I wouldn't have liked it of course.

In my novels, I've done my best to avoid political didacticism. Consciously I never work from any sort of expressed political philosophy. To the extent that I have one it strives to be open — open to change. I try very hard to attain what E.M. Forster described: “Let the characters get completely out of my control.” Some of the characters are completely out of my control and get frankly political. Often when they'd just been awakened from a nap, like when Milgram is awakened from a nap [in Spook Country] and finds himself telling Brown that Brown and his ilk are bringing down the country. That was the Rize talking. Milgram would have a lot more going on consciously if he weren't cramming all that benzodiazanine.

I asked Gibson why he thinks so many people characterize his work as dystopian, especially since he tends to favor happy endings.

He said:

None of us ever live in dystopia. That's an imaginary extreme. They just live in shitty cultures. And these societies [in my books] seem dystopian to middle class white people in North America. They don't seem dystopian if you live in Rio or anywhere in Africa. Most people in Africa would happily immigrate to the Sprawl.

I don't think a writer can hit the dystopic key without being misanthropic. I'm actually not misanthropic. I think people are capable of wonderful things. I'm quite fond of them and enjoy their company. I can't do Jonathan Swift. I don't have it in me to do that. I also don't have it in me to say to reader, “This is all real.” I'm enough of a postmodernist that I go in and out of believing in my own narrative. The happy endings, such as they, are are actually a function of that. They're the "that's all folks” at the end, waving the big three-fingered glove. I want to remind people that they're reading a novel about an imaginary future. If I had my way, I'd even be reminding people about the whole culture of reminding people.

I asked him please not to get meta like that, since it would take him into Thomas "Gravity's Rainbow" Pyncheon territory.

He said:

In Pyncheon you're never allowed to believe in the characters. He's making moves all the way through to remind you that these are cartoons. I have a little bit of that. I don't want people to be completely sucked into the mechanism. They should remember that they're riding on a rollercoaster. But I roll with the human characters.

So what's next for Gibson? What's he working on now? He was a little mysterious but did say:

I have a historic tendency to write three book sets, but I'm unlikely to do it next time out. I always start from nothing – no idea. I daydream about writing a Civil War novel. I happen to know a fair bit about the Civil War. But I don't get to make those choices – the saving grace of my method is that they're made for me. And I can't say anything about it beforehand, or I feel locked in.

Here's hoping for a near-future Gibson novel where new forensic technologies allow people to reconstruct the Civil War in perfect detail. Of course just by writing that, I have guaranteed that it won't happen. Sorry, Civil War buffs!

You can get Spook Country in paperpack! [via Amazon]

Were you a Star Trek fan before the movie?

I did watch a couple of episodes. I followed J.J.'s advice. He said, "If I have to advise you guys at all, I would advise you not to watch [Star Trek]. Just inform yourself of the whole concept of Star Trek, if you're not already a Trekkie or fan. I don't want you to cloud whatever contribution you guys can make yourselves to the role that you are jumping into." I thought that was very encouraging. And then I met Nichelle Nichols and she practically gave me the same advice. So I thought that I needed to make the important aspects about Uhura a priority.

Well, out of the episodes that you did you watch, what were your favorites?

Definitely the episode with Abraham Lincoln [The Savage Curtain] and the episode where Kirk and Uhura have that kiss [Plato's Stepchildren], because of what that kiss represented at the time as well. I spoke to Nichelle about it. She talked about how that work was very dear to her and how they had no idea how big it was going to be. Back then they had no idea that Star Trek was going to be what it is now. They were just artists doing a show that was putting money their pockets, as artists they were working, and they were very grateful to be doing that. She also said as artists, you always live way ahead of your time, so it wasn't a big deal for her. They were aware of what the world was like, but they didn't know it was going to stir up so much.

Where did you build your character from? Did you pull stuff from the script?

Reference pictures, speaking to Nichelle Nichols, talking a lot to J.J. After I met Zach Quinto and Chris Pine, that changed a lot, talking to them. For some reason's Zach's Spock and Chris' Kirk brought out my Uhura. The conversations and sharing the knowledge of Star Trek, it was all really good. And I saw all the physical things that were important about her that the fans need. It was a mix of all of that.

Speaking about what the fans want, what about Nichelle's voice? It's legendary did you work on recreating that at all?

The one thing I can tell you is that I know in my heart that the fans are not going to be disappointed. When they see Star Trek they are going to see all of the characters that they've been in love with. The way the plot is laid out, it's not going to compromise the whole legend of Star Trek. If I did imitate the voice I think J.J. and Nichelle managed to get it out of me with out making me feel like I was stepping on anyone's shoes. Maybe it came out here and there.

Did you meet ahead of time with Chris and Zach ahead of time to build a relationship since the movie is about how everyone met and came together?

Everything went so fast we really didn't have much time and I was shooting Avatar [a little more on that later] and they sort of overlapped. But when we started working, the chemistry was inevitable. It was a great set. Chris and Zach could not have been better cast. I can't even tell you if I met the real Zach or the real Chris, because they were so committed to their character.

Do you feel the pressure form fans and media to deliver?

I think maybe that's why J.J. didn't want us to watch every single episode and go that extensively into the research. He knew that there would be a point when we would confuse the responsibility and turn it into pressure. He wanted us to keep it light and fun. He just kept saying, "just trust me, trust me it's going to be great."

What about the rumors that the skirts in this new Star Trek are shorter than the show? Did you think so, was it hard working in a mini?

