Ice Station Impossible!

New Site!

2011-10-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

Everything's moving over to austingrossman.dreamhosters.com!

Book News

2011-03-07T09:14:00.001-08:00

I have signed a deal with Mulholland Books - a really exciting new imprint at Little Brown & Co - for two novels, forthcoming in 2012 and 2013.

“You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.”

The first book is called YOU, and it's about games, gaming, and game development. I love novels about games - Dream Park, Alice in Wonderland, Player of Games, and of course Ender's Game. I love paging through D&D Modules and RPG Manuals and letting my imagination run.

I have spent an inexcusable amount of my life creating and playing and thinking about game. I love paging through D&D Modules and RPG Manuals. So I'm writing a novel about it - about both making and playing games. I want to do for games what SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE did for comic books - to write what it's like to be inside them, in a newly rich and interesting way, a re-imagining of the medium wrapped in a compelling story.

The title is inspired by old Infocom games – YOU is the you of "You are likely to be eaten by a grue" or "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door." It's the "you" at the center of every game ever made, but who exactly is that?

“My Name is Richard Milhous Nixon. I was educated at Whittier College in Whittier, California, and I have seen the devil walk.

The second book is called CROOKED, and it's about Richard Nixon and the secret history of the American presidency. What if Nixon was a man who had stumbled on a terrible supernatural secret, and who did what he had to do to protect humanity, at the cost of public disgrace? What if our third-worst president was really a pivotal figure in the secret history of the twentieth century, a man caught in a desperate struggle between his family life, his political career and horrors from another reality?

It's a character study, a Cold War espionage novel, and a Lovecraftian horror tale in one.

Expect the answers to such vital historical questions as:

What unspeakable events transpired during the notorious 18 1/2 minute gap?
Famously, in 1970 Nixon made Elvis Presley a Federal Agent-at-Large? What was his true mission?
What terrible secret did Neil Armstrong bury on the moon?
No serious student of history believes the Bavarian-born Henry Kissinger to be entirely human, but for the love of God, what is he?

Finally a word on the SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE followup. It exists, it's just been delayed. Honestly, it's just gotten stuck. I was putting a lot of effort into the INVINCIBLE film and I think I was psyching myself out a little. I have a good chunk of it done, but I really needed to take a break and try something different - Mulholland Books has been kind enough to give me a chance.

The top five moments of my video gaming life, or, Du côté de chez Questor

2011-03-07T00:03:00.000-08:00

I have a new blog post - really a mini-essay - at the Mulholland Books web site, the first in a series on gaming and related matters. This first one is an autobiographical spin on the old top-five games list - it's not the top five games I've played, but the top five moments of my life I've had playing video games.

I want you to picture a giant slingshot

2010-11-30T22:14:00.000-08:00

I'm often asked - mostly by people I owe money to - when my next book is coming out. It's pretty soon, is the answer. INVINCIBLE led to a *lot* of very interesting projects, so my time is split a bunch of ways. So basically it's a giant slingshot I've been pulling back and back and back over the past 2 years. In 2011 I will be hurling giant rocks through the air.

Sundry Writings

2010-07-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

From time to time there comes a crisis of such magnitude that I am compelled to address the nation in prose.

On the occasion of Wonder Woman's new costume

In response to Tom Bissell's book, Extra Lives

The Avengers, Joss Whedon, and coming infinite crisis

2010-04-26T11:48:00.001-07:00

I wrote a short piece on the idea of Joss Whedon directing an Avengers film, for the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog. I also talked about how I liked Doctor Horrible although I don't get how Firefly was supposed to feel. I can't tell if I was a little mean about it - I had an aesthetic point to make, and a long plane ride.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/04/24/can-the-superhero-film-be-saved/

Short version: Whedon should direct an Avengers film.

Walt Whitman says

2010-03-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring...

Sorry, Internet

2010-03-02T11:01:00.000-08:00

That I haven't updated things here in ages. I have two (2) very exciting projects that I'm still waiting to make public, and I'll post news as soon as I can.

"Top Secret" - new short fiction at Granta

2009-05-02T11:13:00.001-07:00

I have a new short story up at Granta: "Top Secret."

Brief liner notes:

- It was written for "Writers in Drag," an offshoot of the Writers With Drinks series. The theme is, you write a piece in a genre outside your usual mode. After trying heroic fantasy and post-apocalyptic, I went to espionage.

- The title is indeed a reference to the mostly defunct, early 1980's spy-themed T SR role-playing system. I think it's pretty arguable that a literary genre doesn't really exist unless it was instantiated as an RPG at some point in the 1980's.

the epigraph that could have been

2009-03-25T21:37:00.000-07:00

"But now at thirty years my hair is grey--
(I wonder what it will be like at forty?
I thought of a peruke the other day--)
My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I
Have squandered my whole summer while 'twas May,
And feel no more the spirit to retort; I
Have spent my life, both interest and principal,
And deem not, what I deemed, my soul invincible."

--- Byron, Don Juan

(with thanks to Professor Ford)

Jon Hamm as Lex Luthor: a personal message to the president

2009-03-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not ordinarily a sucker for the funny internet video, but Jon Hamm delivers possibly the most pitch-perfect supervillain performance I've ever run across, riding the edge of grand purpose, malign hypercognition, and irritability. Hollywood take note.

