Audrey Niffenegger is the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, soon to be a movie, and the forthcoming Her Fearful Symmetry. She's also an artist, engraver and bookmaker, part of the T3 artists and writers' collective. She teaches Interdisciplinary Book Arts at Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, and has published two graphic novels: The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress.

And Niffenegger says that being a visual artist has definitely helped her to create storytelling that's more visually oriented. "I think that drawing, in particular, has trained me to observe and to be able to visualise things clearly. I teach a writing class for visual artists and I have found that they almost always excel at description, they seem to often possess the ability to organise and develop their train of thought very tangibly. I imagine this is due to constantly having to organise 2D space, it does carry over into the laying out of fictional worlds."

Rudy Rucker, meanwhile, is the author of numerous science fiction novels, including the Ware series, The Sex Sphere, Mathematicians In Love and Postsingular. He's been taking photos forever and has been doing paintings, often connected to his fiction, for several years, and has had some gallery shows recently. "All along, I've made little pen and paper drawings of my scenes before writing them, but now I enjoy the more heavy-duty process of breaking out my kit of acrylic paints. I took up painting when I was writing my historical novel about the painter Peter Bruegel, and I started using paintings for pre-visualization while I wrote Frek and the Elixir. A painting takes longer than a drawing, and I get more deeply into it. My sense is that I'm using a different part of my brain when I paint a picture­, as opposed to when I'm revising my written outline. It's like visiting a different muse."

Mary Robinette Kowal won the Campbell Award for best new SF writer, and has a story collection coming soon, called Scenting The Dark And Other Stories. She also has a novel coming out, called Shades Of Milk And Honey. And she works as a professional puppeteer, both making and operating puppets. She explains:

Performing and building puppets definitely has an impact on how I see the world and that directly influences what is important to me when I'm writing. But really, to answer this properly, I should probably back up a bit and explain what it's like to perform as a puppeteer. Puppetry is a form of acting. The main difference between an puppet actor and a "meat" actor is the tool we use to communicate with the audience. In both cases, it's about creating a believable character. A traditional actor inhabits their tool — their body — and learned to use it unconciously since the day they were born. Some might have to retrain it, but for the most part, it's so familiar, one doesn't think about the body as separate from the self. Make sense? With a puppet actor, my tool is external to my body. I had to learn to use a puppet as an adult and very consciously had to work to learn what makes something look alive. I had to learn to break body language down into pieces of discreet information so I could duplicate them with this tool. Ultimately, a puppeteer wants to learn to do all of this so naturally that it requires no more thought than a traditional actor requires to work their own body.

Here's her demo reel:

Visualizing characters, imagining plots:

And Kowal says that the biggest impact of her puppeteering experience is in how she thinks about creating believable characters, and plots that flow from their actions. That focus on "body language" has allowed her to portray lots of different characters, whether a dog, a badger, or a little boy. And one aspect of body language is that "every movement counts, because most puppets have no facial expression." That carries over to fiction, because every movement her characters make have to count as well. "If my character picks up a glass, it has to be for a reason, preferably one that expresses an emotional state as well as a plot point. "

And similarly, Rucker says that his painting has helped him figure out where a story should go next: "Painting gives me a different way of being surprised." Sometimes, when he's not sure what should happen in an upcoming scene, he'll get out the paints and "see what happens."

"If a narrative is 'storyboarded' — even in one's imagination — then the action of the plot will be more grounded," says Stephen Stanley, the only SF writer ever to place in both the Writers Of The Future and Illustrators Of The Future contests and the art director of Shimmer Magazine. "Drawings and sketches of setting, scenes, characters make excellent reference materials (non-visual writers can do the same by collecting photographs and images from magazines and web searches). Perhaps the act of personally drawing reference material makes the elements more real to me, and therefore more real when written. It doesn't hurt."

Stanley says he'll pre-visualize a character or a setting, before he writes, and one crucial question is how much visual detail to include: too much and the story gets bogged down. But not enough, and the story loses vividness.