I'm actually still waiting for the phone call from Paramount producers saying, "You know what Zoe? That skirt wasn't short enough." After watching the show...those skirts were pretty short. If you made them any shorter, it would be a t-shirt. I think they're going to be happy. But the funny thing is, I don't think we went far enough.

What actor went through the most transition?

I think we all did because at times I would think that it was Zachary turning into Spock. But then Chris Pine would walk onto the set in the morning with his blown out hair doing the Kirk walk. We were all transforming ourselves into these characters.

I what was it like working with all the old cast members, like Leonard Nimoy?

Mind boggling. Leonard is the classiest artist I've ever met, by far. He has such grace and his energy and his approach are amazing. After all these years and he just puts on his Spock shoes and transforms into Spock. When his character comes to life it blew everyone away. When I heard Nichelle was on the set I nearly died. I'm sure for Zach it was the same. You are trusted with this precious stone and you have to babysit and make sure you deliver it properly because it was created way before you. And it's going to be living way after, so you need to deliver. That responsibility was kind of humbling.

Tell me about being a one of the few women on the Enterprise?

I think it's awesome. To be on the Enterprise with all these guys, the message speaks loudly. She's a female, she's of high rank and she has her shit together. And never is it ever about, or was it ever about her female presence. It was pretty great. I loved being the only girl.

AVATAR

How did you prep for your role in Avatar, I heard your role is very intense?

I took marshal arts, archery, horseback riding everything. I did an intense six-month prep for Avatar and I loved every minute of it. I was training non-stop. Because we were creating a language that was from scratch. Jim wrote this amazing story out of nothing. It has an amazing message. And the technology that he's using is so ahead of his time that's why it took so long to shoot it. And it's going to [take] a long time for the film to come out, but it's going to be so worth it. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.

How did you get ready for this new technology?

It's about trusting your director. I think with the technology that they decided to use, everybody knows that James Cameron is the biggest perfectionist in this business. I was afraid and we had endless conversations at first. But he just said figure out whatever you need and I did. Because we shot in motion capture and you had to have to create this world in your imagination. He didn't want it to look like I was working in front of a green screen and I didn't want that either. So I worked with what I had and I fell so in love with the story and the characters that it all became very real to me.

What can you tell us about your character, sounds like she's tough?

Given the female characters that James Cameron is known to write, it's just the most impressive ass-kicking girl I've ever played, it's pretty cool.

Is there going to be a lot of war and mayhem?

I'm not going to go into that. The story is very deep, but it's a story that everyone can watch.

Why should people go and see Avatar?

Because Mr. Cameron never ceases to excite. He's always pushing the envelope. I think Avatar is going to represent a lot of change in film history. With motion capture, it's not like shooting green screen. It's deeper it's Beowulf and The Polar Express. But the difference between those films and Avatar is those films were aiming to look like a cartoon. As opposed to Avatar which is aiming to look real. I've seen only three minutes of the film and I can't even put it to words. I can't compare it to anything I've ever seen, because I haven't seen anything like it before. It's going to be just as big as when sound was introduced, or color.

When do you think we might be able to see a trailer for Avatar?

I would say, maybe by the end of this year, but I could be pushing it. So maybe the beginning of next year.

What were you most impressed with on the three minutes that you saw?

I would have to say Jim and what he's done. He's working with Peter Jackson's company Weta in New Zealand and I was down there and I had the honor of meeting all of these people who were working for Weta and I was so blown away. Just Jim, he will not settle for anything other than great. And those three minutes were great, they were beautiful.

Did you get to see what you looked like in Avatar?

Yes I did, all I'm going to say is oh my god, I was so impressed.

This isn't the first time that Zoe has dealt with Star Trek. In the movie The Terminal she played a Trekkie customs worker:

Time travel in Booster Gold, Space war in Green Lantern, and a sci-fi melange in Action Comics (time travel, alternate dimensions, planets full of Bizarros) - You seem to have taken almost all of your superhero books at DC in a more science fiction direction than usual over the last year or so; even your Justice Society of America currently has the Superman of a parallel Earth as a member. Is this intentional, and if so, what brought it on?

Not really intentional, no, but I have been striving to push my books and writing in general into a different direction.  Delving into the concepts and characters a bit more, exploring the DC Universe as a whole in a different light.  Coming out of 52, I really felt reinvigorated for some reason.  Or maybe inspired is a better word.  And with everything that DC's been gearing up for in this post-DC Universe #0 world, it just adds more fuel to the fire.  Science-fiction is inherent in a super-hero universe in general and I'm just trying to take advantage of that.

Would you ever want to tackle straight scifi, away from the familiar superhero characters?

Sure.  I'd also like to tackle an historical story, a western, a horror adventure.  All genres.  The film I'm working on with the Robot Chicken team is more of a family/comedy in the same vein as a Pixar movie, but with a bit more humor and Christmas espionage action on top of that.  I've been very focused on the DC Universe in the comics world and, quite honestly, that's where my passion lies when it comes to comics.  I'll be venturing outside it a bit with some creator owned projects, but my focus is the DC Universe.  It's what I enjoy doing more than nearly anything else.

A lot of DC's Silver Age books were essentially pretty straight science fiction stories disguised in superhero costume (Sometimes without that much of a costume; Adam Strange and Hawkman, for example) . While Marvel books seemed to be based on atomic age fear of what could go wrong, DC had a more optimistic take on the wonders of technology, even if their idea of what technology could actually do was somewhat mistaken. Do you think that one side or another has been proven right in the longterm?

