Omnivoracious

Life Sucks--or Does It?

Okay, so it's still Monday, which isn't good, but it's also another day in First Second's self-declared "Vampire Month," in honor of Little Vampire and, drum roll please, Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece. Life Suck reads as if Joss Whedon and Dazed and Confused movie director Richard Linklater collaborated on a graphic novel about a 24-hour convenience store run by vampires. Just imagine if you're the night manager for that convenience store and you're "facing an eternity of restocking beef jerky and blood brew for Radu, your crappy boss and Vampire Master." Throw in romantic complications and you've got the undead recipe for something pretty unique as far as vampire stories go. Stylish and modern, Life Sucks made my Monday worthwhile.

For another unique vampire story, you could do worse than check out Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch. This heady blend of adventure, intrigue, surreal imagery, and savage supernatural conflict set in modern-day Moscow totally re-energized the vampire subgenre. (The movie's not bad, either.)

(Also remember--the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader. And in reply to your question, no, I'm not on First Second's payroll--I just think they're one of the coolest graphic novel publishers out there.)

Amazon Exclusive: A Review of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s El Juego del Ángel (Angel's Game)

      
   (The cover of the Spanish edition and the author.)

This week marks the official release of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's El Juego del Ángel in the United States. It's a follow-up to his international bestseller The Shadow of the Wind. As Amazon reported back in March, the novel had the highest initial printing for any novel published in Spain.

The catch? For now, it's only available in the author's native tongue, Spanish. With an English-language version just barely on the horizon, we turned to Larry Nolen to write a review based on his reading of an advance copy of the Spanish edition. Nolen divides his time between being an English and History teacher, engaging in amateur translations of Latin American authors, and operating a blog devoted to literature--a blog that was one of the first to provide any information about El Juego del Ángel in either language in the months leading up to its publication. Nolen, with both the review and the translation of two paragraphs from the novel, give us limited creatures who don't read Spanish a tantalizing glimpse of the rich treasures to come. Visit Nolen's blog for English translations of two recent interviews with the author.

Vampires? In May? Why, First Second, You Are a Cheeky Publisher, Aren't You?

One of my favorite graphic novel publishers, First Second, has declared May "Vampire Month" in one of those audacious out-of-season moves that means October/Halloween is now officially "Island Vacation Month". So far, the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader.

In heavily related news, First Second is promoting Little Vampires by Joann Sfar this month. The book collects a previously published story about a vampire going to school with two new adventures. The artwork is stunning, with crisp, deep colors and genius-level compositions. These are sly, funny, often slapstick narratives that adults and children alike will find delightful--all in one neat, new trade paper edition put together with First Second's usual attention to detail.

In spirit if not style, Little Vampires reminds me of one of my favorite kid's books: Bunnicula, the tale of a carrot-draining vampiric rabbit. Both are mischievous and hilarious, for one thing. Narrated by the family dog, Harold, and enriched by the clever cat Chester, Bunnicula recounts Harold and Chester's investigations into the new rabbit in the house. When tomatoes wind up being sucked dry, suspicions arise that the the bunny might not be as innocent as it seems. Although it seems unlikely anyone hasn't heard of Bunnicula by now, definitely check it out. It's a classic.

As is Little Vampires, frankly. Sfar is just a brilliant artist and storyteller.

Graphic Novel Friday Spotlight: Shadows, Empire, Heavenshields, Bibles, and More

Every Friday, Omnivoracious will turn the spotlight on one or more graphic novels, with future installments also including news, relevant links, and interviews. You can let me know who or what you'd like to see featured by commenting on this post.

Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa (First Second) - A rich allegory in which a man and his son embark on a journey to save their family, while haunted by three shadows. Their trip takes them to many strange places, and although the underlying symbolism is at times obscure, the emotional pay-off is definitely worth the experience.

