Jason M. Hough's Blog, page 2

An interview with me on Marianne de Pierres' blog

Talking Zombies, Zero World, and my upcoming visit to Darwin:

http://www.mariannedepierres.com/interview-jason-hough-on-the-zombie-apocalypse/

Australia bound!

Some of you may know from my events page that I'm headed to Australia in a few weeks.  I thought I'd provide a bit more detail here!
First stop is Sydney, where I plan to drink flat whites and take a ferry ride around the harbor.  I've got a signing planned at Abbey's Bookshop on the 5th at 1pm, and so if you're in the area I'd love it if you stopped by! Or tell your friends!
I'll also stop by other area bookstores to sign their stock.
Then, that evening, I head to Darwin!
I have a bunch of things planned, but the highlights are:
Speaking to a group Darwin-based writers at the libraryDoing a presentation to the Occupational Safety conference about the heath and safety concerns during the zombie apocalypse.Placing a plaque at the location of the The Darwin Elevator in Nightcliff, with the mayor!Signing at the The Bookshop Darwin at 11:30am on Oct. 9th
The rest of the time I'll be wandering the city, visiting locations used in the book and chatting with anyone who is willing.
I will blog about the trip extensively. Expect loads of pictures!

Launchpad Astronomy Workshop

I'm still alive!

Yes, the blog has been woefully underfed lately, and I'm sorry about that.  The simple reason is that I've been swamped lately.  ZERO WORLD releases next month, which means I'm doing a lot of promotional work behind the scenes (this primarily involves me cowering in a corner biting my nails).  Plus, my deadlines can't wait for fun release stuff, so at the same time I am busily writing a new novel.  Actually, two new novels.  More on that soon, I hope!

But today I wanted to take a minute and share a bit about my experience at the Launchpad Astronomy Workshop last month, because it was awesome and deserves to be discussed!

What is Launchpad?  Simply put, roughly twenty sci-fi authors of all experience levels are invited to  a week-long series of lectures, workshops, and group discussion on all topics related to astronomy.  It's hosted at the University of Wyoming by a group of professors who really, really know their shit.  Not only that, they know how to teach.

But why do they do this?  To help us write better stories that are more grounded in science.  To improve our vocabulary and the accuracy of our content.  In short, to paraphrase one of the instructors, "if I teach a class of 100 students, I might be able to further science for those 100 students.  If I teach you, I might be able to reach a vast audience through the books you write, the games you make, the films you create."

Here's a quick diary as I remember things:

Day 0: Arrived in Denver, met up with other attendees, and we all hopped into a big rental SUV and drove up to Laramie, Wyoming (about 2.5 hours).  All of us were chugging water like crazy to combat the altitude.  It was even worse for me because I'd been in three different climates in two days (Phoenix, Seattle, then Denver & Wyoming).  We arrived in the early evening and settled into our accommodations: a beautiful place called the Honors House, replete with a full kitchen and dining area, a living room, an entertainment room, plus laundry and all the other things you'd expect from a dorm.  Some of the group did not get in until almost 10pm that night, but we all waited up and then did a round of introductions.

Day 1: The lectures begin! We spent most of the day talking about the scale of the Universe. "It's big. Really big."  Check out this amazing video that takes you through our solar system at the fastest possible speed: the speed of light. It's really eye opening, knowing how fast light is, and then being shown so clearly just how damn SLOW it is.

That night we went to the University's planetarium, then up to the roof of the science building to play with their 14" telescope.

Day 2: Today we talked about how astronomers do their research, and it mostly comes down to the analysis of spectra. I'd learned about all this back in school, but it was great to get a refresher and also to hear it presented in a different way.  Our teachers were amazingly talented!  To really hammer home the concepts we spent the afternoon in a lab looking at different light coming from gas emission tubes (as well as the lights in the room).  I discovered pretty quickly that holding the filter in front of my camera provided some neat pictures.  Also, despite this being a pretty well-known subject, this session was where I came up with the most story ideas.





That evening we had no official events, so everyone walked to the pub.  Irish Nachos FTW!
Day 3: Exoplanets! We spent a lot of time talking about how extrasolar planets are detected, and did some lab time on Planethunters.org searching for some ourselves (I've done this before, and you should try it! Crowd-sourced interactive science is awesome).  
In the evening we drove an hour to the top nearby Mt. Something, where WIRO is (the Wyoming Infra-Red Observatory).  It was fascinating to tour the facility and speak with the current team up there who were doing sciency things.  Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and we were unable to use the telescope.  We did however get to watch an incredible lightning storm that spanned the entire Northern half of the sky.  And, honestly, although the scope was not used, it was informative and interesting to experience the place and see scientists doing their thing.