That's a long conversation and extremely subjective in my opinion.  Everyone has something that speaks to them.  There's something in Wolverine that speaks to people that I don't entirely get.  But a lot of people don't gravitate towards the Legion of Super-Heroes.  They don't see the struggle that team goes through, the dynamics and characters that their fans and I connect with.  My goal when I tackle these characters is to really show, not tell, why I subscribe to the DC Universe.  Why am I fascinated by Captain Cold and the Rogues or the Justice Society?  When a reader comes up to me and says, "I never really got into Green Lantern before Rebirth or Sinestro Corps." that's what it's all about to me.  Someone at the NYCC show pointed out Gary and I's work on Action Comics and said, "When Superman said, 'I'm for everyone.' I finally understood Superman after all these years."  So who was proven right?  There's no right or wrong answer in the take on technology and scifi, there's just the one we prefer.

If you're in the Sunnyvale, CA area tomorrow, you might want to go and tell Geoff that you're a fan yourself: he's celebrating the release of DCU: Zero with a signing at Comics Conspiracy between 2 - 6pm (Click here for details). Otherwise, just pick up the 50 cent book at your local store and get in on the ground floor before Superman and Batman spend the summer getting their asses kicked.

DC Universe: Zero [DC Comics]

Here's the page that started us questioning Sinestro's orientation. It comes from Green Lantern #221, part of the Millennium cross-over. In a nutshell, the Green Lanterns (a space police force with magic wishing rings) are protecting a group of humans who are supposed to develop into the next stage of human evolution. It all goes horribly wrong, as you can read here. Those humans are supposed to evolve into quasi-gods and save the universe, or something.

One of those humans, Extraño, is very, very gay. He wears a pink shirt unbuttoned to his waist, huge earrings and chains. And he says things like, "I'd like to see some men in uniform!" (Sadly, he later gets AIDS.) In this scene from Green Lantern #211, the Green Lanterns have captured Sinestro, the would-be ruler of everything, and they're keeping him tightly bound. But Sinestro decides to flirt with Extraño. Is it a ploy? Or just a genuine moment of attraction? You be the judge:

So I had to ask Steve Englehart, the writer of that comic (and Millennium in general) what was going on here. Was Sinestro really gay? Or just pretending? Since another member of Sinestro's race, Katma Tui, married an Earthman (John Stewart), he definitely could have something akin to human sexuality. Here's what Engelhart says:

I haven't thought about Sinestro for a while, obviously, but here's my take:

He has an powerful, intense, crafty mind. He's the equal or better of most GLs, because he was one, and he's set himself against all 3600 of them. It's the life-choice of a man with an immense ego and grandiose imagination, who has no respect for conventional boundaries. His one overriding, single-minded goal is winning, and he will do anything to accomplish it. So - I don't see him thinking about sex much. At least to my time, we never saw him with another person, let alone another male or female. But since, in effect, he doesn't care, he would certainly seduce Extaño if that would help him, and he would certainly sleep with him in Times Square of that would help him. In other words, he's neither gay, straight, nor metro, he's just sociopathic.

We've watched the full-length Speed Racer trailer a bunch of times, and we keep being blown away by a lot of the bizarre cityscapes that Speed races through. Where did those come from?

In the genesis of Larry and Andy's idea, they were trying to pay homage to the cartoon that came out of Japan in the 60s. And so the idea in a nutshell was to do a movie that was photographically real, but that was two dimensional that and had a sense of the cartoon style. And of course along with that, you need to design a city that s fresh and different [and] that's not as threatening as the city in The Matrix. [A city that's] fun and blatantly colorful. The original cartoon was full of colors that contradicted each other. They used color very well and they used two-dimensional design very well. We've tried to take it to the next level.

It looks like the designs have a lot of bright purples, reds and pinks in them.

There's lots of greens as well, and oranges, I think you'll find every color in the palette. And at times, it was quite a challenge to get all those things to work together.

Why was that challenging?

I think using a very broad palette with a lot of colors in it is very complicated. Larry and Andy wanted the film to be very colorful. There is a retro feeling to it. It's not exactly psychedelic at all, but it has parts of that. We were doing a lot of the pre-production in California, and we used that ranch style house and a lot of the colors from it, and we amped it up a hundred fold.

It definitely looks amped up. And it looks like it has a very cartoony style in general.

Larry and Andy are renowned for their groundbreaking worlds, and this will be another one. This will have a profound effect on how people go about doing things. There are a lot of very graphic images within the film. In one of the trailers, you'll see the faces kind of swirling across the background while the camera is moving. The camera is rotating around the room or panning around the room, and it's following a character, and intercut with that is another character who comes into the frame and sort of pushes the other character out as they're doing their dialog. It's very unusual. It's come from the world of 2D cartoons.
One of the fantastic things about the Wachowskis is their transitions from one scene to another. In Bound, which I didn't work on, there are some fantastic transitions. In The Matrix, they'll drop through the road [or the floor] from one room to another. I think in trailer #1, Speed and Royalton are having an altercation, and you'll see how one face almost pushes another face out... it's not a traditional way you'd cover a scene. There is a sense of a cartoon or an anime.

So does the movie take place in a future city? It certainly looks weird and futuristic.

There are two cities. Cosmopolis is the main city. George Hull did a lot of the design of the actual cities for me, he's one of the illustrators. We were taking inspirations from a lot of buildings around the world — and even from the [American] dollar bill, with the pyramid and the eye on top. One of the buildings is in fact that [pyramid], or very similar to that. It's a completely fanciful city. It's a huge city that's built on advertising and commerce. [In the movie]the world was a world of "corpocracy" as opposed to democracy.

It sounds a lot like our world, actually.