The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation by Siku (Doubleday) - To me, there's something crazy about trying to render the Bible in graphic form to begin with, given that the rich texture of the language provides much of its power. A manga Bible seems perhaps even crazier, given the stylizations of the form. The results, though, seem much weirder than even that, which I mean as a compliment. Either the Bible was always odd or Siku has chosen to dramatize the stranger bits. I'm not sure the standard manga approach really adds anything new to the experience, but it's a worthy experiment that manga fans in general should consider checking out.

James Owen's Search for the Red Dragon

Some multi-talented creators can write books and produce cover art for them. That's the case with James Owen and his Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographic series for young adults. The second book, The Search for the Red Dragon, was released this year. It's a gorgeous book in addition to a thrilling adventure, in no small part due to Owen's marvelous illustrations and cover art. The sketches above showing the creation of that cover art come from a page on his website where he details the whole process. I've posted the finished cover below so you can see the full realization of his vision.

The Search for the Red Dragon has been getting great reviews, and I recommend you pick it up. Here's a little bit more about the book:

It has been nine years since John, Jack, and Charles had their great adventure in the Archipelago of Dreams and became the Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica. Now they have been brought together again to solve a mystery: Someone is kidnapping the children of the Archipelago. And their only clue is a mysterious message delivered by a strange girl with artificial wings: "The Crusade has begun." Worse, they discover that all of the legendary Dragonships have disappeared as well. The only chance they have to save the world from a centuries-old plot is to seek out the last of the Dragonships -- the Red Dragon -- in a spectacular journey that takes them from Sir James Barrie's Kensington Gardens to the Underneath of the Greek Titans of myth.

 

Graphic Novel Friday Spotlight: Superspy by Matt Kindt

Every Friday, Omnivoracious will turn the spotlight on one or more graphic novels, with future installments also including news, relevant links, and interviews. You can let me know who or what you'd like to see featured by commenting on this post.

Superspy by Matt Kindt seems the perfect way to launch this new feature. It's innovative, adult, exciting, horrifying, brilliant, and one of my favorites from last year. Alas, it also seemed to go unnoticed by many outside of comics, until the Eisner nominations last month. Superspy's interlocking and stand-alone spy stories, told in a variety of art styles, gives readers an unromanticized version of spy life--the danger, the boredom, the subterfuge, the violence. Anyone who likes the structure of noir fiction or complex narratives in the novel form will find much to love about Superspy. Shadows, odd angles, cryptic messages, sudden brutality all play a role in the sobering success of the book.

Also check out Kindt's blog for all things comics-related, as well as his how-to video, below.

1984 in 2008: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother

This week marks the publication of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which as we reported here last month is a young adult novel that functions in part as a correction and update of such dystopic novels as 1984 and Brave New World. Except here the hero is Marcus, a smart seventeen year old caught in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in San Francisco. Picked up by homeland security, interrogated brutally, and then released, Marcus finds himself in a world where fear rules and every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. Marcus has a choice to make--and he decides to fight back. Doctorow has wedded his fascination with cutting-edge technology and the choices we make about technology to a riveting suspense plot in this potentially controversial novel.

Reviews and previews are all over the internet, of course. Ed Park in the LA Times writes that Doctorow is "terrific at finding the human aura shimmering around technology." SFF World believes the novel will "only further reinforce Cory Doctorow’s presence as one of the visionaries of free speech advocacy and great storytelling in the twenty-first century." Strange Horizons comments on the distinction Doctorow draws between privacy versus security: "Doctorow offers a distinction between the two which I am still pondering. He suggests that privacy is individual, with no implications of power over anyone else. Secrecy, in emulation of the old formula ('power + prejudice = racism') can then be framed as power + privacy = secrecy. Secrecy is what you do to others; it is withholding information or demanding access to another's privacy, or demanding of others that they keep 'private' something you have done to them."