Day 4:  Today covered star formation and the various types of stars, black holes, and space travel.  Seriously, my mind was reeling under the crush of information by the end of the day.

Dinner was spent in downtown Laramie, which is quaint and loads of fun.  Upon returning to the Honors House, I gave the group a demo of Kerbal Space Program, a game where you plan, build, and fly spacecraft on various semi-realistic missions.


Day 5: Galaxies, Galaxy clusters, and the elusive topic of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, were the topics on our last day.  Then we spent the afternoon reviewing questions people had been building up over the course of the week.  Finally, we spent a few hours talking about science education, and how we as creators could do better in our work.  Really, a fine end to a truly epic week.
I have to thank Mike Brotherton, Christian Ready, and Andria Schwortz for taking time out of their busy schedules to organize this whole thing, as well as basically donate their time to this cause.  They're remarkable people and I feel proud to have spent time with them.
In addition, I met so many amazing authors, editors, game developers, and all-around brilliant people that I can't even begin to name them all.  The organizers did a great job of bringing together a diverse group of students and it was heartening how everyone mingled, talked, and generally hungout together.
If you're an author, or really in a creative field of any capacity, I encourage you to apply to Launchpad next year!

News on the next book, and a podcast...

My new novel has a title now: ZERO WORLD!Release date is tentatively scheduled for Sept 15th.

The cover is done (and kicks ass), but isn't quite ready to share yet.  More on that soon.
Also, I'm interviewed this week on the SPECULATE! podcast. Have a listen!
I'll be a bit quiet for the next month or so as I race to finish the new book on time. Stay tuned!
-Jason

Book vs. Film - The Bond series, final thoughts

Last December my wife gave me a fantastic gift: The Complete James Bond series on Blu-Ray.
I’ll be honest here.  In the past a gift like that, as awesome as it was, would have wound up on my DVD shelf and probably never taken out of the shrink wrap.  Such things are more of a collectors item to me than a thing to actually consume, especially given most of the films are available on streaming.  Also, I have so little free time these days it’s tough to justify spending time revisiting old favorites.  There’s too much great new stuff out there begging for attention.

This is what I usually tell myself, at least.
But around the same time this disc set landed on my lap, I also noticed a sale of James Bond audiobooks at downpour.com — each book only 6 bucks.  The same pang of nostalgia I felt when looking through the Blu-Ray box hit me when I saw all these Bond covers splayed out before me, cheaply priced and beckoning.  The idea hit me to re-read and re-watch the entire series, in order of book publication.  You can read them all here.
It took ten months.  The endeavor gave me a newfound appreciation for Ian Fleming’s writing, filled me with nostalgia for my adolescence, and often made me wonder just what the fuck was I thinking during those formative years.  What any of us were thinking, really.
Let’s start with that.  The bad.  The movies.  Though there are exceptions, taken as a whole they’re simply not that good.  Campy, sloppy, outrageously over-the-top, and very frequently bearing little resemblance to the books they supposedly relate to.  Fleming's slick, economic, wonderfully fun spy stories are often barely recognizable.  His character of James Bond is transformed into some kind of superhero, a caricature of the man we get to know in the books.  Worse, the wrong aspects of his personality are often the ones the filmmakers chose to amplify.
I can see why twelve-year-old me enjoyed the films. They have explosions and cool cars and scantily clad women.  Occasionally some spying even happens.  I was the target audience.  But it’s not like 007's popularity was limited to teenage boys.  The Bond franchise is perhaps the most successful in film history, so it’s hard to argue that the appeal was not, or is not, insanely broad.  Yet watching them again, it’s a struggle to comprehend why.  Take Bond out of the equation in virtually any of these movies and you’d be left with a campy, almost satirical “spy” film that doesn’t merit a second thought.  Yet somehow the mythos of the man changes our perception, at least in the era they were released.  We’re clearly willing to forgive a lot — a lot — in order to go along with Bond on one more zany adventure.
Perhaps a predictable conclusion from the outset, but nevertheless it must be said: the books are better than the movies.
Generally speaking I don’t like to use this phrase.  It’s too easy to toss out there without a second thought.  As far as I’m concerned, films should be judged on their own merits and not be expected to equal the novels they’re adapted from.  There’s a lot of reasons why, but chief among them is that there is no budget involved when it comes to imagination.  A novelist has no logistical or monetary restrictions on what goes on the page. I’m not saying this means we can or should go crazy and write a scene where all raindrops are replaced with Hope Diamonds or something.  No, the point is simply that we don’t have to consider the things that a film crew must deal with.  We never think “someone’s going to have to build this set”, nor should we (unless we’re specifically writing something we hope will be adapted, but it’s dangerous to work that way).
Given that, you might think the Bond books are actually the over-the-top monstrosities, and that it was the films had to reel that shit in in order to come in at a reasonable budget.  You’d be wrong.
You see, there’s another facet here.  Well, a handful of things compounded together.  First is that much of what happens in a book is internalized. We as readers are treated to the internal deliberations, the thought processes.  This is critically important when it comes to a spy who almost always works alone.  Bond becomes an entirely different creature when you are treated to what’s going on upstairs.  Short of adding voiceover, the filmmakers have to find other ways to develop the character. Most often this is with action or dialog that still relays the same general information.  And herein lies the trap they set for themselves.  You see, there is this desire that each film be more than the last. More in every sense. More action, more romance, more humorous.  Once you have Bond utter a silly catchphrase, you’ve opened this door that you can’t close again.  You have to have two next time, or four, or eight, and so on.  Oh, Bond flew a helicopter in the last film? Well this time he needs a jetpack!  A jetpack you say? This time we’ll put him in space!