I suspect there's a kind of reference in that. They're very smart guys. The city came from that. We were trying to make a city that is full of color. There's a building that looks like a big sushi fish. There is a sense of playfulness — You could take a giant caterpillar and do some elongations and some geometry on it, and you could create a building. If you look really closely and freeze one frame, the background is like that.

In the film, when they get to the Grand Prix toward the end, the city surrounds the Crucible, which is the Grand Prix track. The track is literally in the city, and parts of the buildings are great big grandstands that can look down into the Grand Prix track. If you go to Chicago, to Wrigley Field, all around the baseball field, there are grandstand buildings that are five stories high and on top of some of them are homemade grandstands that people sell tickets to and you can sit there and look right down into the baseball.

What's it like designing sets and backgrounds using CGI? Is it harder than the design work for The Matrix?

Yes and no, in that we were designing a city that had particular style to it and color to it. There was a little more two-dimensional quality to it than there was in The Matrix. In The Matrix our big city was based on Sydney and then it was expanded, buildings were made taller, buildings were made longer. Particularly in the first Matrix when Agent Smith is talking to Morpheus — whey they have Morpheus a prisoner in the government building — the city behind Morpheus in the window is the city of Sydney, and we had just added a bigger building to it. Agent Smith says this was built at the pinnacle of human success.

Whereas the city of Cosmopolis is actually based in a fantasy world. There are a lot of elements based on car parts [in the buildings] but they're very subtly done. It's a lot like how when you look at the Empire State Building, they take a particular design motif and they expand on it. Certain things like that have been done with the buildings and the city of Cosmopolis, they'll take a particular piece of a grill of a car and they'll extrapolate on it so it doesn't look like a car part any more but there's a hint of it.

And you mentioned it's a very corporate-dominated world.

It's also a world where they don't use gasoline. They have motors that take like battery power and convert it using a thing called a transponder and they convert this theoretical energy through a convertinator, into a high powered non-CO2 fuel. They're not burning up gasoline when you see those cars going around.

Did you work on designing the cars as well as the sets?

Yes, the art department does that. We have a team of people who work with me who were doing that. The original Mach 5, the car Speed drives around in, was a cartoon car. We had to make a physical version of the car, it doesn't drive, but you can push it around. Julian [Jenson] reinterpreted that car to bring it into the 21st century. It's a very beautiful looking car. It certainly has a retro quality to it. When you look at it you say, "Oh it's the Mach 5 from the cartoon," but it's developed a long way. They did a beautiful job of doing everything from the bumble bee to the shooting star that flies out of the car that Rex Race drives. That's an absolutely gorgeous car. [The cars in the movie] can do lots of tricks, they have saws and jumping legs.

Everybody who worked on this was out to put in the fun elements that you have a cartoon that you can't really put into a regular movie.

In our world we have architects. In Speed's world, they have carchitects. [If you] want a car, you get someone to customize or design your car for you. It doesn't have to be the most expensive. All the street cars [are customized], so when you drive down the road what you see is just the most beautiful cars and exotic cars that you could possibly imagine. It's like going to the Pebble Beach Concourse up at Monterey. The Concourse de Elegance. They have the most beautiful cars in the world, from all time periods from the futuristic cars the concept cars to the 1910s and earlier probably. Some of the cars there are the concept cars of the 1920s or 1950s. If you're going to have a city called Cosmpopolis, it has to be very cosmopolitan. Every car you see is absolutely uniquely beautiful.

And then there are the race cars?

Race cars in Speed's time are called T-180s, and their wheels are able to rotate 180 degrees, rather than the regular 90 degrees. So the car can travel down the race track sideways. In its simplest form, the wheel is captured form above and then it has a drive shaft.

Captured from above?

You know, in a shopping trolley, the wheel is captured from above, and the wheel can spin right around, and then the car has a flexible drive-shaft which is coming off this very powerful non-polluting engine. It's like ion power. So the T180s, they'll do 300 miles per hour, they're very fast. Some other racers we see, [like the one] that Rex Racer is racing, they're the cars that are pre-T-180, their wheels will only partially spin. We were trying to make a film of a parallel world. It's our world, but it's slightly off axis a little bit.

The prosecution of Kurtz continued, even after it was clear his wife died of natural causes and he proved the bacteria were harmless. Another cause for the paranoia was an flier in his house for an art show, which had Arabic lettering on it. Once all of these misunderstandings were cleared up, however, the Justice Department prosecuted Kurtz for mail and wire fraud, based on the fact that he ordered the harmless bacteria via a Web site.

Hershman Leeson's first two movies are Conceiving Ada, about Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter who created the first computer language, and Teknolust, about a woman who creates cyborg copies of herself. Here's what Hershman Leeson had to say about the case, and her newest film.

Strange Culture uses a mixture of documentary, actors re-enacting the scenes, and cartoons, because Steve Kurtz was advised by a lawyer not to comment on the case. Were you influenced by the film American Splendor, which uses similar techniques?

It's a coinicidence. I liked American Splendor. My brother knew Harvey Pekar, and he used to come to our house all the time... I think this really had to be a hybrid, there was no other way to make it... The cartoons had actually already been made and I just had to integrate them... I used cartoons in other work, in the 1970s.

Did Steve Kurtz object to any of the ways Thomas Jay Ryan played him, or Tilda Swinton played his late wife?

Not at all. [We had] a lot of leeway with his character, because he likes Thomas a lot. He said the only person who could play Hope was Tilda, so he was happy.

Strange Culture includes a lot of information about the prevelance of genetically modified foods in America. Do you think many people are unaware of how widespread genetically modified foods are in this country?