"I've always sought to provoke the reader with a steady flow of powerful images," says Rucker. (Anyone who's read earlier works like Wetware or The Sex Sphere, or newer stuff, like the ultra-trippy Postsingular, knows this to be an understatement.) But like Stanley, he seeks a balance between strong images and story flow. "I like to keep things moving with action, dialog, and the stream of consciousness of the main character. Absorbing a story is quite different from looking at a painting. With a painting you have a synoptic view, that is, you can overview the whole scene at once. But in reading a story, you have to build the scene in your head by processing a linear sequence of descriptions. I don't like to overdo the visual description in the "fine writing" sense, which can be a pain for the reader. My goal is to put in just enough description so that when the reader looks back on the scene, they have a mental image similar to the one I started with. I don't mean that I want to be stark or minimalist, what I mean is that I like the conciseness of poetry­, where you line up exactly the right words and phrases to set off the intended response."

Niffenegger's Time Traveler's Wife is full of memorable images and telling descriptions, and she says that including a strong visual element is a good way to ground the story when you're dealing with fantastic elements like time travel or (in her new novel) ghosts. But too much visual detail can detract from the reader's imagination, she adds: "I do try to be careful about which things I render fully and which things I am vague about. I have found that letting readers fill things in for themselves can be effective. In the new book I am more spare with the visuals. I spend a lot of time inside various characters' minds, and most of these people are not especially visually aware."

Page 2: Worldbuilding Is Like Painting A Picture

"All along, I've had a visual imagination," says Rucker. "For me writing is a little like dreaming while I'm awake. That is, I see the scene in my mind's eye before I write it. Sometimes I'll nurse an image of a place or a situation for quite some time before I write about it, in fact I sometimes write a book simply to be able to mentally visit certain locales that I've dreamed up. I pretty much can't write a novel unless I have an image of a fabulous place where I want to go."

And when Rucker gets to write about those imaginary locales he's visualized, they become more real to him, and thus more compelling. It's sort of a feedback loop. "And painting is a way to layer on more details."

As for Kowal, she says working with puppets definitely helps her craft a scene or a locale in her mind. "The world-building is actually one of the key things that pulls me to both puppet building and SF and fantasy. Both forms are essentially the theater of the possible." At the start of a new story or a new puppet show, at first anything is possible — including defying the laws of physics.

The puppetry training also helps Kowal to visualize a new world, because her training has taught her to start a project by defining the parameters. "Since I'm creating a world from scratch, I need to make certain that the visual language I use is consistent and that the world has an internal logic. It's the same with writing."

Says Stanley:

For me, a story will evolve from a drawing (or an imagined visual) as often as a drawing comes out of a story. I'm writing about a space station. The more I pre-visualize, or draw, the interior and exterior of that station the more "real" the station becomes for me and the characters. The better I understand how certain areas look, smell, function, flow, etc., the better I can write about them. Any writer can do this (and for the most part does and should), but having trained and practiced the visualized representation of imagination, perhaps a visual artist who also writes can have an advantage. Of course, there is more to writing than describing visual experience, so it's not necessarily a "great" advantage. The processes in art/creativity tend to be similar.

Niffenegger says world-building is less of an issue for her, because she tends to set her stories in existing places. "The world is built." Where visualizing the story comes in, for her, is figuring out the best real-world location to set off something that happens in a scene.

Keeping it concrete

And perhaps the most important benefit of having access to another art form is that it helps you make the story more concrete. Kowal says that being concrete helps you think about how one little change alters everything else in the world. When she teaches about stage adaptations, she always says, "If you change one thing, you have to look at how it changes everything." And that comes back to writing SF: "Writing about the future is basically taking our world and making a change, which affects everything."

It's all very well to have crazy ideas and whiz-banging plot devices, says Rucker. But in the end, "everything has to be visual. I think I learned that from Robert Sheckley and Jorge Luis Borges. Ideas are important, but what you want in a novel is an objective correlative for the idea."

So instead of going on and on about your crazy ideas, you want to show the reader "some weird little physical device. Imagine, say, a wriggly green horseshoe with antennae on it, call it a jinker­and when you point your jinker at some object, the target object becomes weightless and the size of a matchbox and you can carry it off in your pocket. Maybe the jinker talks to you telepathically, maybe pairs of jinkers like to get together and mate, and while they're doing it, all the objects in your house are floating around and changing size. That's all much more interesting than talking about spatial metrics and gravity tensors!"

