Gabriella Hewitt

This month’s Sci Fi Octoberfest 2007 has come to end. I want to thank all of you who took the time to read the various posts and those of you who also left comments. You may recall that leaving one comment in a post (TT not included), would get you a drawing slip in the hat. Obviously, the more posts you commented on, the greater your chances were. So all the slips went into the hat and the winning slip goes to

TEMPEST KNIGHT

Woo Hoo Tempest!!! Congratulations!!!

Drop me a line with your email address. You are the winner of a $5.00 gift certificate from Samhain Publishing’s My Bookstore and More!

Continuation of the SFFFJ transcripts….Want to read the first installment? Go here.
And to read the third installment, click here.

Log 1 – Star Date 102607

Gabriella Hewitt: A serious question if you will. There’s a lot of talk lately about global warming and the polar ice caps melting. Scientists predict that in a hundred years NYC will be buried under water and China will be a barren wasteland. If this did happen what do you think would happen to the human race?

David Boutlbee: Interesting question. The novel I chose to make into a movie actually deals with this issue. Of course regardless of the question the answer would be ‘We’d adapt’. We always do. Unfortunately the question that remains unanswered is ‘Would we learn from it?’. That I have my doubts about but as long as SciFi exists, we’ll do our best to explore the issue and perhaps help find a solution or warn people of the danger in time to fix it.

Heather Holland: The human race would adapt. Not to mention after hundreds of years have passed, who is to say that we won’t have other planets colonized. It is the future after all.

Christine d’Abo: I think the human race would survive. We’re kind of like cockroaches that way. But it would become a very brutal society, every person for themselves sort of thing. We’d live in the mountains and we’d be playing Survivor for real.

Liz Kreger: This is the type of storyline that really clicks with my imagination. What would the human race do? Anarchy to begin with … that’s a gimme. Human nature being what it is, I think there will be a high degree of lawlessness with pockets of people fighting to retain the technology of the time and to find an answer to survival. The human race will be greatly reduced through starvation with the remaining struggling to retain whatever viable land is available. There would probably be a return to a more agricultural existence since food supply will be the number one concern. Provided, of course, the few more aggressive types don’t manage to destroy whatever is left.

Gabriella Hewitt: I’d have to agree with you all. In a way it would be a dynamic social experiment. Total survival of the fittist. Just like in the series pilot of the Twilight Zone, imagine you wake up one morning to find the streets empty and you’re all alone. How would you react and then what would you do?

Liz Kreger: Freak out initially, and then go look for as much Rocky Road Ice cream that I can find. Can’t make plans and figure out strategy without a massive intake of ice cream to prime my brain. My next move would be to try to find Allen Funt and try to find the Candid Camera. After that … no idea.

Heather Holland: In all honesty, I would be totally freaked out. I don’t do well in crowds, but I don’t like to be alone either. Not to mention that I would totally miss my husband. He’s my rock. Plus, who would I share my stories with if I was the only person left?

Mark Terence Chapman: I imagine my initial reaction, once I figured out what happened assuming there aren’t dead bodies lying around, would be somewhat like Burgess Meredith’s in the “Time Enough” TZ episode: “Hooray! No more responsibilities, no more deadlines. I’m free!” Of course, very quickly the reality would set in—fresh food would go bad quickly, followed by packaged food. Soon all that would be left in stores is canned/jarred goods, and they wouldn’t last more than a few years. And then there’s the matter of shelter, heat in the winter, electricity, and all the other things we take for granted that wouldn’t exist for much longer. I imagine I’d get pretty depressed before long, overwhelmed at the hopelessness of the situation. Unless, of course, I found other survivors.

Gabriella Hewitt: Hmmm…the idea of being the only one left does paint a grim picture. I guess that is why I love science fiction, not only for its entertaining value but because it makes me think about our humanity and the universe in which we inhabit or eventually will inhabit. Science fiction takes us beyond ourselves and makes us consider some tough questions. So what do you think about sci fi? Go on and gush about what you love about the Sci-fi genre!