Yes. I think people are unaware of the erasure of habeas corpus as well, and they are unaware that this case is so important because it would [allow the federal government] to criminalize a civil charge.

The government's case is now entirely based on the idea that it can press criminal charges for a civil statute. Someone says in your movie that this would double the number of laws the Justice Dept could use for criminal prosecution.

It just gives people more control. If someone accidentally makes a mistake on a form on the internet, is it wire fraud?

One of the most chilling scenes in the film is when a professor friend of Steve Kurtz's tries to convince some students to sign the petition for his release. And all but one of the students refuse to sign, because they don't want to jeopardize their futures by getting on the government's radar.

That actually happened to me, word for word. I was at UC Davis and I was trying to get my students to be aware, one, that there was a petition and two, about his case, and they were just afraid, they didn't want to sign anything.

We're huge fans of your previous movie, Teknolust, which also features Tilda Swinton. Is it just a coincidence that both movies are about artists who experiment with science and become accused of being a public menace?

Usually I deal with technology or science and art. I didn't see that relationship before you mentioned it, but it's true.

Do you think part of the reason for the fear of artists using science is the fact that people think only "experts" or specially qualified people should be allowed to do science?

I'm not sure. it's just such a bizarre case that one can't pinpoint why. It had to do with the subject of his work, and he was criticizing the government. And then his wife died and there were strange materials [in his house.]

And there hasn't been any movement on the case since Nov. 2006, when your documentary ends?

There's going to be a trial sometime this year. We don't have a date yet.

Are you ever going to make another fictional movie, like Conceiving Ada and Teknolust?

I just finished a script on Sunday about a vampire. It's really kind of an essay about aging, so it's kind of part three of my trilogy, with Conceiving Ada and Teknolust.

Do you think there are a lot of restrictions on artists using technology and science?

All the time, and they also don't think it's art because it's not painting. so there are all kinds of criticisms... There was criticism of photography when it first happened. It took years before it was taken seriously or considered art. Any time you want to use something new and that people aren't familiar with, they think it's not art and you're a charlatan.

What sort of restrictions on your work as a science artist have you faced?

Not being able to show my work, for as long as 30 years. And then the work was shown, and people got really interested in it.

Does feminism affect how you portray subjects such as creativity or technology?

It absolutely does. The major inventions in tech, the computer language, [came from] Ada Lovelace, artificial intelligence was invented by Mary Shelley. Cellular phone technology was invented by Hedy Lamarr. The major influences have all been women, but people continue to say that women have no aptitude for science or technology.

Do you think you've had a harder time making movies and dealing with technology because you're a woman?

I think it's very difficult for women filmmakers, or maybe it's me because I don't do traditional films. It's amazing I've had as much success as I've had. When I started out, I was paired with Todd Haynes, and then I was paired with Darren Aronofsky. [In both cases], we both won awards, Haynes and I at the London Film Festival for the work we had done and the same with Darren, because he did a film called Pi just when I did Conceiving Ada, and people compared them because they dealt with science. I've just had it much more difficult than my male counterparts. [Strange Culture, from Docurama]

What was it like being the only Firefly writer to come over to BSG? Did you get a sense that BSG was trying to imitate some of Firefly's more revolutionary elements, like the grittier, less heroic tone?

I don't think Firefly influenced BSG. BSG was being developed shortly after Firefly was, and I'm under the impression that Ron would've been too busy coming up with Battlestar to be watching Firefly.

What do you think the differences between the two shows are?

Certainly the shows *feel* entirely different to me. Firefly was more episodic, while BSG is one long novel. Firefly laughed openly, while BSG's humor is so black it can be hard to see against a dark background. Both shows reflect the souls of their creators and not each other. I know I never think about Firefly when we're working on Battlestar. Does evolution think about a deer while it's making a llama? (No. It doesn't. They're equal, similar, and also different.)

How are the writing rooms on the two shows similar, or different?

I never worked in a writers' room at Firefly. Maybe there was one, but I worked on the story for Shindig one-on-one with Joss. BSG, though, is all about a very lively room that is guided by Ron, although not always in person. The writers at Battlestar, to a man, are amazing. They're smart, funny, and incredibly devoted to making a challenging and intelligent show.

You came onto BSG with its third season. Is it challenging to take on established characters who've been around for a while, and try to come up with something new to do with them?

That's at the heart of a TV writer's job. Even on a new show, the creator will have established the characters in the pilot and the writers have to build on what's already there. In fact, my favorite part of the job is matching a pre-existing voice. And "finding something new to do with them" can be easy when you're dealing with a world as dense in past conflict and grounded disagreements and desperate alliances as Battlestar is... throw a new situation at these characters and you'll have something new and electric to write about.

Is it true that Ron Moore wrote a Cylon Bible, which tells about their culture and what life on a Basestar is like?

There is, indeed, something like a Cylon bible — a document that describes their culture and their ships. There is also a similar document about life on Galactica. I was given these when I was hired and I can vouch that they're fascinating!

Can you share anything non-spoilery from either of these? Like, how do the different Sharons share so many memories? When we first meet the Athena version of Sharon, she knows a lot of stuff that the Boomer version knows somehow, despite one of them being on Caprica and the other being on Galactica.

Not all Eights know everything the other Eights know. But during a download, memories are stored and can be accessed by a curious Cylon who knows how. Different models may differ on how widely memories are shared between different incarnations of the same model.

Don't hold your breath for any answers to the questions raised at the end of season three. The show is shooting its fourteenth episode of the season, which may not air until 2009, and Sackhoff says she's "no closer to having any questions answered from last season than I was." She's read the script for episode 15, and there's no resolution to how Starbuck came back from the dead, and what her trip to Earth meant.