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm - watch more funny videos

via my crew at io9

In Germany, Doctor Impossible Strikes Back

2009-03-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

Regard the German edition of Soon I Will Be Invincible, from Droemer Knaur. I love it more than I can say. The taped-up mask, the font, the color scheme - it projects unashamed awesomeness. It looks like a sexy spy novel from the 1970's. You really don't know if that mask is on its way to a superpowered encounter or a scene of masked debauchery, and, manifestly, there is no reason it can't be both. My run of luck with book designs holds.

The translation is also really quite satisfying, insofar as I could make it out.

Judaism in Seven Minutes

2009-02-24T17:12:00.000-08:00

I'll be at Amnesia in the Mission on Thursday 2/24, trying to explain my experience with Judaism in seven minutes flat.

http://www.heebmagazine.com/events/view/74

In which my father gets his due

2009-02-17T14:39:00.001-08:00

http://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/allen-grossman-wins-bollingen-prize-in-american-poetry/

Yes, Virginia, there is a Doctor Impossible

2009-02-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

Now it can be told! Doctor Impossible's scheme for moving the Earth is actual - peer-reviewed, published - science.

The culprit is Don Korycansky, IGPP/CODEP Associate Research Planetary Scientist at UC Santa Cruz, and he developed it as a contingency plan for later in the Sun's life cycle, when it expands beyond the Earth's current orbital radius.

The published paper is here, and although it's quite technical it's worth reading for Korycansky's gloriously dry prose: "The sun's gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth's biosphere within ~10^9 years." Where "seriously compromise" = "engulf in nuclear fire."

Or:

"The collision of a 100-km diameter object with the Earth at cosmic velocity would sterilize the biosphere most effectively, at least to the level of bacteria. This danger cannot be overemphasized."

He reconsiders the idea here, including the possibility that the feat will give away our position to extrasolar civilizations.

(googling Don also yields a page marked "Impossible to nudge earth into different orbit!" which sounds exciting until you realize they didn't mean it like that.)

(also: McSweeney's and The Daily Show both had a go at this one.)

(also: Don is my brother-in-law)

Everybody Nominate me for the 2009 John W. Campell Award Best New Writer Award

2009-01-21T16:01:00.000-08:00

The Campbell goes to a first-time science fiction author - I didn't think of it last year, but fortunately you're eligible your first two years.

A nomination is like a vote - they're counted, and the top five most-nominated authors become the nominees.

It's open only to 2008 or 9 World SF Convention attendees. So, to that august assemblage I say, get to nominating! It would mean a lot to me.

The online nomination form is here!

The deadline is February 28.

The Infinitesimal Seven Fandom Starts Today

2008-12-18T16:37:00.000-08:00

Because you demanded it! The Infinitesimal Seven have their own Facebook page!

Included: a never-before-seen look at the I7 in action! Or so it is believed!

Become a Fan!

Strange Yet Perfect Reading Poster

2008-12-13T13:28:00.001-08:00

(click for full-size view)

I read at Pegasus a few weeks ago - which was terrific, and thanks in particular to the Berkeley English Department for representing. At the end they showed me the poster advertising the reading, which was by someone who worked there, whose name I am still tracking down.

It took me a moment to absorb how odd but excitingly perfect it is. Where did it come from? If there's ever call for an indie-comics version of Soon I Will Be Invincible, this (as yet unknown) person is on the short-list.

Great Ass-Kickings of Western Literature: A Survey

2008-11-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

An enduring work of scholarship by Austin Grossman, ABD.

Be advised that...

a) I thought everyone else was doing something funny...but they weren't. At least I had the best title.

b) I literally(1) had 35 minutes to write it, so...this is what you get.

(1) actually literally

Reading at Pegasus Books in Berkeley, this Thursday 11/13

2008-11-09T15:47:00.000-08:00

I'll be reading at Pegasus Books in Shattuck Ave in Berkeley this Thursday! Which is a great store with a homelike atmosphere and a fun mix of new and used books, as is its sibling Pendragon Books in Rockridge.

After "Writers in Drag" I'm a little more confident about showing new material, so look forward to some world premiere action.

Review of Maze of Bones in the New York Times

2008-11-08T12:55:00.000-08:00

I have a new review up in the Times - this time it's The Maze of Bones. Kudos to the Times for adding the fun title.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/books/review/Grossman-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

A tough review to write, because it's a children's book and an online game and a collectible card game, and maybe partly an ARG ie Alternate Reality Game - and if you know what that is, you know how hard it is to assess one in its earliest stages.

Also because I had some issues with the book. I tried to hold snark to a minimum, and express my honest hopes and disappointments with the book and game, more or less as if the authors were friends of mine and looking over my shoulder as I wrote. I rather hope the authors themselves feel it's written in that spirit.

I'm still trying to pin down exactly what the reviewer's voice should be. When I'm reading a review I of course like to see some blood in the water. But now that I've read plenty of reviews of your own book, of all kinds, it looks pretty different.

I will be at Writers in Drag this Saturday, which is not what it sounds like

2008-11-05T13:32:00.001-08:00

Here's the Scoop:

Saturday, Nov. 8, 2008:
Writers In Drag: writers read works they've written outside their normal genres!

