Tag: inspiration

GODZILLAAAAAAAAAA! Etc.

On By Dan HarrisIn Random, Reading, Sci-Fi and FantasyLeave a comment

Bryan Cranston? Check. Guy from Kick Ass? Check. Really, really big lizard? Check.

But a lizard so big that repeatedly being hit by nuclear detonations back in the 50s didn’t kill it? Really? I can get behind the idea of a thousand foot tall monster laying waste to Tokyo, but let’s be realistic.

In other news, NASA reported that they found a bunch of new planets. A big bunch. 715 more on top of the 1000 we already knew about. Only four are in the so-called Goldilocks zone–not too hot, not too cold, just right for us finicky humans–but that’s still quite a find. Now we just need a vast amount of money, resources and political will to go and investigate them, and we’ll be colonising the stars in no time!

Over at the Wertzone there’s a great list of female fantasy authors, who apparently Waterstones have never heard of despite being a major bookseller.

And there’s an interesting and well-written article on Tor comparing Sherlock, which I love, with Elementary, which I’ve never seen. Some really good points.

Last up: BATMAN VS. THE TERMINATOR.

30 years have passed since Bruce Wayne survived Skynet’s nuclear blasts in August of ’97. Iron demons now roam the planet, and without the requirement to defend the innocent against crime and injustice, Wayne has seeked refuge in the bomb shelter that saved his life; the Batcave.

Having scavenged the wasteland for resources, he discovers the radio of a dead soldier. There is static over a frequency. Flesh and blood is rising up to the west. With The Stinger; a riot control vehicular unit built before the apocalypse along with a refitted bomb blast vest, Batman makes his way across what remains of the United States to join forces with the man determined to neutralize the electronic menace – John Connor.

Fantastic.

China on the Moon, Doctor on TV, X-Men at the Movies

On By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment
Chang’e 3 sticks the landing, and takes home the gold medal in the individual lunar lander parallel bars. That gives China its seventeenth gold in these Olympics.

Wonderful footage from Chang’e 3 as it touches down. This makes China only the third nation in history to land a craft on the Moon, decades after the United Kingdom and Italy both achieved the feat in the 1950s*, their years-long rivalry having driven a technological renaissance that made the European Union the world-leading scientific powerhouse it remains today**.

Continue reading “China on the Moon, Doctor on TV, X-Men at the Movies” →

REALLIFE, WRITERLIFE and Tom Hiddleston

On By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Self-Publishing, Writing2 Comments

Hey, look – I’m really nailing this one-post-every-seven-weeks plan. Keep ’em keen, that’s what I always say.

It’s not, of course. It’s just that WRITERLIFE has been frustratingly derailed by REALLIFE for the last few months. A lot of it’s been good stuff, like moving from Brazil to D.C. and settling into our sweet new apartment, but a fair chunk has been being stupidly busy at the day job. (Which has even been a night job sometimes over the last month. The telecoms software game isn’t all champagne and supermodels, I tells ya.)

But that’s enough of my grumbling. You’re here for superhero movie trailers and sweet, sweet hyperlinkage to stuff wot you should read. Some of you even care about when my next book is going to be out! Thanks to everyone who’s pestered me about that. It’s wonderful that you’re keen to read it, even as I apologetically mumble that no, it’s not going to be this year, but I’m damn sure going to try to get it out before the one-year anniversary of Venus Rising. If I can’t knock out a book a year, then something’s gone wrong. I’m not Fran Lebowitz, here.

So. Let’s get it on.

Continue reading “REALLIFE, WRITERLIFE and Tom Hiddleston” →

I’m Baaaaaaack

On By Dan HarrisIn Random, Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

[Silence. After a few moments, footsteps are heard. Faintly at first, but then louder as they approach. A man appears from stage left. His stride stutters for a moment as he glances toward the darkened auditorium, but he gathers himself and steps confidently to the microphone.]

*cough*

[He taps the microphone twice. Feedback whines through the auditorium’s speaker system, and the man winces. He moistens his lips and peers out at the shadowed space where the audience might be.]