By episode 14, the characters are dealing with "more important issues" than what the back-from-the-dead Starbuck is. And we won't see much resolution on the status of her marriage to Sam Anders, who's suddenly an inhuman Cylon. Sackhoff questions whether marriage to a Cylon would even be considered legal.

On the perfect man for Starbuck: Lee and Kara will never be happy together, Sackhoff claims.

I think they're meant to be best friends, to push each other, to have those arguments. I think that's the purpose they serve in each other's lives... If anyone is fitting to her, and anyone she would actually be happy with, it's Leoben... Anders is too weak for her, Lee is too much of a boy scout.. He makes her feel guilty just by being who she is, if there's any person she would ever let her guard down with and be happy with, it would be Leoben.

At the start of season four, Starbuck is "extremely fragile, extremely lost," says Sackhoff.

We've never seen Starbuck so alone and so lost... Not only because of the way that people are treating her, but because of the questions that her coming back has raised in her own mind.

Loving the Cylons: Says Sackhoff:

Starbuck is starting to feel compassion for the thing she hates the most, because she and everyone else on the show is starting to realize...These are the questions of humanity, and what the show has always asked: If you found out tomorrow that your best friend or your mother or something was a Cylon, would it make your experiences you had with that person or thing less important to you? No, it's the same person, the same experiences, the same emotions, it's just different. It doesn't mean it's less. That's something they're starting to remember.

Female empowerment: Sackhoff also feels great that she's won over so many of the nay-sayers who said Starbuck wouldn't work as a woman.

What made people accept Starbuck as a woman was that she was such an interesting character. Once people let their guard down and their prejudices of what the show was supposed to be, they stopped thinking of the old show.

Realistic science fiction: BSG's biggest influence on the genre, according to Sackhoff, is that it treats science fiction like reality:

We never relied on the science fiction in the show to drive the show, we relied on the drama and the human condition ... That's what we depended on for the show and to move it along. Most science fiction shows rely way too much on the bells and whistles. It's kind of opened doors in science fiction (generally). Science fiction is a setting, it's not a show. It's where something takes place. It should never have been what the show is.

The newly revealed Cylons: The actors playing Tigh, Tyrol and the other newly revealed Cylons were pissed off, because they had spent so much time building up those characters, Sackhoff says. "You play for years making choices as a character and then feel those choices would have been different if you'd known." Tigh actor Michael Hogan still hasn't come to terms with the revelation, she said.

Her chosen souvenir: When the show ends, Sackhoff wants to take her flight suit, including her gunbelt and helmet, home and bronze them. Then she'll put them in her bathtub, so anyone who takes a shower at her house will have to look at Starbuck's flight suit.

How Starbuck has evolved:

I think she's finally someone you can depend on, and I don't think she was before. What keeps her going is her desire to love and her desire to have people love her. Her relationships with [Admiral] Adama and Lee have probably kept her alive.

As for Starbuck's turn towards a more spiritual side, Sackhoff says it doesn't affect how she plays the character. "She 's always been religious. It's not that she's changed it's that she's opened up her eyes and allowed something else to come into her life.... It's just another aspect of who she is."

How BSG will end: Some of the show's revelations late in the season will "ruffle some feathers." The show won't have a neat and happy ending, tied up with a bow. Instead, the show, and Starbuck, will have a messy ending, says Sackhoff.

She would be interested in appearing in BSG/Bionic Woman producer David Eick's television version of Children of Men, both because of the cool premise and because she loves working with Eick. What went wrong on Bionic Woman, where she played the psychotic original bionic woman, was that there were "too many cooks" and "too many hands in the pot. You can't agree on what you're trying to make, [so] you get a stew that's full of shit." (At least that's what that last part sounded like to me.)

A lot of your songs take place in a bleak semi-destroyed world and focus on collapsing/decaying structures and corrupt systems. Do you think of yourself as a dystopian songwriter? Are you influenced by any particular dystopian works, like Brazil or other post-apocalyptic films?

You know, I hadn't thought of myself like that, mainly because I try to avoid saying "I am thus-and-such a kind of songwriter" — I think you have to be careful not to compartmentalize yourself, or at least that's true for me. But I was a young comics & SF books reader and it's true that much of my favorite stuff involved post-apocalyptic scenarios: Logan's Run was a big movie for me when I was a kid, and there was a James Sallis story in Again, Dangerous Visions that left a huge impression even though I'm not sure I was even reading it right. I barely remember it except that it felt kinda scorched-earth, you know? But always in those movies the best part was when they see, like, the Forbidden Zone in Planet of the Apes, or the overgrown places outside the city where Logan finds Peter Ustinov with his cats. Am I even remembering that right?

One of my favorite songs of yours is "The Day The Aliens Came," the one about waiting eagerly for the genocidal alien invaders to arrive, which was left off the Sunset Tree album. Was there some reason this song was omitted? Could this song inadvertently have given away crucial info on the coming alien invasion?

Yeah we recorded that one in the studio and we sort of went nuts with it — it had this huge treated surf-y electric guitar and jaunty rhythm section and emotionally it just didn't fit into the album at all any more. After a recording session, when you're putting an album together, some songs sort of raise their hands and quietly say "I don't really play well with the others here." And that was true with that song; I dug the song, everybody liked it, it had a great feel. But it was out of place there.

Your new album includes a song about H.P. Lovecraft, "Lovecraft In Brooklyn." Why should we identify with H.P. Lovecraft's feelings of alienation and xenophobia during his exile in Red Hook? What about that image appeals to you? In Lovecraft's case, that alienation leads to all his best speculative horror... do you think xenophobia creates better speculative fiction than xenophilia?

