Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2011, Random House
It’s 2045, but the ‘80s are back. Most of humanity’s time is spent in the OASIS, a massive multiplayer online game that’s become a globally networked virtual reality. Halliday, the powerful loner who created it, was a pop-culture obsessive who grew up in the 1980s. When he dies, he leaves a challenge – whoever finds and solves the hidden puzzles he’s programmed into the game will inherit his fortune and controlling stock of the OASIS.
In true John Hughes/Spielberg fashion, our good guys are a group of lovable misfit loners. They are obsessed with finding the puzzles and they’re in with a chance, because they have immersed themselves in the ‘80s ephemera that Halliday’s quest revived. They rule at clunky console games and know Bladerunner word-for-word, as well as the Bon Jovi back catalogue. This time the geeks really might inherit the world, so long as they get there before the corporate bad guys.
Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty goes to Washington, Kitty Raises Hell by Carrie Vaughn
2011, Gollancz, p/b, £6.99
Kitty’s a dj on a late-night radio show. She’s also a werewolf. At the start of the series she’s struggling to come to terms with that, and trying to keep it secret. Before long, her two lives meet and her radio show becomes the call-in show for anyone with questions about the supernatural…and the supernatural themselves. Think Frasier, with fangs, for the fey.
Changelings, humans and the Psy occupy Earth, 2080. None of us are good at sharing. The Psy are emotionless psychics, connected and controlled through the PsyNet. Changelings look like humans, can turn into animals and their animal’s characteristics are present when they are in human form – heightened senses and urges. Oh, the urges. Sexy futuristic animal SF? Indeed. And it’s great fun.
Mercy is a leopard and Riley is a wolf. Mercy has the urges of a cat in heat, but worries she’ll never find a mate who can handle her dominant, alpha-female ways. She has lots of sex with Riley, spends the intervening pages brooding that he won’t be able to handle her strong femininity (even though he’s clearly fine with it) and then sleeps with him again. In between encounters, while the scratches on their backs heal, Mercy and Riley lead military-style Changeling packs who are trying to protect their communities – and all of civilisation – from the latest threat. Someone’s targeting the implacable Psy and turning them into suicidal killers. But who? And can the PsyNet ever recover?
Much typing here at writingislovely towers as I try to get this nth draft finished, in order to begin on the next and meet my deadline. Each draft adds more words, more detail, another layer of paint. Plenty gets cut, too, but please let’s not dwell on wordcount today.
This week I’ve been working on my heroines. Making them strong on the page, making them 3D – even though two of them are, at least in this telling, villainesses. Well, they need detail too, don’t they? Why would all the other characters cower and scatter at their approach, unless they have real substance? These ladies think they’re in the right, they think a Happy Ending is the one where they win and everything and everyone that was once in their way lies blackened and ruined. So, I’ve been spending time with them, imagining them centre stage, figuring out new nastiness for the violent one, new vanities for the cruel one.
And my ‘good’ heroine? Gah, she kept crying through one of the first, skeletal drafts. She didn’t like the forest, or being far from home, and she was worried she would lose and everyone would laugh at her. Okay, I see her point – but the heroines I like to read about, and the ones I want to write, have more courage than that. Of course they don’t like the scary forests, who would – the clue’s in the name, scary – but they figure out winning ways to get through it, tossing about quips and feats of cunning while they are at it. Hmmph. It is not as easy (of course) to write a character who is heroic, yet real, as it is to read one. Someone relatable yet still fantastic enough to warrant a tale. I’m getting there, but it will take a few more drafts ’til I am satisfied.
So. Here are some songs to write heroines by – whichever side they are on, good or evil. I didn’t want anti-man songs, or love songs if I could avoid it – the songs should be about how ace they are, not how rubbish boys are. These are songs that give me a swagger, so I hope that’ll be the case for your characters, as well.
As usual, if you don’t see a player please follow this link to 8tracks.com
(8tracks can only play songs in the same order twice, something to do with copyright & licensing. Here’s the tracklisting for the first couple of listens:
Wang Dang Doodle – PJ Harvey
Not Too Soon – Throwing Muses
The Littlest Birds – The Be Good Tanyas
Gone Again – Patti Smith
Walking Back to Happiness – Helen Shapiro
Rock ‘N Roll – Elastica
Monster Hospital – Metric
Feed The Tree – Belly)
Reviewed for the British Fantasy Society.
Reviewed for the British Fantasy Society.