They started off with Dr. No, the sixth book, and did a reasonably faithful adaptation.  But then they had no choice but to go back, all the way to the 2nd book, From Russia With Love.
Somewhat amazingly, especially in this day and age, Fleming resisted the oneupmanship desire. His Bond novels are even keel, pretty much the whole way through.  They're astonishingly consistent.  And so my usual theory on film adaptations, the budget of the imagination, doesn't actually apply.  The situation is, in fact, reversed.

You see the filmmakers, instead of showing the restraint Fleming did, built this house of cards, starting with Russia.  Their first mistake, in my view, is that they filmed the books out of order.  Fleming does have a progression that occurs over the course of the series, although it’s quite subtle.  Follow that road, with perhaps some embellishments, and they would have been fine.  But they started with the sixth book, roughly halfway through the series, and then proceeded to jump all over the place.  It didn’t matter where the book came in Fleming’s timeline, they slotted it in after whatever they’d made previously and then figured out how to amp it up above that waterline.  Thus we’re left with atrocities like Moonraker, where the 3rd and rather subdued novel (perhaps the best in the series) is adapted into this insane farce of a movie (the worst of the lot).  Things really started to get bad when they began to borrow only he barest details from the books.
The second mistake the filmmakers made in this process is that, when deciding what to do to raise Bond above his previous outing, they almost always picked poorly.  They invented the character Q to build Bond more and more ridiculous gadgets.  They continually have Bond’s support staff showing up in the most inane locations to help him at some crucial moment (which, oddly, hurts the superhero character they’re so keen to create). They make him progressively more chauvinistic to the point that we’re often in the inexcusable territory of rape. They make him more and more of a know-it-all.  Jack of all trades, master of all trades, too.  He’s like an RPG character who goes up a level with each movie and gets to spend ability points willy-fracking-nilly.  They take every opportunity to have him quip a sardonic one-liner.  And the worst part is, I can see how no one could stand in their way.  It’s hard to argue with success, as they say.
With hindsight, however… I don’t know what else to say other than I definitely fell out of love with the movies during this re-watch.  Three or four of them are decent.  In virtually every case though the books are more deserving of your time.
As for 007 himself, the question that always comes up is “who is the best Bond?”.  People fall into the various camps like they fall into the various religions — it’s usually the one you grew up with that you prefer.
Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig… which one captures the character best?
My choice? Simon Vance.
"Who?”
Simon narrates the audiobooks (or, at least, he recorded the entire set during the 2000’s… they were recently re-released with a bunch of celebrity narrators, but Simon’s are superior).   Coupled with the fact that the books really are just better, it’s Vance’s Bond that I think absolutely captures the character as Fleming intended him.  Simon’s performances are consistently excellent, absolutely worth a listen.  Find a sample.  Give it a few minutes.  I think you’ll agree pretty quickly.Full disclosure: Simon also narrates my audiobooks, along with hundreds of others.  He’s my favorite narrator, and it was a wonderful surprise to find he narrated the Bond novels.  So I may be biased.  A bit.
But, fine, that answer a bit of a cop out.  If I have to pick from the film actors, I’d say Connery has the look down, but it is Daniel Craig who best captures the personality.