Susan Grant: I love the grand adventure of exploring other worlds, and being immersed in other cultures, love stories playing out against a backdrop of danger, and the utter creativity of made-up worlds. It’s what I love to read and watch. Babylon 5, Star Wars, Star Trek TNG, and now Battlestar Galactica are all favorite shows. There must be many other fans of the genre because for the first time, SFR is expanding when it used to be the “poor stepsister” of other romance genres. We’re getting more crossover readers from SF. Less romance reader are “fearful” of trying something with SF in it. The stigma of being associated with the “futuristic romance” genre of the 90s has mostly gone away. Linnea Sinclair and I have both had our SFR books win in the major award categories like the RITA (romance’s “Oscar”). It’s all exciting because I want MORE SFR to read and to watch!

Mark Terence Chapman: What’s great about it is the freedom to write literally anything. You can invent technology, societies, aliens, and parallel universes, rewrite history with a stroke of a pen, have characters go back and change history, and so on. There are few limitations to what you can do. Violating the laws of physics can be a bit iffy, though.

David Boutlebee: The possibilities. While it’s true that SciFi can have an element of the fantastical to it, it’s the one genre that tries to explore the future. No other genre offers that. SciFi may not predict the future but it can inspire it, as Robert Heinlein’s story Waldo inspired the use of remote manipulator arms, or warn us of the dangers of it, as George Orwell’s1984 warned us of the dangers of a totalitarian society.

Heather Holland: The alien races and worlds. The gizmos. I love creating new gizmos to use in books. In sci-fi you aren’t confined to one tiny planet; the entire universe is your playground. I can create whole new cultures and civilizations and I love doing just those things.

Bev Katz Rosenbaum: I love the ethical and moral explorations of various aspects of scientific progress. This is really deep, juicy stuff!

Angela/Scifi Chick: Time travel, other worlds, aliens, advanced technology — they inspire the imagination and create an escape from reality. It’s that “What if?” scenario.

Christine d’Abo: Oh where to start! I fell in love with Harrison Ford…I mean sci-fi when I saw Star Wars on TV when I was a kid. I found it so exciting, the adventure, strange worlds and creatures they got to meet in their travels, I wanted to be there with them. I then started watching every sci-fi show I could get my hands on; Star Trek, Battlestar Galatica, Space 1999, Doctor Who. As I got older, I began to appreciate how sci-fi writers could address current issues through their stories, presenting their concerns and possible solutions. I’ve always admired the genre for that.

Liz Kreger:Where to begin? I’ve mentioned in the past that for awhile I grew tired of reading romance and switched to reading Sci-fi. It wasn’t until I discovered that they’d combined the two genres that I was in readership heaven. From there it was a short jump to writing in the paranormal/Sci-fi genre. Haven’t looked back since. I made it a point of reading every paranormal or romantic Sci-fi I could get my hands on … including Susan Grant, Susan Squires and CJ Barry. I currently write Sci-fi/Romance for Samhain Publishing with my first book (“Forget About Tomorrow”) coming out in print in February of 2008 and my second book (“Promise for Tomorrow”) which is loosely associated with “FAT”, coming out in e-format this November. I’ve also written three other paranormal romances which have yet to get the editing treatment courtesy of my crit partners and are therefore not fit to query, and an urban fantasy that I’m currently working on. It’s a complete departure from my previous work in that there is less romance and is written in the first person. The title is currently “Darkness Before the Dawn” and I’m really enjoying this tale so far.

Gabriella Hewitt: Our meeting has come to an end. But in this infinite universe our paths will cross and continually meet whether on this cosmic plane or on the cyberkenetic wavelengths of the internet. As in the immortal words of Dr. Spock, “Live long and prosper.”