Well the song is not really about Lovecraft — it's sung by a guy who's identifying with Lovecraft at his most xenophobic and terrified. Why does that appeal? I think I'm just attracted to hermits in general — to people who don't feel like they're part of the world, who have a hard time feeling like they're really present in the same space as everybody else.

Second part of your question is self-evidently true, the classic trope is Alien Invasion, right, not Aliens Who Are Swell Folks!

Are there particular science fiction authors you're influenced by? Or other works of science fiction that have had an impact on your writing process?

When I was a kid I pretty much worshiped Harlan Ellison and I still think he's a good writer. Through his interviews & his introductions in the Dangerous Visions books I got into James Sallis & Carol Emshwiller, and I'm still a big Emshwiller fan to this day — she writes such hard good sentences. I think I checked out of the science fiction hotel early in high school and never really looked back, lit-wise — the stuff that was getting popular was Piers Anthony and Anne McCaffrey stuff, and more power to anybody who's into that sort of thing, but I liked much much darker stuff and I started reading Faulkner instead. I think I'm more interested in horror than science fiction ever since — it's more of a constricted niche but it seems to attract writers whose visions are more demented. Not that there isn't plenty of awful horror too of course. If I gotta see one more well-dressed ambiguously sexual vampire whose manners are 19th-century impeccable, I'm gonna fall asleep and never wake up again.

Your new book, Master Of Reality, is about a teenager in an adolescent psychiatric care facility explaining his need for his confiscated copy of the Black Sabbath album the way you'd explain "love to an android," according to the 33 1/3 blog. I'm dying to read it. How far do you pursue this metaphor? Is adult sanity like being an android? Also, the album ends with "Into The Void," about leaving a doomed Earth for outer space. Do you think people still write songs about this type of escapism from a ruined world? (I can't think of any recent "we're leaving Earth" songs, but maybe I'm missing something.)

I think the narrator of the book is saying something that all teenagers know instinctively: that there is something wrong with adults. That, somewhere along the way, the adults lost the plot. Maybe it's just that they got stressed out by having to pay bills, or maybe it's just the nature of aging, but from a teenager's perspective, it looks like aging just strips you of your ability to be reasonable, to be cool, to understand other people. So in that sense, teenagers are living as captives in some colony where the androids have all taken over, and where they've made it clear that they intend to turn their captives into androids, too.

I think people prefer to soak in dystopianism more than write about escape the way Ozzy did — and, to be honest, I think it's posing to focus real hard on "the world is screwed!" tropes. It's like, every emo and metalcore band thinks they're the first people to notice that the world is harsh. Good job dudes! Give yourselves a gold star! Meanwhile Ozzy has the courage to dream, to talk about leaving the world and going someplace where everything's cool, and he sneaks in "the world is screwed" tropes while he's at it - that's what makes for a good lyric, I think — that little bit of extra effort.

The Descent and Doomsday both focus on women venturing into perilous situations. Do you think it's important that the heroes in your films are women? Do you write women characters differently, or are they just heroes who happen to be women?

It's certainly not some kind of career plan to have my heroes be women, it's just turned out that way. I actually wrote the story for Doomsday several years before I made The Descent. It was one of 3 scripts I tried to get made in the wake of The Descent and it was the one that Rogue Pictures chose to back, so it's really just a coincidence that my new hero is also a woman and I saw no reason to change the character into a man just because of what I'd done previously.

I try to write women as authentically as possible. Above all things, no matter how tough and rugged I make the characters, they should never lose their femininity.

The thing that seems most intriguing to me about Doomsday is that it seems to straddle genre lines, including horror, scifi, medical thriller, etc. Do you think this is true? Are you consciously trying to blend genres?

I love to blend genres. Taking the best elements from different inspirations and throwing them all into the mix is what makes it fun. Besides, I think the lines between genres have often been blurred at best, and that's no bad thing.

Most post-apocalyptic movies nowadays feature monsters (28 days, I Am Legend, etc. ) Are you consciously trying to reclaim post-apocalyptic movies from the monster-movie genre?

Absolutely! It's like there's an unspoken rule in movies now that virus = zombies! Well that's not what post-apocalyptic movies are about for me. It should be about human survival, because the day the next big global pandemic arrives, there won't be any zombies running around, I can promise you that. This is real, terrifying stuff, just as real as nuclear war was when the last great post apocalyptic movies (like The Road Warrior) came out. And that's the kind of gritty, savage world I'm trying to revisit with this movie.

After the epic disasters and hard science future of the two novels that preceded Rolling Thunder, this novel feels almost like an idyll, or a romantic comedy. How do you see the story of Podkayne fitting into the larger questions about the way Earth handles environmental disaster and space colony politics that you raised in the first two novels of the series?

I don't, really. Podkayne is a Martian, through and through. Though she is saddened and horrified by events on Earth, she is more concerned with how it will affect Mars. She's not a scientist, nor is she political. Her only concern about the ongoing destruction of the Earth is for the people being uprooted, displaced, and killed, and with what she and her fellow Martians can do to help. The fate of the planet doesn't much concern her. You could think of her mission to Earth late in the story as being like the Concert for Bangladesh. She's doing what she can, but knows she can't stop anything.

You've talked about how Heinlein is one of your influences, and certainly critics have compared your work with Heinlein's. When it came to writing a novel that is overtly an homage to a specific Heinlein book, why pick Podkayne of Mars? What is it about that novel in particular that drew you in?