A Publishers Weekly feature that ran in January suggested that "Time will tell if the book’s political awareness and tech-savvy will resonate with readers (teen or otherwise), but [Patrick] Nielsen-Hayden [Doctorow's editor] hopes that it will inspire them to become more active and involved. 'It’s not a call for anarchy in the streets,' he says, 'but it is a call for a more reasonable social order.'" Nielsen-Hayden shares more thoughts about Little Brother on the Making Light blog.

Doctorow also talks generally about SF and young readers at the website for a new YA anthology, The Starry Rift, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Tonight he's in Toronto to kick off his book tour. Check out the reviews and check out the novel--you'll be glad you did.

Tom Piccirilli: Award-winning Master of Suspense Pens an Instant Classic

Tom Piccirilli is one of the hardest working writers out there, selling his first book while in college and never looking back. Over the last twenty years, he's created keen psychological portraits of people in extreme situations, mysteries as noir as they come, and suspense-thrillers that'll keep you, as they say, on the edge of your seat.

Some of the most recent of his books include The Midnight Road, The Fever Kill, and, in another week, the amazing The Cold Spot, of which suspense superstar Ken Bruen says, ""[the book] is truly dazzling. Piccirilli has taken the mystery to a whole other level."  Publishers Weekly calls The Cold Spot, "a violent and dark tale in an appealingly noirish narrative style, highly economical yet bracingly intimate." As ever, Piccirilli approaches his work with honesty, humanity, and a keen sense of the traditions he's working in and with--highly recommended for anyone who loves mystery and suspense. This may just be the book that catapults him to the top of the bestseller lists. I read a lot of suspense/mystery novels and The Cold Spot has an intensity, economy, and tough lyricism that just plain blew me away. As far as I'm concerned, it's a stone-cold instant classic of hardboiled/noir fiction. (Click here for my full review.)

I caught up with Piccirilli recently and interviewed him about his perspective on fiction generally and his own work...

Amazon.com: From your perspective, how has horror and suspense fiction changed over the last 20 years?
Tom Piccirilli: I don’t know if there’s been much of a change in form or content. New subjects come to popularity of course. At the moment it seems like readers can’t get enough of the Knights Templar or Da Vinci or historical mysteries, whereas fifteen years ago it was courtroom dramas. The topic of the hour is always changing. In the field, there’s still a lot of fine and intriguing material being produced, as well as plenty of garbage. That’s just the way of all things, and always will be. So far as publishing is concerned, I think we all know that “Horror” is a despised term. I’m not even sure that Leisure Books, who was one of the few publishers with a dedicated horror line the last ten years and who actually put the word “Horror” on the spines of their books, does that anymore. The word itself is anathema although the subject matter of ghosts, monsters, serial killers, etc. is still popular. Maybe even more popular now than ever thanks to “paranormal romances” which take vampires and werewolves and inject a little erotica and Hepburn and Tracy dialogue in order to mine a whole new extremely popular niche. As for suspense, I think that nowadays writers, readers and publishers appreciate the good old crime stuff a lot more than they once did. There’s been a resurgence in reprints of pulp, noir and hardboiled material from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and that seems to have had an influence in producing neo-noir stylized writing. 

Pop Culture Report #3: James and Kathryn Morrow's European SF Anthology

Earlier this month, Tor Books released the trade paperback edition of James and Kathryn Morrow's The SFWA European Hall of Fame, a collection of sixteen stories translated from a variety of European countries. Contributors include Jean-Claude Dunyach, Panagiotis Koustas, Joao Barreiros, Andreas Eschbach, and many more. Most of these writers are well-known in their own countries but have had very little work translated into English. Our Pop Culture Report #3 (above) gives you more information on this intriguing, some would say essential, anthology. I conducted the interviews with the editors and Greek contributor Koustas in Nantes, France, last year, at Utopiales, a wonderful speculative fiction festival.