Our Science Fiction Octoberfest is coming to a close. The last post will be up tomorrow. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I’ve enjoyed hosting the event. For our last sci fi-related TT this month, I’m focusing on books. Here’s a list of the top thirteen science fiction novels as listed at Sci Fi Lists.

1…. Dune by Frank Herbert, 1965
2…. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, 1985
3…. Foundation by Isaac Asimov, 1951
4…. Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 1979
5…. 1984 by George Orwell, 1949
6…. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, 1961
7…. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 1954
8…. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, 1950
9…. Neuromancer by William Gibson, 1984
10…. Ringworld by Larry Nevin, 1970
11….2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, 1968
12….Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, 1959
13….Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932

So, what do you think? Any you would add or take off? Any books written from 2000 onwards that you think should make the list?

By Mark Terence Chapman

(This is the first segment of a nine-part story, told across nine different blogs around the world, from the United States and Canada to Japan and Malaysia, in a sort of chain linking us all together. I’d like to start out by thanking authors Gabriella Hewitt, David Boultbee, Joyce Anthony, Suzanne Kamata, Karina Fabian, Ron Berry, KS Augustin, and Jamieson Wolf, in order, for hosting most of this story on their blogs.)

There really isn’t a short answer to the question of how I became a published novelist, so I hope you’ll bear with me through some history. (Feel free to get naked and bare with me, if you prefer. I won’t tell. This is a casual blog.) There was some skill involved, and some luck, but mostly it was a lot of time and hard work spent on writing and—most importantly—editing. If you came here looking for the “secret” to getting published, that’s it. You can stop reading now. On the other hand, if you’re curious about the winding road one novelist unknowingly followed, read on.

I hear all the time about authors who knew from an early age that they’d be writers when they grew up. They scribbled down stories and poems almost from the moment they could hold a crayon. They joined writers’ clubs and submitted stories for publication in children’s magazines.

Well, that wasn’t me. Although I enjoyed creative writing classes, and always did well in grammar, vocabulary, and spelling (even won a few local spelling bees), I looked at writing as a hobby—and not even an especially compelling hobby—rather than as a future profession. In fact, after high school I didn’t do any creative writing for more than two decades.

In my youth, once I got past the “When I grow up, I want to be a baseball player, a pirate, and an astronaut” phase, my career plan had me becoming an architect. That lasted until 10th grade, when I ran face-first into Algebra 2. So I switched gears and decided on a career in law. I pursued that goal through college, getting my BA degree in Criminal Justice in 2 ½ years and being accepted into a prestigious law school.

But life has a funny way of playing tricks on us. After two years of law school, I was home for the summer. As a lark, I took a computer aptitude test at the local IBM sales office, even though I’d never touched a computer before. (This was 1979, when personal computers were such things as Radio Shack TRS-80s and Apple IIs, and only geeks played with them.) I had no expectation of doing well, but I figured what the heck?

Imagine my surprise when IBM offered me a job, at 30% more money than I expected to make as a rookie lawyer perhaps two years down the road (after my third year and after passing the bar exam). So I took the job, figuring that if it didn’t pan out in a year I could always go back to school. That was 28 years ago, and I haven’t regretted that decision once. (Computers are a lot more fun than dusty law libraries.)

So how did I end up writing novels? Certainly not from working with computers, you’re thinking. Right? That’s where you’d be wrong.

To find out the connection between computers and writing novels, click here to read Part II, on author David Boultbee’s blog or http://davidboultbee.com/blog/?p=12. To jump to the ninth and final part of the story, on my blog, click here.

On Tuesday night I will be posting this week’s guest post featuring Mark Terence Chapman author of The Mars Imperative and The Tesserene Imperative. Take a journey with Mark through nine different author blogs and learn how Mark made the leap to published fiction writer. I hope while you visit each blog you take a minute to stop by and look around.

Part I will start here and at the end of the post you’ll find a link which will take you to part II. But, if you’re in a hurry and just want to see how it ends, Mark kindly links to part IX which is on his blog. Of course, I know you’ll read it all and visit each and every stop.