Austin Grossman (Soon I Will Be Invincible) reads fantasy
Stephen Elliott (Happy Baby) reads something TBA
Annalee Newitz (io9.com) reads science fiction
Michelle Tea (Rose Of No Man's Land) reads cyberpunk

All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

In actual fact I can't guarantee a fantasy work - we may be trending in a weirder direction. Come find out!

Girl-Wonder.org Fundraiser Art Auction

2008-10-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

Hey, so Girl-Wonder.org is auctioning original artwork and signed books to raise money so it can um continue existing, I guess. I contributed a couple of signed books - it's one easy way for US readers to get a signed copy of the UK paperback, with amazing art by Bryan Hitch of Ultimates, Authority, and everything-else fame.

Girl-Wonder is a collection of sites with a provocative feminist take on superhero comics: interesting discussions of female characters, writers, and artists, plus fandom, diversity issues, and some excellent rants. Aside from being really funny and incisive, they do a great job of balancing a genuine love for superhero comics with an awareness of how appalling the state of mainstream comics never stops being.

Karen Healey of the awesomely titled Girls Read Comics and They're Pissed (part of girl-wonder) did a great review and interview with me.

Reading Thursday, 9/18/08

2008-09-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

I'm way late in announcing this, but I'm reading tomorrow at Cafe Royale in San Francisco, as part of the InsideStoryTime reading series. The Theme is: Adventures! I'm still debating whether to read from Invincible or do material from the work in progress.

Also reading Jason Roberts (A Sense of the World), Sean Beaudoin (Going Nowhere Faster), and Christy Chan.

I have a couple readings this fall, and I'll try to announce them in more timely fashion.

a

David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

2008-09-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

I am still working out why this matters to me so particularly - in a way it wouldn't with another prominent writer.

I was actually pretty snarky about Infinite Jest when it came out, and mostly I stand by that, and I kind of thought I had put him in his place, mentally. The turning point for my feelings about DFW was a review in the New York Review of Books by A. O. Scott, which I remember as saying, roughly, "Sure, Wallace does a lot of fancy formal experimentation, but for his cohort that's kind of the norm; he doesn't do it to impress, he means it. Ie he's really in it, he's not just trying to look smart; it's just that the problems are so hard that he has to be smart and do his performative stylistic tricks because he needs to make language tell the story he needs to."

I just got through re-reading Consider the Lobster, and it was only just striking me how valuable his writing is - there's something exquisitely fine-grained about how DFW encounters the collisions of class and taste and politics and morality happening in contemporary culture, wherever he happens to be - the Iowa State Fair, a cruise line, in Iowa City on 9/11, and -crucially - following the McCain campaign in the 2000 Republican primaries - where picks apart how impossible it is to really know the candidate at the center of the campaign machinery. I say "fine-grained" not because he writes about trivia but because he registers distinctions, tensions, that are pushing on us all the time and are almost impossible to be aware of every second, and somehow he makes his prose do that. And so I thought we were going to have him around for longer than this; in fact I was kind of counting on it.

And: DFW always seemed maddeningly (to me) absent from his own prose. He writes these experiential non-fiction articles where he's sent to wherever, and the comedy is in the collision between his blue-state sensibility and some mass demotic event, so he has a persona of sorts, neurasthenic, hyperaware outsider stumbling through the vulgarity, entranced, horrrifed, periodically humiliated, but always narrating with a perfect openness to all the sensations involved. That sensibility is the centerpiece, but the personal stuff is conscientiously omitted - he manages to put his perceptions out there without the rest of him, which is part of the charm. You're always expecting the snobbish or Woody-Allen-hapless persona to make its entrance, and it's always surprising to get to the end without having seen DFW himself. (especially when you turn over the book to find the author photo, which is nothing like what you've imagined)

Likewise his fiction (I couldn't finish either Broom of the System or Oblivion so it's not like I have delusions of critical authority here) doesn't use obvious author-surrogates, the closest being the tennis student of Infinite Jest; which doesn't detract from the emotional impact - long passages talk about what it feels like to be these characters, and it's moving and precise - but it's almost spooky because you don't know who could possibly be writing it except that they went through it personally, but where exactly is that person?

I've gone on too long with this undergraduate-style appreciation, but this why the decision he made to end his life is so disappointing: His review of Updike's Toward the End of Time, is a demolition of the book in question and of, at least, the later work of Updike, Roth, and Mailer, the "Great Male Narcissists" (GMN's), the absolute triviality of writers so obsessed with their bodies, sexual powers, and the gradual disintegration of same, which they endow with cosmic significance.

DFW took issue with that, so rightly, and I couldn't help but take him as a counterexample, someone whose writing took him and his ego out of the equation, but in his hyperacute application of language and formal experimentation was looking for a way to put himself back, in a way that didn't violate a deeply held feeling of obligation to the medium. His essay "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky," I think speaks to a conviction about the ethical force of literature, the stakes of literature, and reading now I feel that a lot of his stylistic flair was in the service of those stakes. DFW is 46 and I am 39, and so I had hoped to have him around to give advance word as to how one might face those events differently than the GMN's had done, as a writer and as a human being.

My Review of Little Brother is in the Times

2008-09-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

My first professional book review is in the New York Times this weekend, of Cory Doctorow's novel Little Brother. I enjoyed writing about it - I think obsessively about prose, my own and other people's, and it was worthwhile to get those thoughts on paper. It's a particular challenge to write about Cory's prose, which is so well-paced and idea-driven that it's hard to be directly aware of it.