“So. I’ve… been away for a while.”

Silence.

“I don’t know if anybody’s out there, but… well. Let’s just pick up where we left off, shall we?”

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Iain Banks: The Final Interview

On By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Writing2 Comments

Over at The Guardian today. Includes what I’m sure will go down as one of his most famous quotes:

“I can understand that people want to feel special and important and so on, but that self-obsession seems a bit pathetic somehow. Not being able to accept that you’re just this collection of cells, intelligent to whatever degree, capable of feeling emotion to whatever degree, for a limited amount of time and so on, on this tiny little rock orbiting this not particularly important sun in one of just 400m galaxies, and whatever other levels of reality there might be via something like brane-theory [of multiple dimensions] … really, it’s not about you. It’s what religion does with this drive for acknowledgement of self-importance that really gets up my nose. ‘Yeah, yeah, your individual consciousness is so important to the universe that it must be preserved at all costs’ – oh, please. Do try to get a grip of something other than your self-obsession. How Californian. The idea that at all costs, no matter what, it always has to be all about you. Well, I think not.”

Perfect. ‘How Californian’ indeed. There’s also a great quote that’ll get the more militant indie author/publishers’ backs up:

“I think my poetry’s great but then I would, wouldn’t I? But whether any respectable publisher will think so, that’s another matter. I’ll self-publish if I have to; sometimes I have no shame.”

Ha ha. And finally:

“…it wasn’t that Iain was still Iain, despite an illness that was as unexpected as it was tragic. It’s that in his last days he was more witty, more impassioned, more imaginative, more kindly, more caustic and even cleverer, as if concentrating and distilling the best of himself into the small time he had left. It was humbling to have been there.”

(Thanks to Steve Hall for the link.)

Fifty and/or Ten SFF Works Every Socialist and/or Conservative Should Read

On By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy2 Comments

This is great. Wonderful spec-fic author and renowned socialist China Mieville put together a list for The Weekly Ansible of ‘50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read‘. Then The American Conservative, just for fun, did a counterpoint list of ten equivalent works for those of a more conservative bent.

intriguing stuff, and a great shopping list for readers who like some political theory with along with their hyperspace travel/dragons.

Sometime in 2423, I Will Be a Millionaire

On By Dan HarrisIn Writing7 Comments

Yep–that’s right. In the two days since I released ASCENSION POINT, I have sold…

(wait for it)

FOUR BOOKS!

I’ve had the boys in the lab run some calculations, and they tell me that at this rate, I’ll make my first million dollars sometime in 2423!

Me, just four centuries from now.

After consulting my chart of the future, I see that by only 2040 I’ll be living in an arcology, hopped up on anti-aging drugs. So life in the 25th century must be even sweeter: I’m going to be riding to work on my giant robot tiger like some kind of Future He-Man.

Awesome.

Look at present day He-Man riding his ridiculous non-robot tiger. What a loser.

Time To Plan a New Book

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Writing5 Comments

There seems to be a pattern emerging.

When I was about a third of the way through the draft of ASCENSION POINT, I started to find myself daydreaming about ideas for new stories. Some were vague and insubstantial, and didn’t come to much; for a couple I jotted down the basic, high-level premise to come back to later; and one really caught my imagination and quickly turned into the outline for the book I’m writing now, ROGUE.

Now that I’m about five chapters into the draft of ROGUE, the same thing’s happened again. It’s as if, with the WIP’s outline in place* and the story and character arcs plotted, my ‘big picture’ creative juices need something to do. So they wander off and think up new things.

Which is why I got out of bed at 4am last night to write down–before I forgot them–the notes which now make up  the broad-strokes outline of what will end up being my third book. Tentative title: BODIES IN MOTION.

The story’s actually not entirely new: it’s a fleshing out of one of those basic, high-level premises I dreamed up last year. Now there’s some meat on the skeletal plot bones, and I’m really excited to start writing it!

But… Oh yeah.

I just need to write the other 55,000 words of ROGUE first.

(* Work in progress, for anyone unfamiliar with the acronym :))