It really wasn't the novel itself, it's all the juvenile novels. I believe I mentioned six of them in the last chapter. (Can you find them all?) I don't think Heinlein's Podkayne is like my Podkayne.

One of the compelling aspects of your writing is that you're never afraid to bring romance and sex into your hard SF space opera scenarios. But the romance has changed a lot over the past 4 decades. You've gone from tales about alien-human sex, lesbian lovers, and people who get sex changes as easily as haircuts, to tales about much more conventional, heterosexual human marriages like the one Podkayne has. What's changed for you? Will you ever bring your readers back to worlds where aliens with three sets of genitals cavort with sex-changed humans, or are you more interested in dealing with human relationships that more closely resemble those that exist on Earth now?

Different things are appropriate to different stories. These novels are set in the near future, whereas the others are set in the distant future. I don't see things changing that much in 50 years. So I don't think anything has changed for me. When I get back to that other universe, there will be more unusual sex. One of these days I hope to write a third novel in the Steel Beach, Golden Globe trilogy, entitled Irontown Blues. The reason I haven't written it is that I don't yet know what's going to happen.

There's an overarching pessimism to Rolling Thunder and the rest of the series regarding how humans deal with climate disaster. Did the recent disasters in New Orleans and after the Asian Tsunami affect your perspective in these novels?

As I said in the Afterword to Red Lightning, I had already begun writing about a tsunami (which was originally going to hit Indonesia) when the real tsunami arrived ... in Indonesia. It scared the hell out of me. I'm not in the prophesy business, I'm a writer, I tell stories. I had hoped that would never happen again, but it did, in the same book. This time I had completed writing about the tsunami in Florida and the breakdown in social order that resulted, when Katrina hit New Orleans, and I found myself looking at the very scenes I had described. I wondered if I had been unreasonably pessimistic in my descriptions, but must say I felt vindicated, because Katrina was not one ten-thousandth as destructive as the disaster I described ... and yet, things fell apart. "Y're doin' a heckuva a job, Brownie!" So am I pessimistic? What has happened in the last seven years that would lead me to optimism?

Mutterings among critics and writers indicate that space opera may be on the rise again. What are some themes from classic space operas of the 50s and 60s that you'd like to see SF writers taking on again? And what are some themes you'd just as soon leave behind?

Space opera has not only arrived, it has conquered all, since the release of Star Wars. Don't get me wrong, I loved that movie (and none of the sequels), but I don't see it as science fiction. The 50s and 60s, as I remember them, was the time when SF was moving away from the pulp crap of L. Ron Hubbard and hacks like him, and into more concerns of sociology and character. I frankly don't read much SF, haven't for a long time, so I don't know if space opera has taken over the written word, but it sure dominates on the silver screen. Even one of the few movies I've seen recently that seemed to be trying for at least a smidgen of scientific accuracy, Sunshine, was pretty stupid.

In Merci's words:

PMOG is an asynchronous, peripheral game that transforms the Firefox browser into an MMO head up display and invites the player to engage in warfare, socializing, and annotation on the world wide web through html.

Is PMOG the future? Is the Internet going to become a vast multiplayer game?

The internet is already a vast multiplayer game, PMOG just makes that obvious and tangible. There are player types (Wikipedia nannies versus forum griefers), there's social cuing based on a the presentation of self online (avatars, profiles on social networking sites), When I designed PMOG I approached the problem of making an MMO in a browser by first realizing that the internet is already a place. It's an environment with its own architecture, languages, and customs. The gameplay and story flowed from that decision.

What kind of story did you devise to overlay/explain/narratize the internet in PMOG? It looks pretty steampunk - is that the genre? Any plans to evolve the story over time?

When I began designing PMOG, I started with the environment of the internet. It struck me that the internet is this kind of awful urban sprawl. Buildings (websites) go up in a matter of days with no building codes or aesthetic oversight. There's no organizing principle apart from the most basic rules of the world - html operates like gravity. If it loads, I guess it's okay. There is no government building roads and schools, keeping the streets lit at night, putting on parades, or punishing criminals. But despite this lawlessness there are some highly functioning and beautiful structures, there's magic and technology living side-by-side. That concert of magic and tech speaks well through steampunk. Additionally, I took a lot of Victorian literature in college. And aesthetically, I'm tired of everything being fantasy or flat anime-esque children. Over the course of the time that PMOG runs I'll continue to develop the story and the world, eventually adding non-player characters and more advanced interactions.

You can sign up for the PMOG beta. If you were PMOGing, you would already have earned experience for reading this post.

Is it true you have a cameo in the new movie?

I have a great part in the movie but I can't talk about it, it's confidential.

Have you already filmed it?

Yeah, it comes out June 13th.

So the wig you wore as the Hulk, is it true that it was some fancy $5,000 wig?

Yeah, it was hair from a Chinese mule. I might have it, I have a lot of memorabilia. I'll have to check my boxes to see what I have.

How long did it take to paint your body green?

Three hours.

Do you wish that you were the governor of California instead of Arnie?

Someday if I get the opportunity, I'm interested in running for a congressional seat.

When did you live in the Village? And was it really such a hotbed of science fiction?

I was in the East Village from about 61, i suppose, until 1973. Thomas Disch I believe was in the area. Other people passed through. James Sallis, when he was in New York he tended to stay in the Village or the East Village. I believe Robert Sheckley from time to time lived in the village. My sense is that the Village of the 50s, before i got there, was even more a sort of science fiction center, even for New York. Judith Merrill and a lot of the people who lived in Milford, Pennsylvania, would stay in the Village when they came to New York.