After being reviewed so many times, it's interesting to be on the other side of the transaction - it forces you to think about what's fair and unfair in evaluating a book. I tried to follow Updike rules - give a fair sample of the author's prose, and evaluate it on its own terms. And of course one hopes to get off a zinger or two. Check it out.

Playing For Keeps in print

2008-08-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

Mur Lafferty's Playing For Keeps is now in print from Swarm Press. This was a podcast for much of its life - which I've enjoyed online - and has a great fan following. Now it's in print, and I believe we're ganging up today to boost its Amazon rank, so, jump in!

Shout Out to Wil Wheaton

2008-08-21T16:45:00.000-07:00

Wil Wheaton reads Soon I Will Invincible!

Wil is another one of those people whose writing I've followed for years, and who represents so much for geek culture. When I was writing I thought, "Wow, wouldn't be it amazing if that guy read this - I bet he'd totally get it! Or maybe he'd read two sentences and say, 'Forget it. This guy's got nothing.'"

Thanks Wil. This is one of the moments I wrote the book for. So cool.

Soundtrack to Soon I Will Be Invincible

2008-08-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

or,

"Love Songs for Depressed Cyborgs and World-Conquering Mad Scientists"

The Official Soon I Will Be Invincible Mix Tape with Extensive Annotations is over at Largehearted Boy's books/music/&c blog.

From the liner notes:

This is the mix for those nights in your hidden island fortress, when it’s five in the morning and you can’t sleep, and CNN’s stuck on another economic summit. You’re blacked out and can’t work because some hero team is trolling the South Seas, you're doodling assembler on notebook paper just to keep busy. The heat is unbearable, and it’s an hour until dawn and the slow tropical sunrise over the lagoon, and you’re thinking about how far you are from home, and that this whole thing was maybe not such a brilliant idea after all, but there’s nothing you can do about it now.

This is the mix for when you have to ride Amtrak and people are staring at your height, the armor plating, the glint of metal in your skull, the lens that replaced one eye. You get a seat to yourself even though people are standing, because no one want sit too near the fusion reactor in your pelvis. And you know you're just a line-item in the DoD's black budget, or a B-list metahuman with maintenance problems, but if you think about the other way you're an exotic armored warrior princess, and you're trying to figure out which is closer to the truth.

Feel free to debate me on these selections, but I thought pretty hard about it - you'd better bring some game.

ps If you ask me it's worth it just for the vintage Thomas Dolby video - skip past the intro tag for pristine New Wave brilliance:

San Diego Comic Con Highlights

2008-07-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

Sharing a panel with the io9 writers - I talked about three geek-culture novels from three different decades - Neuromancer, Cryptonomicon, and Little Brother - and how they changed my view of the culture each time. io9's writeup is here. Their site has incredibly thorough coverage of the whole four days.

Watching Doctor Horrible with hundreds of other fans, and the cast sitting three rows behind me, as I sported the Doctor Horrible goggles, which was embarrassing and stylish at the same time. I failed to get NPH or anyone else's autograph, because the line to see Whedon's panel resembled Napoleon's retreat from Moscow but with funnier t-shirts. Frustrating, but it bodes well for a Soon I Will Be Invincible movie.

Dining with Warren and Caroline Spector - Caroline was there to speak about Inside Straight - an enormously fun Wild Cards mosaic novel. Warren was there to, I suspect, lure innocent art students into a life of digital vice. I ordered a drink with marshmallows in it.

Going to the G4/StrangeCo party and, after spending 90 minutes being crushed by hipsters, watching Ytcracker, MC Frontalot, and MC Lars perform. I was standing, like, literally 5 feet away. Frontalot was there in the crowd ahead of time, so I said hi to him and met Badd Spellah. Comic Con: where celebrities are nice to you.

The Owl Ship

Meeting the Penny Arcade guys, who were very polite to me as I behaved like an idiot.

I want to thank everyone who read the book and said hi to me - I have no idea how everyone kept spotting me, but it's a thrill every single time. And I apologize for not spending more time in the Pantheon booth, where I SAID I would be.

See You in San Diego

2008-07-23T10:40:00.000-07:00

I'll be in the Random House/Del Rey booth to sign things and generally chat. The booth appears to be the size of a small town, but look for the Pantheon Books section. I'll be there late Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon (except for 2-3), and I'll be hanging out other times when I'm not at panels.

Here incidentally are some picks for good events, leaving aside the obvious ones that will be mobbed:

Thu 2-3: Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life. This is of course my panel, but features a lot of the smart people from io9, including Annalee Newitz, who has a Ph D in English Literature. Which is much like a Ph D in Horribleness.

Thu 4-5 Superhero Superfiction. I'm not on this but will be there to heckle my fellow crossovers.

Fri 11:30-2:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #6: Comics Studies: Developing Canon and Theory. Featuring Douglas Wolk, the Other Smartest Man in Comics.

Fri 3-4:30 Doctor Horrible Cast Signing. Do not go to this, because I will do whatever it takes to get Neil Patrick Harris's signature. You are all expendable.

Now Doctor Horrible is Here

2008-07-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

J. Whedon kinda name-checked me. Or my book. Not actually. New York Magazine pretty much made him say something. And he didn't actually read the book, except for the title. Not that he should, he's probably busy.