Don’t forget too that any comment left on the Part I post of my blog is eligible for the prize drawing at the end of the month. So, don’t be shy.

Continuation of the SFFFJ transcripts….Want to read the first installment? Go here. And to read the second installment, click here.

Log 1 – Star Date 101907

Gabriella Hewitt: The world is about to blow and a spaceship picks you up. Yes, you have the once in a lifetime opportunity to hitchhike across the galaxy. What 3 things would you bring along for the ride?

Angela/ScifiChick: A towel, a Babel fish, and my trusty Hitchhiker’s Guide, of course! How else would I get around?

Christine d’Abo: A Swiss army knife, MP3 player, and chocolate. Hey, a girl has priorities.

Gabriella Hewitt: I hear you loud and clear on the chocolate! Make mine a Milky Way or maybe Mars bars.

David Boultbee: I would bring the most important part of my life, my wife and our two children.

Mark Terence Chapman: A case of Mars bars to offer friendly aliens, a phasor for the unfriendly aliens, and a sonic screwdriver—because stuff is always breaking down at the wrong time. If I could bring another person with me, it would be Scotty from ST:TOS, for the same reason.

Heather Holland: This will probably sound sappy, but my husband first of all. I’m rather attached to the man and can’t picture myself being without him. My laptop because it has all my works in progress in it, and … shoot, the third answer isn’t quite so easy to come up with. My Linkin Park backpack aka my portable office. It’s got everything a writer could ever need in it.

Bev Katz Rosenbaum: My husband and my two kids!

Gabriella Hewitt: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a wickedly great sci-fi read. To those that haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Aside from Science Fiction what other genres do you guys like to read? Better yet, cross-breeding it with sci-fi!

Susan Grant: I read non-fiction travel books! Ha. It would be cool to cross-breed those. Now all I’ve got to do is hang out at United Airlines long enough to start flying into space, and I’ll write my own travel books! As for a fictional travel book, that would make a fun SF read–in the future a travel writer like Rick Steves finding all the best out-of-the-way and hole-in-the-wall places around the galaxy to stay and eat!

David Boultbee:I like to read almost any genre, with the exception of horror. My only criteria would be a believable storyline and intriguing characters. In terms of cross breeding a genre, any genre, with SciFi, we already do this. A good SciFi story should have more than just SciFi to it or it probably isn’t a very good story. Some stories go beyond this and we’re now starting to see mixed genres such as Erotic-SciFi or Romantic SciFi. I personally think this is great as it creates a wider audience for SciFi.

Mark Terence Chapman: Political/military thrillers from Tom Clancy and Dale Brown, and the occasional Stephen King and John Grisham. But mainly Sci-Fi. Not much fantasy. As for cross-breeding, Clancy and Brown already do that, setting their novels a few years in the future so they can take advantage of technology that’s on the drawing board today, but not yet here, or existing political situations that might come to a head soon.

Liz Kreger: I adore reading and writing Romance/Sci-fi. Besides the opportunity to create worlds that have always lived in my heads, I get to develop characters and give them an HEA as a reward. You can put your characters through the most horrendous situations and the reader is assured that in the end, there will be a happily ever after.

Heather Holland: I mainly read romance, and I already cross the two. I enjoy a good healthy dose of sci-fi with a wonderful romance threaded throughout it or vice versa. I also enjoy ghost stories. Hmm, an alien ghost love affair…it could happen.

Christine d’Abo: I have wide reading tastes. I read Romance, Mysteries, Comedy, and Erotica. I love to blend all of these genres as I write. In my book The Bond That Ties Us, I have taken the sci-fi back drop and mixed in romance, erotica and a touch of mystery. It was challenging as a writer to try and pull all the different elements together, but I think I managed to pull it off.

