Nerdgasms: A Smorgasbord of Science Fiction Delights

It couldn’t be a better time to be a sci-fi nerd. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the long-awaited seventh movie in the franchise, opens this week, Doctor Who is going strong and the annual Christmas special airs on Christmas Day, the X Files returns in January, and a third Star Trek reboot movie is in the offing. Not to mention the plethora of Marvel and DC TV shows and movies that just keep coming. (Though I’m sure some will argue that comics aren’t “true” science fiction. And those people can argue that until they’re blue in the face—like Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan or Dr. Manhattan.)

I just binge-watched Jessica Jones, which I highly recommend, and I was psyched to see that Luke Cage is getting his own Netflix show in April. And I’m pretty sure I actually yelled “OMG, WHAT IS HAPPENING ON MY TELEVISION?” when I saw the previews for Legends of Tomorrow during last week’s Flash/Arrow crossover and saw that Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams from Doctor Who) was playing Rip Hunter.

I’ve always been a science fiction fan. I grew up with Star Trek, almost literally—I’m exactly 17 days older than the original series—and was one of those kids who saw the first Star Wars movie repeatedly when it first aired in theaters. I watched every possible science fiction show and movie I could find on our little six-channel, no-cable black-and-white television, gobbled up every science fiction book in the library, and started writing science fiction stories for extra credit in sixth grade.

One might expect that lo, these many years later, I’d be busy scribbling away on my own science fiction novels. But I’ve never written one, and I have no plans to do so. For some reason, science fiction writing (outside of those short stories in sixth grade) has never come naturally to me. The stories that always find their way out of my head are fantasy, with a liberal dose of romance. I suspect that somewhere along the way, I absorbed the messages girls are bombarded with that science fiction isn’t our domain, no matter how much we love it. Little by little, though, Hollywood is beginning to realize that women love science fiction just as much as men, and stronger female characters, like Jessica Jones, are becoming more common.

Nonetheless, those stories I loved growing up made an indelible impression on me, and I couldn’t be more excited about the resurgence of some of my favorite shows and characters. To me, science fiction and fantasy are two sides of the same coin, anyway, so I don’t make a huge distinction between my love for the X Files and my fangirling over Tom Mison’s eyebrow in Sleepy Hollow. ;) As long as there’s a little romance in all of them, I’m happy.

Which sci-fi premiere are you most looking forward to? Tell me in the comments and I'll choose one commenter at random to win a copy of my latest release. While it isn’t science fiction (unless you count the science of relocating nature spirits from the old world to the new), The Lost Coast is out today.

"This gothic-inspired modern romance is built on a supernatural base that drips with intrigue, mystery and some deliciously dark humor." ★★★★ — RT Book Reviews

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Sci-Fi Week -- Stealth Sci-Fi & Laziness

Many of us at Here Be Magic are also long-time fans of Sci-Fi and have written SF books (usually with at least a sprinkle of romance). If you are, too, please join us for a week of dishing about Sci-Fi!

 
I never know quite how to describe my SF series. YA SF? Dystopia? Neither quite fit. If you read the first chapter of Violet Eyes, you might not even realize it was science fiction. Angel appears at first to be a mostly-normal if rather outrageous high school student, though it soon becomes clear that Angel has many secrets.

You might also notice that the novel is set in 1987. And yet Violet Eyes' direct sequel Silver Eyes is set in 2098 --and no, there's no time travel. Angel is seventeen in both books. So how did I pull that off?



To explain that I first need to tell you why Violet Eyes is set in 1987 instead of present day. You see, I wrote the first draft of the book in 1987 when I was a teenager. The book moldered in a drawer for a long time, but I never forgot it. I always loved the character of Angel--she's smart, athletic and reckless--but the thought of rewriting the book a decade later daunted me. I'd have to update all that teen slang and pop culture references. Was there any way I could justify setting the story in 1987, I wondered? And then the perfect solution hit me, an idea that galvanized the whole book and spawned the sequels. I already knew that Angel and her nemesis/love interest Mike were genetically-enhanced: what if the scientists watching them had placed them in an artificial setting, a Historical Immersion Project, where everybody else were people on vacation, paying to experience a recreation of the past?

Jackpot. (And all due to my laziness.)

Simon & Schuster published Violet Eyes and its sequel Silver Eyes in 2001. They are still available in ebook and sell well enough that I've recently published book three in the series, Angel Eyes. Book four, Golden Eyes, will be released January 2016.

Add Violet Eyes to your Goodreads list.
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