Still, huzzah.

(thanks to Jim for the tip)

Jonathan Coulton blog shout-out

2008-07-17T21:52:00.001-07:00

It felt a bit sad to just mail JoCo a copy of the paperback a month ago, but he was nice enough to read it. You always hope that when you like somebody's work, you share a sensibility in some tangible way. But one suspects that is an illusion, except maybe it's not.

Doctor Horrible

2008-07-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

"That's the plan/Rule the world/You and me/Any day!"

You can't possibly be hearing about Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for the first time via this website, but I'll pretend you are, and link to it anyway. Go there, because I pretty much guarantee a good time.

It's Joss Whedon's internet-only musical about a supervillain and his frustrating life and unsatisfactory relationships, with his laundromat crush and nemesis. It stars Whedon stalwarts Nathan Fillion and my internet crush Felicia Day (from Buffy Season 7, duh), and Neil Patrick Harris as Doctor Horrible himself.

It was being compared to Soon I Will Be Invincible before I even got there, so I don't feel bad saying I felt a lovely frisson from NPH's brilliant performance. And the way the role is written, that intense close-up address to the camera, that tight zoom at the end of Act II. I've always thought of NPH as a supervillain ever since I saw his incandescent performance as a defiant law-student villain in a long-ago episode of Homicide (I think it was? I don't even watch that show), something of which made it into the DNA of Doctor Impossible.

Joss Whedon's writing isn't mine - it's a little broader and he doesn't overthink the way I do and um I didn't write a musical - but let's just say I can get behind the sentiment - the love triangle, the isolated loser-mastermind, all the performances, and a couple of JoCo-caliber lyrics.

"And Penny will see, the evil me
Not a joke, Not a dork, Not a failure
And she may cry
But her tears will dry
When I hand her the keys
To a shiny new Australia"

I didn't really mean this post to be a review or a fanboy rant. He's just in the Whedonesque mode here, genre fix and actual emotion just melted together into Ben&Jerry style deliciousness. I rewatched several times, but each time it all went by in a blur of pleasurable awesome. Go watch!

San Diego Panel Update

2008-07-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Here's the official listing for the SDCC panel, on Thursday July 24:

2:00-3:00 Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life— A discussion of science fiction stories intended to make you rethink your whole life or alter your perceptions. With Annalee Newitz (editor-in-chief, io9.com; contributor, Wired), Austin Grossman (author, Soon I Will Be Invincible), Charlie Jane Anders (news editor, io9.com; contributor, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet), Graeme McMillan (weekend editor, io9.com, contributor, Newsarama), and Patrick Lee (editor, Sci-Fi Wire). Room 2

Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy | Writers & Writing

Come one, come all!

Feel free to post if you want to suggest SF novels and stories that deserve to be mentioned...

New Trailer!

2008-06-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

I made it myself - none of your fancy-pants professionalism here at Impossible Industries! If you think you can do better, you are hereby challenged to do so.

(special thanks to Garage Band's library of free sound effects).

San Diego Comic Con

2008-06-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'll be at San Diego Comic Con all four days this year - either roaming the floor or in the Pantheon Books booth, so please feel free to come by and say hi. I'll post some definite hours close to the date.

I'll be on a panel on Thursday 7/24 talking about science fiction - details to come!

The Galaxy Teems With Life!

2008-06-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

Spore's Creature Creator comes out today! I posted a quick review on io9. If you care about the medium at all it's worth a look, if only for the exquisitely nice interface design. It's hard to think of a more significant event for interactive media this year - win or lose, they're doing something profoundly interesting.

Update: OMG the comments thread has veered into an evolution vs intelligent design debate. Thanks, Internet!

Out in Paperback!

2008-06-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

The paperback edition of Soon I Will Be Invincible launches today from Vintage Books! It is a gorgeous object - glossy, luminous, gemlike, glowing with inward power. Acquire one!

Muy Pronto Seré Invencible!!

2008-06-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

No one tells me anything! But I now know the Spanish translation is starting to hit the streets. I don't speak a word of Spanish, but I corresponded a little with the (obviously very smart) translator and we nailed down a few ambiguities.

http://www.amazon.com/Pronto-Sere-Invencible-Very-invincible/dp/8439721102

I present an image of the first page, culled from here:

http://katamari.podomatic.com/entry/2008-05-22T07_43_34-07_00

Maybe some Spanish speaker can let me know if they're saying mean things about me, so I can de-link them muy pronto.

What Was Ming Thinking?

2008-03-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

Vintage Flash Gordon panels are kind of a muse for me when I write - they're always so beautifully drawn, and they stand alone so well. And when I can't do anything else I can write captions for them.

Who am I kidding? This is just a shitty New Years all round.

It’s more about software support, was my only point. Why doesn’t one of those guys step in? This is getting way out of hand.

No one's listening to my logic here.

Do girls even think about if you can lift them? I bet Flash doesn’t even think this way at all. I shouldn’t even be having these thoughts.

Well, they're funny to me. It's all about process.