Bev Katz Rosenbaum: Well, in I Was a Teenage Popsicle and Beyond Cool, I did cross-breed Sci-fi with teen chick lit, which I love to read and write. Scott Westerfeld did this in his Uglies trilogy, too. Both series are all about fitting in/conformity, which is a common theme in teen chick lit.

Angela/ScifiChick: I’ll read almost anything. But my favorite genres (besides sci-fi) are mysteries and fantasy. I’m not a big fan of blending sci-fi and fantasy. But I do love a good science fiction mystery! And I’m always open to recommendations…

To Be Continued….Join us Next Friday for the final installment of SSSFFJ’s meeting.

Remember, if you comment on this post, it will count towards the prize drawing at the end of the month. Only one comment per post eliglible.

And for an introduction to our wonderful guests and what Sci Fi Octoberfest is all about, click here.

Boston.com has a list of the Top Fifty Sci-Fi Shows of all time. It’s worth a look. Along with the name of the who, they give you a picture (love that Battlestar Galactica pose) and a brief blurb about each one. For sci fi junkies, see if you agree or not. And there’s plenty of room for disagreement. If you visit Sci Fi Lists, you’ll find a list of the top 100 shows of all times, with completely different rankings. And if you check out TV.com, you’ll be greeted with yet another list. I only expect the diehards among you to check all these out.

From Boston.com’s list, I present you with the top thirteen sci fi shows:

1…. Star Trek (original)

2…. Battlestar Galactica
3…. Star Trek: The Next Generation
4…. The X-Files

5…. Babylon 5
6….Stargate SG-1
7…. The Twilight Zone

8…. Dr. Who
9…. Mystery Science Theater 3000
10….Sliders
11….Lost
12….Xena: Warrior Princess
13….The Outer Limits

So, what do you think?

NOTE: There is a page on the website for The Gender Divide – http://www.thegenderdivide.com/?concept – that discusses the concept briefly but this is a more in-depth discussion.

I was recently re-reading Blind Waves, a novel co-authored by one of my favorite authors, Steven Gould (co-authored with Laura J. Mixon). There’s a scene where the two protagonists are skinny dipping. The authors have done a good job of establishing a realistic love-at-first-sight connection between them, and as a result the conversation naturally segues into a discussion on becoming intimate. They share the pertinent details about blood tests and previous partners and then, in an almost offhand way, the female protagonist, Patricia, mentions that she had her cycles turned off during a previous relationship. When that relationship ended, she didn’t turn them back on because she didn’t see any reason to go back to tampons.

Turning off menstrual cycles. A simple and believable enough concept for a science fiction novel, so simple that it’s relegated to one brief paragraph in a 350 page novel. It’s not a unique concept either, as this is not the only novel I’ve read that mentions this. Nor is it treated any differently in those novels. Yet somehow the implications of turning off menstrual cycles intrigued me.

Perhaps it was because I was working for a bio-tech company at the time. Although I’m not a scientist, I quickly learned how interconnected all the systems in the body are. It is difficult to affect one part of the body without affecting other parts. That is why so many drugs have side effects. The company I worked for developed drugs based on compounds naturally produced by the body and even those sometimes had side effects.

It’s natural for a science fiction author to make simplifying assumptions about the future as they develop their story, but this assumption kept nagging at me. I began wondering what would happen if there was an unusual side effect to stopping menstruation. Menstruation starts at a young age and runs for roughly forty years. During that time there is a lot of biological activity that is occurring. What happens if that all that energy is available elsewhere? Where would it go and what effect would it have? What if it affected longevity and women started living longer than men?

From there I began to wonder about the implications of greater longevity for women. How would this disparity in life span impact world politics, economics, the military, and society? As I thought about it, I realized that the balance of power would gradually shift from men to women, resulting in massive changes in all these areas. Most of these changes were interesting to me only in the context of the new world that I was writing. Far more interesting to me was how this affected people.