Overall I greatly enjoyed reading the books again, in fact I felt kind of depressed that there were no more to pick up after the last.  They're engrossing, well written, and briskly paced.  Compared to the tomes we write today, they're also quite short.  I think authors today, myself included, can learn something from Fleming's economy of words.  They feel just as full of colorful locations, well-drawn characters, and intricate plots as books with double the word count.

Scrivener Bootcamp!

Just in time for NaNoWriMo, I've recorded a 1.5 hour tutorial on using Scrivener.

If you've never tried Scrivener and don't understand what all the fuss is about, hopefully this will be useful!

Meet the Character - Blog Tour

My friend M. Todd Gallowglas called on me to participate in this blog tour thingy, so here goes!

1.What is the name of your character?

Nigel Proctor

2. Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

Fictional

3. When and where is the story set?

It's set in Sydney and Darwin, Australia, circa 2278.

4. What should we know about him/her?

Nigel is a high-end locksmith, sent to open a hotel safe in Sydney in order to prove to the hotel that it should install a better model. However he's hired away at the last minute by some unsavory characters, while outside the world seems to be dipping into some sort of calamity.

5. What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Well, there's this whole apocalypse thing...

6. What is the personal goal of the character?

He gets involved with some less-than-reputable people, and realizes his career is over for doing so. But then the world ends, and he seizes the chance to reinvent himself. My fans will know him as Prumble.

7. Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

It's called THE DIRE EARTH, a novella that serves as a prelude to my novel THE DARWIN ELEVATOR.

8. When can we expect the book to be published or when was it published?

November 18th!

To continue this blog tour thing, I call out Michael J. Martinez, Teresa Frohock, and Karina Cooper!

Announcing THE DIRE EARTH, a novella

Hey all!

My new novella, THE DIRE EARTH, will be released on November 18th (North America).
Here's the cover:

Set in 2278 against the backdrop of the SUBS outbreak, this tells the stories of how most of the main characters from the DIRE EARTH trilogy found their way to Darwin as the world fell apart.
It's about 125 pages long, and for the time being is an ebook-only release. I'm hoping to hear confirmation of an audio version any day now.
Links to preorder at most major ebook sellers can be found on this Random House page.  Happy reading!

Book vs. Film: "Octopussy and The Living Daylights"

This is a short story collection, comprising four tales: Octopussy, The Living Daylights, The Property of a Lady, and 007 in New York.  It's also the only Bond material of Fleming's to be published posthumously.

I'll cover each in turn:

OCTOPUSSY
Tale of a retired British soldier who, at the end of WWII, stole some Nazi gold, murdering a Austrian mountaineer in the process. Bond has come to Jamaica many years later to arrest him for that crime. The man now works for a lab in Jamaica, studying fish along a particular reef. There's one octopus there, whom he's named Pussy, hence the title.
The man is basically waiting to die, his life having lost all meaning for him except these sea creatures whom he's come to know as friends over the last two years.
It's rather poetic, and actually one of my favorite Bond stories despite it mostly being about Major Smith.  I love the backstory of how Smith came to be in the situation he's in, and why Bond is the one who finally tracks him down.This story was, it turns out, not adopted for film.  That's right, Octopussy the movie is not based on this.  Instead it's based on...

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
A very short and anti-climactic story, involving a Faberge egg being sold at auction as a way for the KGB to pay one of their moles inside the British Secret Service. Bond points out to M that the mole's handler might be present at the auction trying to force the bidding up, and it's a good chance to spot the elusive man. M agrees, and so Bond goes to the auction... and spots the man. The end. It's a decent story that seems more of an excuse to delve into the shady side of affluent auctions than anything else.
The movie Octopussy is odd as an adaptation.  A large portion of the plot comes, more or less, from the short story The Property of  Lady. Yet it gets its title from the story Octopussy.  The actual details of that story are reduced to background for Bond's love interest of the same name. Background, mind you, delivered via a thirty second long, unnecessary and overly complicated bit of dialog.
Confused? Don't worry, this is one of the least confusing things that happened in the course of adapting these works to the screen.
Octopussy holds a crown of nostalgia for me. It's the first Bond film I ever saw in the theater, at the impressionable age of twelve. I'm trying not to let that cloud my judgement, but I do think that it's Roger Moore's best Bond film. In fact overall it's one of the better Bond films, which is a surprise considering how much it strays from the source material (admittedly there wasn't much to go on).  Still it's not without its laugh-aloud moments, and not in a good way. For example when a Jeep full of bad guys appears literally out of nowhere to give Bond someone to fight during a chase. The worst of the lot is the Tarzan bit, though. I found myself hoping someone lost their job for that.On the plus side, the plot is pretty good and doesn't feel like a bunch of "wouldn't it be cool if?" scenes strung together by Bond following the first clue he comes across (ahem, Moonraker). Somehow they managed to avoid that here, and Bond even does some real spycraft in the process. When the finale comes, and Bond must defuse a nuclear bomb while being chased by a few hundred police officers, the tension is actually palpable. You know he's going to win even if you haven't seen it before, and yet I still found myself completely caught up in the action.
In other words, Octopussy enjoys some excellent direction. The cinematography is also quite good. A few examples:
A rare thing in the movies - Bond actually spying.
The auction, well staged and filmed. Reminds me a bit of Hitchcock
Excellent lighting here... lots of great shots like this throughout