Astro City: Samaritan #1

2008-03-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

Astro City was a huge influence on Soon I Will Be Invincible, and this single-issue story about a long-running rivalry between a hero and his nemesis, is a good example of why - it's the kind of hero/villain relationship I really enjoy, where long breadth of that conflict builds to create a sense of something human and deep, and well, novelistic out of pulpy action-driven characters characters. (frankly it's rather too reminiscent of some passages from my book, which makes me glad I didn't discover it until after I published - I would have felt like I was ripping it off) (the same is true of Venture Brothers, which I'm also a huge fan of)

Part of why I wanted to put superheroes into a novel, to explore the sense of depth of continuity unique to the Marvel and DC universes, which Astro City creates as well - the way layers and layers of crazy episodes and adventures build our sense of a characters like Superman and Batman. It's one of the things that make superheroes themselves a unique sub-genre.

Offhand I can't think of another set of characters with the same kind of multigenerational depth, unless it's in classical mythology - this is the kind of interesting stuff that Douglas Wolk talks about so well in Reading Comics.

#5 Baron Ether Prime

2008-03-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

"In the late 1940s, he came to America and founded the first League of Evil. He fought the Super Squadron long before I did, even cruised the timestream and fought the SS3000 centuries from now. One time, he threw in with his own alternate-dimensional self to steal a fortune in gold, only to cheat his double out of the proceeds. Classic."

Little is known about Baron Ether's alternate-universe duplicate, Baron Ether Prime. The original Baron sought him out as an accomplice, In courtroom testimony after his final arrest, the Baron described manifesting in his duplicate's castle in an alternate Cincinnati to propose a joint scheme to steal the Canadian gold reserve (the Baron's evidence was later struck from the record due to jurisdictional confusion). When they responded at the scene, the Baron Prime surprised the Super Squadron with what appeared to be a gear-driven exoskeleton, and the heist was successful. Witnesses say the Baron Prime is considerably younger than his duplicate self, and speaks with an American accent, but is otherwise indistinguishable.

The Baron later cheated his counterpart out of the proceeds, either out of greed or a desire to prove he was smarter even than himself.

#4 Baron Ether, aka Ernest Kleinfeld – “The First Name in Evil”

2008-03-27T00:21:00.000-07:00

"Baron Ether is old. He lost an eye fighting Paragon, and replaced it with a mechanical device of his own construction. Whatever gave him his original superpowers has mostly faded, except in the elongated shape of his skull, and a coal-like glow behind his remaining eye. He’s an old man, no one really knows how old, and he’s been a villain a long, long time. He started out robbing railroads. He fought Victorian adventurers and American whiz-kids, wore a moustache and carried a trick cane whose jeweled head bulged with concealed gadgetry.

I’d heard he’d fallen on hard times, but seeing him is still a shock. He hasn’t been out much lately, and rumor has it one of his last experiments went badly – a mutation ray. This is the first time I’ve seen the results. His right arm ends in an insectile claw, and the skin on the right half of his body looks puckered and angry. At the interface, you can see where his body’s metabolism is fighting the effects of a halfway transformation."

Born in the late 1800’s, Baron Ether was the greatest supervillain in the world for most of the 20th century. He fought everybody, committed every crime, perpetrated every bizarre scheme imaginable – he lived through the Golden and Silver Ages of superheroes. He retired at the end of the 1970s, at which point his schemes were starting to have a dated, Victorian feel.

Baron Ether is a living example of the toll being a supervillain takes on your body – over his lifetime he’s been thousands of superhero fights, and been hit with every kind of radiation, chemical, and biohazard imaginable. He was once very handsome, now extremely old and decrepit. But even while confined a wheelchair, his malign intelligence and will are unmistakable.

#3 Argonaut

2008-03-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

"I remember the night Argonaut showed up incognito and fought all comers to a standstill. The night Colony was killed in the ring, and what came out of him. I remember holding a stranger by the hair, one arm raised to the crowd."

A seldom-seen hero of legendary prowess, Argonaut claims to be a surviving member of Jason's crew who afterwards journeyed north and east and discovered the secret of immortality, somewhere in the Caucasus mountains. He has lost much of his memory, but possesses fragmentary recollection of the Trojan War, and the songs of Orpheus. A solitary figure, he was last reported in the early 1980's in Thailand, where he spoke of plans to journey into the interior of the continent.

Inside Straight

2008-03-13T01:10:00.000-07:00

Inside Straight came out a few weeks ago, the new Wild Cards novel, with my blurb on the back. I've never blurbed anything before, and I see now I should have actually believed they would use it and made myself write something cleverer, but anyway - it couldn't be more sincerely meant - I read the book straight through twice, in the space of a couple of days, seriously thought about reading it a third time.

The premise is pretty much genius - real-world superhumans compete on a reality TV show, American Hero. Lots of backstage drama, intertwining stories, action, relationships, &c - I could have read three more books like it and not stopped. (If anything when the book takes a more serious turn I rather missed the frothy fun, maybe that's me) Lots of different authors contributed (it's a "mosaic novel") under the editorship of the redoubtable George R. R. Martin, but it all feels of a piece.

For those who don't know Wild Cards, it's a shared fictional continuity - an alternate history that various authors can set their stories in, sharing characters and plot events. (Like Thieves World , but if I'm still explaining at this point then you probably don't know Thieves World either. It was the '80s.) The series went off the rails (and into a weird, sexy place?) sometime in the '90s, so this is something of a reboot, although not a retcon - all that backstory is in place, setting up the current generation - it feels well done.