Here's the full list:

Best Novel
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor)
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella
‘‘The Erdmann Nexus'' by Nancy Kress (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)
‘‘The Political Prisoner'' by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008)
‘‘The Tear'' by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
‘‘True Names'' by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Truth'' by Robert Reed (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Novelette
‘‘Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders'' by Mike Resnick (Asimov's Jan 2008)
‘‘The Gambler'' by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
‘‘Pride and Prometheus'' by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
‘‘The Ray-Gun: A Love Story'' by James Alan Gardner (Asimov's Feb 2008)
‘‘Shoggoths in Bloom'' by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)

Best Short Story
‘‘26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss'' by Kij Johnson (Asimov's Jul 2008)
‘‘Article of Faith'' by Mike Resnick (Baen's Universe Oct 2008)
‘‘Evil Robot Monkey'' by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
‘‘Exhalation'' by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
‘‘From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled'' by Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Feb 2008)

Best Related Book
Rhetorics of Fantasy
by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan University Press)
Spectrum 15: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art by Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood Books)
The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold by Lillian Stewart Carl & John Helfers, eds. (Baen)
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid (Beccon Publications)
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)

Best Graphic Story
The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle
Written by Jim Butcher, art by Ardian Syaf (Del Rey/Dabel Brothers Publishing)
Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Fables: War and Pieces Written by Bill Willingham, pencilled by Mark Buckingham, art by Steve Leialoha and Andrew Pepoy, color by Lee Loughridge, letters by Todd Klein (DC/Vertigo Comics)
Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic Story and art by Howard Tayler (The Tayler Corporation)
Serenity: Better Days Written by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, color by Michelle Madsen, cover by Jo Chen (Dark Horse Comics)
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: Whys and Wherefores Written/created by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled/created by Pia Guerra, inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. (DC/Vertigo Comics)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, story; Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, screenplay; based on characters created by Bob Kane; Christopher Nolan, director (Warner Brothers)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola, story; Guillermo del Toro, screenplay; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; Guillermo del Toro, director (Dark Horse, Universal)
Iron Man Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, screenplay; based on characters created by Stan Lee & Don Heck & Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby; Jon Favreau, director (Paramount, Marvel Studios)
METAtropolis edited by John Scalzi; Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, and Karl Schroeder, writers (Audible Inc.)
WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Lost
: "The Constant", Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof, writers; Jack Bender, director (Bad Robot, ABC studios)
Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Battlestar Galactica: "Revelations", Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, writers; Michael Rymer, director (NBC Universal)
Doctor Who: "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", Steven Moffat, writer; Euros Lyn, director (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "Turn Left", Russell T. Davies, writer; Graeme Harper, director (BBC Wales)

Best Editor, Short Form
Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

Best Editor, Long Form

Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
David G. Hartwell
Beth Meacham
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Professional Artist
Daniel Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Donato Giancola
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine
Clarkesworld Magazine
edited by Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas, & Sean Wallace
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
The New York Review of Science Fiction edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kris Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, & Kevin J. Maroney
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

Best Fan Writer
Chris Garcia
John Hertz
Dave Langford
Cheryl Morgan
Steven H Silver

Best Fanzine
Argentus
edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger edited by Guy H. Lillian III
The Drink Tank
edited by Chris Garcia
Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

Best Fan Artist
Alan F. Beck
Brad W. Foster
Sue Mason
Taral Wayne
Frank Wu

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Aliette de Bodard
David Anthony Durham
Felix Gilman
Tony Pi
Gord Sellar

The story, from the Solaris Book Of New Science Fiction Vol. 2, is up as an audio file on Kowal's site, and it's well worth listening to. For one thing, Kowal has a great reading voice, very smooth and NPR-ish, and for another, the story is awesomely depressing. It's a great examination of art and the creative process, and what it feels like to be an artist who's looked at merely as a curiosity or as a momentary amusement for child barbarians. And art as a containment device for impotent rage. Robot Death Monkey illustration from RobotDeathMonkey.com. ["Evil Robot Monkey" at Mary Robinette Kowal]

We already reported that the as=yet=unpublished Austen/zombie novel Pride And Prejudice And Zombies has a movie deal. It's just what it sounds like: Pride And Prejudice, but with zombies.

