Cinder, the YA debut from author Marissa Meyer, hits shelves Jan. 3. The first novel in The Lunar Chronicles introduces a 16-year-old heroine, Cinder, who also happens to be a cyborg. In an interesting mash-up of fairy tales and science fiction, the book is a cross between Cinderella, The Terminator, and Star Wars.
You can’t read Cinder until the new year, but today we can exclusively reveal the book’s trailer. Click through to watch the video.
Legend, available now, is 27-year-old video game art director Marie Lu’s first novel, and it’s already attracting major buzz. CBS Films has already snatched up the film rights, and Twilight producers Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen are attached. Legend takes place in a dark future in which North America has split into two warring nations: the wealthy Republic (or the West Coast) and the poor Colonies (everyone else). Two teenagers on opposing sides of the conflict are caught in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, though a series of shocking events eventually bring them together. Lu took the time to talk to EW about writing her gripping debut—and about being an Asian-American author.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your road to publication like?
MARIE LU: It was a long journey. I started writing seriously when I was a teenager, around 14 years old. I remember the exact moment when I [wanted to be a writer] because I saw an article in the Houston Chronicle about a young writer named Amelia Atwater-Rhodes who got a book deal when she was 15 years old. That was when I realized that I can actually pursue something like this, and I started writing seriously. I wrote four manuscripts before Legend over the course of 10 or 12 years, and none of those ever made it. I had one agent in college I parted ways with. My fourth manuscript didn’t sell, but it got me my current agent Kristin Nelson. When we were pitching that one, I started writing Legend, just to sort of distract myself from the whole submission process. My agent and I went through two or three heavy revisions on Legend before we finally submitted it. It was just really surprising and amazing to see Legend to sell after the other ones didn’t, so it was a long journey. [Laughs] READ FULL STORY »
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s seminal work of science-fiction about the perils of book burning, is finally available as an e-book. Simon & Schuster released the novel for download on Tuesday. It might surprise you to hear that Bradbury, now 91 and apparently a little further into the future than he would like to be, was previously dead-set against making it available in any form other than traditional paper-and-glue, calling the internet “meaningless” and commenting that e-books “smell like burned fuel.” To get the obvious joke out of the way, given his fear of literary conflagrations, maybe he was just uncomfortable putting his book in something called a Kindle.
When Fahrenheit 451 (Celsius 233, in its European editions) was first published in 1953, it was coming only two decades after the infamous Nazi book burnings and in the midst of America’s own wave of anti-literary fervor courtesy of McCarthyism and general think-of-the-children hysteria. But coming in 2011, this e-book release presents an opportunity to ponder the continuing relevance of the novel in a time when words aren’t quite so flammable. It’s pretty difficult to burn an e-book—unless it’s onto a CD—and a thumbdrive is much easier to smuggle than an armful of texts, so you’d think that Bradbury might be willing to forgo his traditional curmudgeonliness to embrace a technology that would spell the end to the act he deplores. Then again, in many cases, firewalls can be just as effective as fire and, as Amazon’s ironically Orwellian faux pas showed us, readers may not be as in control of their electronic library as they are their bookshelf.
Of course, Fahrenheit 451 is not just about the act of burning books in the same way that Animal Farm isn’t just about animal rights (and wrongs). It’s about all varieties of censorship, something from which digital media are far from immune, and in that way its themes are as pertinent as ever. Maybe in fifty years, an updated version will replace Guy Montag’s bonfires with a simple Select All + Delete.
Image Credit: Edmund Ross
Anne McCaffrey, who wrote Dragonriders of Pern and nearly 100 other science-fiction and fantasy books, died of a stroke on Monday in County Wicklow, Ireland, according to a post on the Random House website. She was 85 years old.