And yes, blurbing a book feels like I'm being sucked into a corrupt, nepotistic underworld. Especially because I'm friends with Caroline Spector, who wrote some very good bits of Inside Straight.

But wait, I read the Wild Cards books way back when they first came out, a trillion years ago, so I feel I can legitimately recommend this installment - I have my own personal engagement with the series and the subject matter, which doesn't come from knowing anybody. Wild Cards was probably the first place I saw superpowers set in prose - it's not Marvel- or DC-style superheroes per se - there's a virus that gives people different abilities (or hideous deformities, or death), so it's somewhat sui generis. In any case, George R. R. Martin's moody "Winter's Chill" was one of the many prior works I stewed over while writing Soon I Will Be Invincible - a small fragment of its DNA.

Upcoming Appearances

2008-03-13T01:04:00.000-07:00

The paperback of Soon I Will Be Invincible is coming out June 10 from Vintage, so I'll be doing a bunch of appearances this spring & summer, but I don't know when and where - I'll post when I know. Definitely San Diego Comic Con, hopefully NY Comic Con, quite possible WisCon if the stars align. And of course, your local bookstore - no reasonable invitation refused!

Gygactic Ascension

2008-03-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

I know I'm the last person in the universe to post about this, partly because I was waiting for the storm of zero-hit-points jokes to die down, and partly because I am such a lazy, lazy bloggist.

My meager additions to what has already been said about the significance of Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons generally...

- I was born in 1969, and Dungeons and Dragons was one of the first things I was conscious of belonging particularly to my own generation, an incredibly exciting piece of culture that we knew no children in history had had in quite the same way.

- When I got to college, D&D was the first thing I had for a mental example of a totalized explanatory system-of-the-world - when I was introduced to Marxism, behaviorism, Darwinism, &c, I understood them as modified forms of that original all-encompassing model.

- And finally, I am completely down with what this person proposed. When you think of all that geek money out there, it would be so possible to inter EGG in a mysterious, elaborate, player-character-killing stone-walled maze of dread.

Unshelved!

2008-03-05T23:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20071021

(I know it's been up for a while - no one tells me anything)

#2 Aquamarine

2008-03-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

"It’s like we always used to talk about, who could beat whom when it came to just power on power. Blockade versus the Living Diamond. Nick Napalm or Aquamarine. Grab Bag against the Bricoleur."

Superhero, nth-generation Atlantean princess. Long interbred with human beings, every once in a while the Atlantean phenotype expresses itself in pure form, resulting in a person of Aquamarine's abilities. Although she knows only a few words of Atlantean, she commands ocean water in its element, and can breathe it for any length of time. The politics of Atlantean royalty are Byzantine and largely academic, but she is still occasionally visited by supplicants urging her to claim the empty throne.

#1 Anne de Siècle

2008-02-27T21:11:00.000-08:00

The camera does a slow pan, and Lily leans forward to catch all the faces.
“Look at that crowd. They asked Leapfrog, can you believe that? And Anne de Siècle. What a bunch of also-rans! I should have gotten in while I could. God, we both should have.”
“Thanks, but I was six. And I didn’t have any of this stuff yet.”
She takes in the skeletal metal of my calves, upper arms. “That must have been some accident.”
“It was.”

A Champions also-ran who claimed to be Shakespeare's wife returned as an immortal vampire. Exposed as a charlatan by a team of Early Modernists at Temple University working with a paranormal investigator, she confessed to being a former Sarah Lawrence student, turned during a year abroad in Indonesia. Although denied Champions affiliation, she remains a crimefighter local to the Chicago area.

Powers: strength, speed, dematerialization. Experiences episodes of daemonic possession, an unexplained characteristic of Indonesian vampirism.

nb Anne's name is outright plagiarism from Steely Dan, which I did in totally affected emulation of William Gibson. I deluded myself that no one would catch it - in fact I was busted in my very first press interview.

Jonathan Coulton @ GMBH in San Francisco

2008-02-25T23:57:00.000-08:00

So I went to the Jonathan Coulton show on 2/22, which was a lot of fun. I bought a single ticket months ago, on the optimistic assumption that other people I knew would go.

There is no point to this post other than to say that it was really really good. GMBH is like a 600-person house, which seemed just small enough for an intimate feel. He played A Talk with George, which is a personal favorite, and of course Skullcrusher Mountain, which obviously I listened to a lot as I was finishing Soon I Will Be Invincible.

I actually had lunch with Jonathan in September - a total coincidence, in that we were in the airport van together and then our rooms weren't ready. And I recognized him and said, even though I never recognize anyone, nor do I ever say hi to people just because I recognize them.

In any case, in real life he's exactly as pleasant and personable as he comes across on stage, which is kind of good news about the world.

Guest-Blogging at io9.com

2008-02-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

Gawker's excellent new science fiction blog. On various topics, mostly gaming at this point.

ONE! HUNDRED! SUPERHUMANS!

2008-02-21T23:29:00.000-08:00

In the months leading up to the paperback I'm going to publishing mini profiles of all one hundred and nine superheroes, supervillains, turncoats and unclassifiables, from Afreet to XCathedra. If I do one per day I should be overshoot by only a little. Supplemental fan art welcome!