However, this film would have been even better if the climax had been the moment of the bomb diffusion.  Instead, we go back to India for one last battle, and it's so hokey I found myself cringing with embarrassment for all involved, especially when Bond and Q come floating in via an air balloon designed after the British flag.  No need for subtlety when you're a secret agent, I guess.

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
Berlin.  A British agent is going to be crossing from East to West, and he's unaware that the KGB has discovered the plan. All the KGB knows is roughly when and where the crossing will occur, so they've posted a sniper team to assassinate the agent as he crosses.  Bond is sent in to snipe the sniper.  He's not really happy at the prospect of a mission that is purely murder, but he's a good solider and takes his orders in stride.As Bond tales go it's perhaps the one that best captures Cold War espionage in Europe.
The story also encapsulates a trait of Bond that is present throughout the books. Bond, despite his playboy lifestyle and tough talk, is a hopeless romantic. While watching the crossing spot for 3 nights in a row, he's taken by the beauty of a cellist whom he sees walking into a concert hall each night. When she eventually turns out to be the enemy sniper, Bond (who is working as part of a team and thus is under scrutiny) deliberately shoots the girl's hand rather than killing her.

"That girl won’t do any more sniping. Probably lost her left hand. Certainly broke her nerve for that kind of work. Scared the living daylights out of her. In my book, that was enough."

He does this mainly because he's invented sort of a fantasy version of what her life must be like, and fallen for this invented version of her.
Another element of Bond's character is revealed here, and it's one that surfaces in the last 4 books or so of the series. Bond seems to be deliberately seeking a way out of his 00 status, and he states it very clearly here when his partner says the act of mercy will go in the official report. In literary circles, Bond is well known as being an exception to the rule that the main character of a story must have an "arc", a change they go through over the course of the story.  Bond is often cited as an exception to this.  He never changes, they say.  Well, I'm not so sure about that anymore. The change is subtle, but I now feel that, at least in literary form, it's there.This story is adapted fairly well into an early scene of the movie that bears the same name. The rest of the movie is purely the invention of the filmmakers. It's also Timothy Dalton's first outing as Bond. I actually liked Dalton in the role, compared to Moore at least.  And though his portrayal of Bond doesn't really fit with the one his predecessors built up in moviegoers minds, it is fairly close to the Bond that Fleming writes about. Dalton's romance with the cellist is intimate and often quite sweet, more so than any other Bond.  Perhaps too much so, and I think this has a lot to do with why audiences rejected him.  He may have nailed the sweet side, but he never seems tough enough.

Dalton's Bond is the most romantic

007 IN NEW YORK
This is a bit anti-climactic, as the last story in the last book of Fleming's work, and that's because I didn't read it.  For some reason it's not included in the audiobook I purchased. "No matter," I thought.  The story also appears in the non-fiction book Thrilling Cities Fleming wrote... but only in the US version. I happen to own the UK version.  So, nothing much to say here other than, from what I can gather, it was never adapted into any of the films and is only remarkable because he's one of the few Bond stories featuring a fair amount of humor.  I'll track it down at some point and update this.

Thus concludes my James Bond re-read and re-watch.  I'll post a conclusion and some final thoughts in a separate article.

To sum up this book and the two films made from the material:

OCTOPUSSY - Contains a reasonably faithful adaptation... of a different story.
THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS - Contains a somewhat faithful adaptation of the story, and also captures some of Bond's romantic side.

Up next: Some final thoughts on this whole endeavor...

Czech cover for THE DARWIN ELEVATOR

Have a look at the Czech cover for Darwinský výtah!