From Publishers Weekly's starred review: Wondrous worlds await U.S. SF fans in this sensitively chosen, impeccably translated anthology of Continental European science fiction stories, ranging from 1987 to 2005. Offering "emotional satisfaction and cerebral excitement," as James Morrow puts it in his introduction, highlights include Johanna Sinisalo's "Baby Doll," a Finnish denunciation of materialistic exploitation of children; Romanian Lucian Merisca's "Some Earthlings' Adventures on Outrerria," an excruciating political satire; Valerio Angelisti's "Sepultura," which offers a neo-Dantean Infernoscape; and W.J. Maryson's "Verstummte Musik," a Dutch near-future Orwellian nightmare. A French twist on human-machine interface lifts Jean-Claude Dunyach's "Separations" into a meditation on the nature of artistic creativity, while Elena Arsenieva's "A Birch Tree, a White Fox" exquisitely illustrates the quintessential Russian soul. These "disciplined speculations" by European writers and their painstaking translators not only excite the mind, they move the heart.

Book-Beer Pairings (Part II)--T.C. Boyle, Chip Kidd, Margo Lanagan, James Morrow, and More

     
(Large beer Drayman's Porter with Small Beer's Ant King; Dudman's novel and Old Speckled Hen.)

Much has happened since posting Part I of the book-beer pairings feature. First, I tested out Three Philosophers with Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton and found that (1) it is indeed a great Belgian-style beer, with some very subtle yet strong flavors, and (2) it goes very well with Groff's book.

Then, I decided to check in with Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press because...well, how can you do this kind of feature and not talk to a publisher called Small Beer Press? Gavin has a lot of respect for both books and beer--and access to both locally. “We have a fantastic brewery (ok, we have a few) in the Happy Valley in Massachusetts: the Berkshire Brewing Company. Their Traditional Pale Ale is a summer time treat and all winter we survive on their Drayman's Porter. Which is what we were drinking when the UPS guy delivered galleys of our next collection, Ben Rosenbaum's The Ant King.” (You can now download John Kessel’s excellent new collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Maureen F. McHugh's powerful Mothers & Other Monsters from the Small Beer website.)

So, without further rabbiting, the continuation of this landmark feature...

Guinness Versus Everything Else?!

Although most participants in the second half of this feature preferred matching a dark beer with their books, a few hold-outs for lighter imbibification include Thomas Disch, Nick Mamatas, and Chip Kidd—Kidd mostly because, as a purist, he deferred to his novel: “In The Learners, Happy and Himillsy down Rolling Rocks at Modern Apizz in New Haven, so that would appropriate. Otherwise, everyone drinks martinis.”

Mamatas probably wouldn’t typify his pick as a light beer, although it is: “The official beer of Weinbergia, the country in Under My Roof, is Red Stripe.  Short and hip, sweet and a bit more dangerous than you might at first suspect.  Plus, hipsters dig it like they dig uncombed hair and T-shirts from 1985.”

Similarly, Disch, author of the forthcoming The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten (coming July 1 from Tachyon Publications), selected either Rhinegold or Lowenbrau for his forthcoming farcical “memoir”: “In the New York of my youth (I was 17 when I got here in '57, and Miss Rhinegold was then an annual tradition. The contestants had their pictures posted in the subways. There was also a Miss Subways. They have both disappeared in our new, unsexed era, but there is another good reason to serve Rhinegold at the book party. It is the beer Wagner made famous. Not much of a beer in itself, as I recall, which is why it may have become extinct, and not the best opera in the Ring either, but no one has ever dared to bring out a beer called Gotterdammerung....I was actually in Lowenbrau Hofbrauhaus in Munich (in 1966). There were tiers of drinking halls where roisterers bellowed out drinking songs. A kind of Valhalla.”

Bothering the Coffee Drinkers: The Multi-Talented Doug Hoekstra

         

Doug Hoekstra has quietly become an icon of Americana music and the Nashville scene, writing beautifully spare songs that contain genius-level observations about people. As Wired magazine has said about Hoekstra "a lot of people write songs, Hoekstra writes five-minute worlds." So it comes as no surprise that Hoekstra also writes fiction and nonfiction, collected in Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, which won an Independent Publishing Book Award.