McCaffrey was born in Massachusetts, and lived about half of her life in the U.S. She initially aspired to be a ballet dancer or an opera singer, but she found her calling in writing. After some promising short stories in 1967, she published her first novel, Restoree, a feminist response to the sexist treatment of women characters in science-fiction at that time. “I felt that I could write better stories myself; tales where the female characters didn’t cower in the corner while their “hero” beat off the bad guys, but got right in the middle of the fight, kicking and swinging along-side the man,” McCaffrey wrote on her website. READ FULL STORY »
Kane Hodder has killed more than 100 people…onscreen! Now, the stuntman-turned-actor who became a horror legend playing relentless killer and hockey mask aficionado Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th horror franchise is hoping to slay readers with his autobiography, Unmasked: The True Life Story of the World’s Most Prolific Cinematic Killer. We spoke with Hodder about the book, playing Jason, the real-life accident that changed his life, and his habit of peeing in costars’ dressing rooms…
You won’t be seeing The Governor on the upcoming season 2 of The Walking Dead, but there is one place you will encounter the infamous fan favorite this October — bookstores. October 11 will see the release of The Walking Dead: Rise of The Governor, a novel penned by Walking Dead comic book creator Robert Kirkman and horror writer Jay Bonansinga. The book gives the backstory of how The Governor became the ruthless and savage despot that terrorized Rick Grimes and Co. in the comic book on which AMC’s hit drama is based. This zombie prequel story will also be available in an audiobook format read by Fred Berman and released by Macmillan audio, and we’ve got your exclusive first taste of it right here. Click on the audio player below to get an advance sneak listen as Philip Blake enters a warehouse only to learn that he is not alone. (You know it’s going to be good when the first line is “The place is a dark as a crypt.”) Then hit the message boards and sound off on what other Walking Dead characters you’d like to see receive the backstory treatment. And for more Walking Dead news and views, follow me on Twitter @EWDaltonRoss. READ FULL STORY »
Twenty years ago Star Wars began its true second act. Not on the big screen, mind you, or the tube, but in print. It was eight years after Return of the Jedi, eight before The Phantom Menace, and while George Lucas was still filling legal pads full of notes about Gungans and midichlorians, author Timothy Zahn published Heir to the Empire and forever changed the way fans thought about that Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Rather than fill-in backstory to tales fans already knew, as earlier novels like Brian Daley’s Han Solo Adventures had done, Zahn set his cosmic yarn five years AFTER Return of the Jedi, then a completely unexplored part of the Star Wars timeline. Fans of the movies found out that, no, the Empire was not defeated overnight with the death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of the Second Death Star—in spite of that Jedi-capping orgy of drunken Ewoks. In fact, though the Rebel Alliance had become the New Republic and controlled half the galaxy from the Empire’s former capital at Coruscant (which Zahn himself named), the Imperial Navy was set to launch perhaps its greatest onslaught ever—led by the blue-skinned, red-eyed, art-loving master tactician Grand Admiral Thrawn. READ FULL STORY »
The most important element of any time-travel story is the rules: what can the hero do, what’s impossible, and how does messing with the past change the future?
What we find in this exclusive excerpt from the opening of Tempest, the debut YA novel from Julie Cross, is that its cocky, time-shifting 19-year-old protagonist doesn’t understand the rules himself, and is struggling to figure out this strange, apparently instinctive power — though, like most kids that age, he’s not all that serious about his potential until trouble strikes.
Click here for a link to the first four chapters of the book, which comes out in its entirety Jan. 3, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Expectations are high for the novel, which has already had its film rights optioned by Summit Entertainment, the studio that produces the Twilight films. By releasing such a significant portion of the book four months early — and for free — publisher Thomas Dunne Books is, sort of like the hero of Tempest, hoping some actions taken in the past will positively influence the future.
See below for more theories on the excerpt.
Last year, everyone was eager, eager, eager for I Am Number Four to become the NBT (short for Next Big Twilight). Not only was the first book in the alien-in-high-school series released with much fanfare, but it was adapted immediately into a film starring Alex Pettyfer and Dianna Agron. There’s no indication whether a Hollywood version is in the works for the sequel, The Power of Six, but the book is definitely set to hit stores on Aug. 23 and, like the first, it is written by Pittacus Lore, the nom d’espace of writer Jobie Hughes and Oprah hatchet-burier James Frey. Here’s the trailer: READ FULL STORY »
One of Hollywood’s most esteemed fanboys won’t be attending Comic-Con 2011 this week. But David S. Goyer says he has a good excuse: He’ll be working on director Zack Snyder’s forthcoming Superman relaunch starring Henry Cavill — the superhero opus most likely to be the biggest story of next year’s Comic-Con. “It would the height of irresponsibility to break away at this point to go to Comic-Con,” the Man of Steel screenwriter (also a key member on Christopher Nolan’s Batman team) told EW in an interview last week. (The film, slated for release next year, begins shooting next week.) Not that the Hollywood hyphenate isn’t capable of multi-tasking. Goyer is also currently brainstorming a new Godzilla flick and adapting his just-published sci-fi novel Heaven’s Shadow, co-written with author and TV producer Michael Cassutt. The book, set in the near future, has rival groups of astronauts – American (in a ship called Destiny) and an alliance of Russian, Indian, and Brazilian interests (in a ship called Brahma) – racing toward a mysterious “near Earth object” (wittily dubbed “Keanu”) hurtling toward our sun. The premise seems vaguely Armageddon-ish, but takes a surprising, challenging, mind-expanding leap into 2001: A Space Odyssey territory. It’s smart, serious, crackerjack-paced sci-fi, expressed through relatable characters and drama that will entertain hardcore geeks who love well-researched Big Ideas and anyone who likes spacey escapism.