Herewith, a Hodgmanesque preview:

Anne de Siecle
Aquamarine
Argonaut
Baron Ether a.k.a. Ernest Kleinfeld
Baron Ether Prime
Battalion
Blackwolf
Blockade
Bloodstryke
Bluetooth
Bomar
Breach, The
Breaker
Bricoleur
Brigade
Calliope
Captain Kelvin
Champions, The (New)
CoreFire
Corsair, The
Coyote
Crippler, The
Crush, The
Damsel
Delinquent Five, The
Doctor Cogito
Doctor Colossus
Doctor Impossible
Doctor Mind
Doctor Stonehenge
Doctor Yondo
Dollface
Duplicate Sun, The
Eerious
Elemental

Elphin
Embryarch
Fastbreak
Fatale
Feral
Freedom Force
Freelance
Galatea
Go-Man
Grab Bag
Imago
Impkin, The
Infinitesimal Seven, The
Justice Alliance 3000
Kage
Kane
Kosmic Klaw
Lady 88
Laserator
League of Evil, The
Leapfrog
Legion of Evil, The
Lightwave
Lily*
Living Diamond, The
Lord Tiglon
Machine Intelligence Coalition
Mechanist, The
Mechria
Mentiac
Metaman, The
Miss Mindbender
Mister Mystic
Mordenkainen
Naga

Nick Napalm
Oboeist
Paragon
Pentatonic
Pharaoh (1), The
Pharaoh (2), The
Phathom-5
Phenom
Polgar
Prism, The
Professor Peril
Psychic Prime
Pyramid of Ramses II, The
Quizzler, The
Rainbow Triumph
Rarity
Regina
Reveille
Rocking Horse
Ruinator
Sargon
Serpentine
Servant of Atlantis
Shylock
Sidereal
Sister Satan
Sphinx, The
Spideractive
Stormcloud
Super Squadron, The
Syntricate
Terrapin
Theodore Bear
XCathedra

(sorry my columns suck)

Wondercon appearance @ CBLDF Party

2008-02-20T14:43:00.000-08:00

I'll be a guest at a CBLDF benefit party Saturday night, 8-11PM at 111 Minna. A good cause, and look look! Terry Moore will be there.

Future Supervillains of the World

2008-02-20T14:27:00.001-08:00

From Photo Basement via io9, badass photos of science fair displays and their authors. Power from the Throne!

Jurassic Time Logo

2008-02-19T13:49:00.001-08:00

I just noticed there's an an actual, custom Jurassic Time logo - a sneaky-brilliant retake of Chip Kidd's iconic Jurassic Park logo.

I just don't understand how it all got this awesome, this quickly:

(Chip Kidd also designed the cover and all sorts of cool graphics for Soon I Will Be Invincible.)

Who is this?

2008-02-18T22:01:00.001-08:00

I especially like the comma in "But, not so my newly-developed laser cannon!" In general, the attention paid to punctuation makes for almost as much geekiness as the text itself.

(I would credit this panel if I knew where it came from - Avengers somewhere? I am unable to identify this supervillain)

Jurassic Time

2008-02-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

A guy named Derrick Davis has done an Awesome Thing:

I was lead designer on a game called Trespasser: Jurassic Park, which - to make a long story short - was very forward-thinking but shipped in a pretty much messed-up state, to the chagrin of all concerned. It constitutes a little-known backwater of the Jurassic Park continuity, and included some writing I was very fond of, read by Lord Richard Attenborough - who played John Hammond in the movies, and is of course the incredibly eminent director of many films. But not many people got far enough into the game to catch Attenborough's really fine performance.

The text forms a fragmentary memoir of John Hammond's experience of building, and then losing, Jurassic Park. Derrick extracted the audio and made it available for download here, under the rather inspired title Jurassic Time. Brief commentary appears here. It also includes music by Bill Brown, who was asked to do a John Williams impression and pretty much hit it out of the park.

I really thought I was never going to hear that audio again - so it's thanks to Davis I have it back, and other people have a chance to hear it. While I have taken truly epic amounts of flack over Trespasser over the years, I won't second-guess the decision to attempt a radically forward-thinking game, and I'm proud of the writing that came out of it.

Y The Last Man #60

2008-02-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

No one needs me to say how good this series was, but I did over at Newsarama, even though I get nervous writing these things and end up with a chunk of overworked, mannered prose. But, how awesome to appear on the same page with Paul Chadwick.

I slightly hope that Y:tLM is a kind of counterweight to Cerebus (which I would blog about more extensively but fear attracting the Eye of Sauron)

ETA: I'm a passionate and conflicted Cerebus fan, and I'll leave it at that.

Stan "The Man" Lee is The Man

2008-02-08T11:39:00.001-08:00

STAN LEE SENT ME A FAN LETTER. When I went to write that sentence, my pinky involuntarily struck the caps lock key, because it turns out there's no other way to write that sentence. A couple of weeks ago, Pantheon forwarded it to me - written on Spider Man stationery in thick marker. I forbear to reproduce the actual text here - hey, it's a me/Stan thing, okay? - but it was short, articulate, warm, handwritten and signed by the man himself.

Now it begins

2008-02-07T22:54:00.001-08:00

This blog is going to be a clearinghouse for information anything happening with Soon I Will Be Invincible and related projects. Response so far has been really wonderful, and as I figure out new stuff to do I need a forum to let people know about it. Which is what this is.