The book is just as fascinating as Hoekstra's music. I really can't put it any better than the Midwest Book Review: "Each detail segues compactly into the next and before you know it, the book has hooked you in a distinctly quirky and entertaining way. Like all great music, it sounds easy to do. As all great musicians know, this is a deceptive effect that is only maintained through constant work and practice. [Hoekstra] is like a quirky art collector, putting together odd bits and ends, and then making them into something with an effect so much more than the mere sum of their collective oddities."

Hoekstra has just released a CD, Blooming Roses, which consists of another eleven perfectly understated songs that incorporate elements of country, rock, and even jazz. From the easy-going "Naper Vegas Scrabble Club" to the quirky/driving "Your Sweet Love," Hoekstra has crafted some great new songs. I interviewed Hoekstra recently to talk about both writing and music.

Book-Beer Pairings (Part I): Arianna Huffington, Michael Chabon, Lauren Groff, and More

(Lauren Groff's Monsters paired with Brewery Ommegang's Three Philosophers, along with another great Ommegang beer, and an interloping stout.)

For a long time, I’ve wondered why wine and food should have all the fun. Here at Omnivoracious, we also believe in the complementary pairing of books with...beer. Now, please note that we’re not advocating irresponsible reading, but with the current popularity of micro-breweries and the role of beer in the writing of books over the centuries, it seems somehow irresponsible not to pair the two. We’re frankly a little surprised no one’s done it before.

Thus, I took it upon myself to explore the connection between hops and writing chops, going far afield to ask a diverse group of writers what beer or beers would go best with their latest work. The results were so revelatory and comprehensive that we’re running the first half of this feature today and the second half on Thursday...

Light Beers, Lambics, Arrogant Bastard, and More!

Naturally, everyone approached the question in a slightly different way. Eastern European surrealist Zoran Zivkovic appeared to have already sampled a brew or three, sending in the rhyming verse, “Drink Bud West, drink Bud East,/Drink Bud reading Steps through the Mist.” Elizabeth Hand echoed Zivkovic, even while confessing she hasn’t drunk beer in thirty years: “But the last time I did have one, it was almost certainly a glass of Bud with a shot-glass of Jack Daniels in it. A boilermaker, which is what Cass Neary in [the dark thriller] Generation Loss would drink--24/7, and minus the beer.”

Arianna Huffington, author of the just-released Right Is Wrong, decided on a more political (and surprisingly conservative) approach, writing, “Busch, of course!  Besides the homonymic convergence, distribution of this beer helped make Cindy McCain rich and funded John McCain’s political career.”

Other books that apparently take a lighter approach include Karen Joy Fowler’s Wit’s End, paired with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: “The company describes it as a new take on a classic theme; it's light, but complex.  This is a North Californian company, which fits me and my book.  But what I like best is the slogan--‘the beer that made Chico famous.’ The where?”

What's the Fuss About Patrick Rothfuss?

   

Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, recently released in mass market paperback, is an Amazon staff favorite--and, really, what's not to like? Rothfuss doesn't write down to his audience, takes on epic themes, and manages to be original at the same time. He's also a down-to-earth, no-nonsense kind of guy, as evidenced by this new interview on SF Site, which fans should definitely check out. For example, asked about working on The Name of the Wind, Rothfuss says, "For more than a decade I worked on the book knowing I was more likely to be hit by a bus than get published...I do remember that fairly early on someone pointed out that I used the word 'alloy' and 'counterpoint' in the same sentence. That person pointed out that some people wouldn't actually know what an alloy was. I made a conscious decision right then that my book was written for people who either knew what that word meant, or were willing to look it up."  That's the kind of attitude that, perversely enough, more often than not produces great novels.

The next book in the trilogy is due out next year.