Enter Ryan Peters. Ryan, the hero in the novel, is trying to recover a formula that allows men to live as long as women. He has already been treated with this formula and is forced to pretend to be his own son to cover his longer life span. This becomes harder than he anticipated when he starts working for Olivia Morgan, his true love from forty years ago.

When I first started writing, I expected Ryan and Olivia to live ‘happily ever after’. Imagine my surprise when this didn’t happen, or at least not as I expected it to. Instead Ryan finds himself drawn to Nicole West, another woman he works with, despite having what appears to be the perfect relationship with Olivia.

I won’t divulge any more details, other than to say that the rest of the story wrote itself, with the help of Ryan, Olivia and Nicole. The result is a story that I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it, a story that Chris Bartholomew at Static Movement Online calls “…extraordinary reading, a book that will live in your thoughts long after you’ve read it…”.

Please visit the novel’s website at http://www.thegenderdivide.com for a full excerpt of Chapter One, links to where you can purchase The Gender Divide, and some more fantastic reviews (4 cups from Coffee Time Romance & More!)

I’d like to offer a special thanks to Gabriella Hewitt for allowing me the opportunity to post on her blog. BTW, Dark Waters is definitely on my TBR list.

—David Boultbee

Continuation of the SFFFJ transcripts….Want to read the first installment? Go here.

Log 1 – Star Date 101207

Gabriella Hewitt: Was watching the line up of all the new sci-fi shows on t.v and I am so excited by the new versions of my old favs such as Flash Gordon and Bionic Woman, although I have to admit I don’t get the same big high as when I watched the originals. How do you guys feel about the remakes? What do you think about remakes such as War of the Worlds, Invasion being made?

Mark Terence Chapman: My philosophy on remakes, in general, is “why bother?” If it was great the first time around, what are the odds of making it better the second (or 10th) time? And if it isn’t better, why bother? On the other hand, if it was a bad/mediocre movie the first time, why remake it? The rare exception is when there was a good story originally, but the special effects technology of the time wasn’t up to the task.

Heather Holland: Truthfully, I liked the War of the Worlds remake, though I still enjoy the original version as well. Haven’t seen the other movie—yet.

David Boultbee: Leaving aside the merits of the actual movies themselves, I think that anything that exposes people to SciFi is a good thing, as it makes you think. Whether the movie is a remake, an original movie, or an adaptation of a SciFi novel, is almost irrelevant. A good SciFi movie raises questions and exposes people to new ideas and new concepts.

Christine d’Abo: I’m not much of a remake person just for the sake of remaking a movie. For me, the movie needs to be updated to address current societal concerns or else it just becomes another action flick. That’s not to say you can’t have a sci-fi movie that isn’t just about good vs. bad and explosions. But those movies in particular were designed to comment on a particular ill that was perceived in society. I didn’t see that element in the remakes, and I think that’s why they weren’t as good as the originals.

Susan Grant: I love it. I’m all about technology and don’t love old movies. To take a basic premise and redo it using modern effects is just great to me. Bring ‘em on!

Gabriella: Hmmm… makes me wonder if we did a remake of the (original) Star Trek series which characters would we play if we could recast it with oursleves?

David Boultbee: Captain Kirk, of course. He’s the only one who is guaranteed to survive whatever disaster comes his way. Even Spock died once. Kirk not only survives, he almost always saves the day and gets the girl (although he never gets to keep her).

Mark: I’d be a tribble. They’re cute and lovable (unless you’re a Klingon), and all they do is eat and reproduce. Right now, kicking back and doing nothing sounds appealing.

Heather: None of them. I’d much rather make up my own—it’s more fun that way.

Christine: The green Orion slave girl! Damn she could dance.

Bev Katz Rosenbaum: Spock, because I need a little bit more logic in my life–I’m entirely too emotional!

Gabriella: Personally, I think I’d want to be Captain Kirk. Just so I can talk with that cool staccato. “Doc! I..think…we…have…a…situation.”

To be continued…