And now Variety reports that Elton John - Elton John! - is producing a film called Pride And Predators. That's what it sounds like as well. It's Pride And Prejudice... except that alien monsters descend and start killing everyone in sight. Says John's fellow producer David Furnish:

It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect.

And then there's Lost In Austen, the successful British TV miniseries about ardent Jane Austen fan Amanda, who gets whisked back in time to Austen's era. She finds herself living out a Pride And Prejudice-esque storyline. (But no zombies or Predators, as far as I know.) Think Life On Mars, only Jane Austen-style. The movie version is being produced for Columbia by American Beauty's Sam Mendes, who knows a bit more about movies than Elton John.

Probably way better than all three of these movies combined will be Shades Of Milk And Honey, a "Jane Austen-style story with magic" by Campbell Award-winner Mary Robinette Kowal. She just sold Shades, in a two-book deal, to Tor's Liz Gorinsky, according to Publisher's Marketplace.

One of the most interesting panels at this year's Readercon was an exploration of the steampunk design movement, as it emerged into the mainstream with May's New York Times Style article. Writer/puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal, YA fantasy novelist Holly Black, Tor editor Liz Gorinsky, and speculative fiction writer Sarah Micklem gathered to show off their steampunk creations, discuss steampunk's literary origins, share their favorite steampunk websites ... and, of course, to design a Gibson chair for the fannish masses.

As with every genre, there are purists of steampunk — those who insist that if it ain't steam and it ain't punk, it doesn't count (Catherynne Valente is, famously, one of them). Since this style reached the mainstream, however, it became something much broader. At its heart, Kowal and Gorinsky noted, steampunk represents a literary fascination with the past, a desire to bring beauty and care into a seemingly rushed and impersonal modern life. Black called it "decorating like your subgenre," being brave enough to fashion your home and possessions like the fiction of your dreams. It's about individualism and originality: By the time mass-produced, identical steampunk shirts hit Hot Topic, much of the movement's essence will be lost.

In the panelists' view, steampunk also denotes a nostalgia for the days of simple inventions. In the Victorian era, it was possible to look at a typewriter or a sewing machine and divine its purpose from its appearance. No one who still wears a cummerbund could figure out the function of an iPod that way. The exposed gears and bolts of a steampunk machine gives us the illusion that we know how it works, and that we could build one ourselves given the time. Steampunk is the old-fashioned gadgetry to the modern world's newfangled technology.

With that in mind, the panel shared their favorites of the steampunk design movement. They hailed creator Jake von Slatt of the Steampunk Workshop — rightly so, for his steampunk Stratocaster is not to be missed. Also mentioned were the blogs Steampunk Home (I want that rococo outlet multiplier) and Brass Goggles. Though it's not really steampunk design, Black couldn't resist a shout-out to Gothic Martha Stewart either; really, who could?

No steampunk panel would be complete without the revelation of secret art projects by its members. Holly Black was the first to admit to using steampunk design in the renovation of her house, and Mary Robinette Kowal achieved BoingBoing fame a few years ago for her steampunk laptop, but this was the first time anyone had seen Sarah Micklem's objet d'art. It was handmade ... from a piece of leather and two human finger bones. She wouldn't reveal their origin. She did, however, take part in the design of a "Gibson chair," named both for iconic art character the Gibson girl and cyberpunk author William Gibson.

Here are the decided-upon elements of a Gibson chair:

• made out of leather, brass, wood
• steam-powered (possibly featuring an attached "steam jet pack"?)
• steam-heated (or steam-cooled, in the summer)
• very comfortable (mahogany and velvet pads, like an unusually indulgent dentist's chair)
• featuring gears and clockwork
• revolves 360 degrees
• has attached flutter-valve for gentle vibration
• has attached "brain in a jar" for mad scientist purposes
• has attached vampire ray gun for cross-genre purposes

Go forth and create, io9ers! I can bet you someone from that panel will pay you big bucks for such a stylish seat.

Image by Sam Van Olffen.