Checking in on YA Titles: Gwenda Bond's Picks

Shaken & Stirred, run by Gwenda Bond, is one of the most literate and interesting blogs out there. Especially in the last couple of years, it has also been of great use for those interested in Young Adult fiction. Bond is a bit of an expert on the subject--in addition to writing for Publishers Weekly, the Washington Post, Kirkus, and Strange Horizons, she is working on a young adult novel and pursuing an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College. She also writes an advice column for Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet as everyone's Dear Aunt Gwenda. You can read much of her published work online for free (or buy some in print if you'd rather).

I recently interviewed Bond about current and classic YA. Bond is an enthusiastic advocate for the form: "The great thing about YA--and children's literature, in general--is that genre divisions are a lot less set in many ways. All the books are in the same section of the bookstore, with the exception that series books are generally broken out on their own. I believe that the overall level of quality in YA is higher than in adult books--perhaps because less is published--and so I'd encourage a person to just wander the section and take a chance on something that piques their interest."

The Martian General's Daughter: Military SF with a Heart

Sometimes you come across a novel that doesn't quite fit your expectations of a genre--in a good way. The Martian General's Daughter, set two hundred years in the future in a world very much like Imperial Rome, is military SF told through the viewpoint of, well, a general's daughter. Steeped in historical and emotional resonance, this slim but satisfying novel is often willfully didactic in the way it treats political/military issues--but it works because of the context. These are the issues the characters are dealing with, this is the way they would talk about them. It's rare that a book will make you think and make you feel in quite this particular way.

As Philip K. Dick Award finalist Adam Roberts says, "The novel is a wonderfully judged character study, a highly readable narrative, often witty, sometimes cruel...but best of all is the narrator, the general's daughter herself--a diffident and modest individual who is nonetheless vividly and marvelously alive, strong and likeable."

You can read an excerpt from the novel here. Go forth and check it out!

 

Liz Williams' Near-Future Detective Inspector Chen Novels

Looking for something different? Something immensely entertaining and yet with some depth? Something you can sink your teeth into? Well, I've got just the books for you: the new mass market paperback editions of Liz Williams' Detective Inspector Chen novels: Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, and Precious Dragon. (Night Shade Books)

In these near-future occult mystery novels set in Singapore, Chen and his demon sidekick Zhu Irzh--one of the Underworld's vice-detectives!--explore cases that involve ghosts, Chinese mythology, feng shui, martial arts, and travel between Heaven and Hell.

Booklist says readers looking "for something uniquely imaginative will find it in Williams' surreal fusion of Chinese mythology, paranormal high jinks, and satisfyingly suspenseful sleuthing," while Publishers Weekly praises the unique storylines, "colorful characters and imaginative settings extrapolated from ancient Chinese mythology...that fans and new readers will enjoy."

Whatever makes you tick as a reader, you'll something to like in this unique, well-written, and fast-paced series.

Author Fact: A British novelist with a background in magic, Williams is a past Philip K. Dick Award finalist.

Tiptree Award Winner: Sarah Hall's Daughters of the North

The James Tiptree Jr. Award has been announced, and the winner is Sarah Hall for Daughters of the North (published in 2007 in England under the title The Carhullan Army). The winner will be celebrated on May 25 at Wiscon, a convention held in Madison, Wisconsin, and receives $1,000. The jurors for the award were Charlie Anders, Gwenda Bond (chair), Meghan McCarron, Geoff Ryman, and Sheree Renee Thomas.

As stated in the press release for the award, "The James Tiptree Jr. Award is presented annually to a work or works that explore and expand gender roles in science fiction and fantasy. The award seeks out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating. [It] is intended to reward those women and men who are bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles, a fundamental aspect of any society."

Judge Bond wrote of the winning novel, also a winner of European literary awards, “Hall does so many things well in this book – writing female aggression in a believable way, dealing with real bodies in a way that makes sense, and getting right to the heart of the contradictions that violence brings out in people, but particularly in women in ways we still don't see explored that often. I found the writing entrancing and exactly what it needed to be for the story; lean, but well-turned.”

"James Tiptree Jr." was the pen name of Alice Sheldon, whose short stories were, as the Tiptree administrators point out, "notable for their thoughtful examination of the roles of men and women in our society."

Win a Weekend with J.K. Rowling's "The Tales of Beedle the Bard"

Calling all Harry Potter fans!
Want to get your (gloved) hands on J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Amazon.com wants to send you and a friend to London, England to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course), handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself. Open to muggles ages 13 and older in 24 countries, the Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest challenges you to creatively answer one of the following three questions in 100 words or less:

• What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
• What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
• What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

An Amazon.com committee will select 10 semi-finalist submissions (based on creativity and writing style) from each of two age categories: 13-17 and 18-and-over. Amazon.com customers will determine the two finalists and Grand Prize winner by voting for their favorites. But hurry--submissions will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. PDT April 22, 2008. 

If you haven’t already, take a look at The Tales of Beedle the Bard:

Dora Lives

Pioneer. Felon. Genius. Con man.  These titles (and many more) have been draped on the shoulders of legendary surf icon Miki Dora for decades.   Yet very few ever got close enough to get a clear picture of who Dora really was.   Hitting bookshelves today, David Rensin's All for a Few Perfect Waves offers a rare and engaging look at the life and times of an elusive figure known famously as "Da Cat."  Armed with hundreds of interviews and meticulous research, Rensin tackles the man, the myth, and the legend of Miki Dora.

I recently chatted over email with Rensin about his pursuit of a man once dubbed "The Black Knight of Surfing."

Amazon.com: Miki has been compared to everyone from Jesus to James Dean. After reading All for a Few Perfect Waves, I found my own comparison: he was the Tyler Durden of surfing. Akin to the Fight Club character, surfers cannot always condone Dora’s antics, but we quietly support his pursuit for point-break perfection. Do you agree?
Rensin: I agree. Miki, like Durden, was that sage of harsh reality who made his own way, and the hell with the rest of you. Like Durden he was not completely a loner, and was willing to bring along new initiates if they attracted him with their own inner search. Often while writing the book, I kept thinking about Fight Club and how the rule never to talk about Fight Club was Miki’s rule for himself. Many of Durden’s aphorisms apply as well to Miki: "The things you own end up owning you." "It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything." And my favorite, "Fight Club exists only when Fight Club begins and when it ends." Or, as Miki famously said: "When there’s surf I’m totally committed. When there’s none, it doesn’t exist."

What Do You Find at a SF Convention? Ernie Hudson and Corrupted Science, That's What!

As guests of I-Con at Stony Brook University on Long Island this last weekend, my wife and I participated in the literature track of this sprawling multi-media SF convention that features over 100 writers, actors, gamers, artists, and comic book creators. When you have a science fiction convention this big, part of the appeal is the interplay of subcultures, whether it be Trekkies and anime fans hanging out together or actor Ernie Hudson appearing at the same convention as respected author Peter S. Beagle. The dealer's room at such events is a maelstrom of different influences, with the Long Island Advanced Rocketry Society sharing space with graphic novel vendors, jewelry makers, and clothing sellers, among others. Seeing Hudson was definitely a treat--especially signing autographs for amateur ghost-busters, as above. I've always been a fan of his acting, and think Congo is an overlooked gem of a movie.

But the real treasures of interest to Amazon readers were two books by John Grant, Corrupted Science and Discarded Science, which I found nestled between heroic fantasy trilogies and space operas at one of the book dealer tables...

                             

Book Preview: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, Coming in May

(Author photo by Bart Nagel)

Author and Boing Boing contributor Cory Doctorow makes his YA debut in May with Little Brother, a novel Doctorow told Amazon is "enormously" influenced by dystopian/fascist regime classics. "The genre fascinates me; the novel 1984 is one of my favorite and most re-read. Adolescents are the perfect protagonists for these stories, too--hence Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Jack Womack's Rando