The Future...next exit!

by JULIE BERTAGNA

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is an exciting place. I’ve been travelling back and forth, meeting friends and celeb-spotting in the Authors’ Yurt (a kind of tented Tardis, much bigger on the inside, crammed full of authors bursting with stories they’re about to let loose on the world). But the best thing about a book festival is that authors and readers meet to share stories and ideas.

So if you’re coming to our schools event (see page 15) or our evening event on Wed 21st August, here’s a taster of what we’ll be discussing in our dystopian debates... join in!

Books and films imagining the future are hugely popular just now. Think of the Hunger Games, Inception, Halo - and our books! 

Why do people enjoy them? Do YOU? Because we like to be thrilled, challenged, scared, inspired? Or are dark and dangerous stories an escape from reality? 

We imagine three very different versions of the future. But how do you imagine it? Could science save us? Destroy us? Take us across the universe to new worlds? Will the climate, new inventions or politics change the way we live? (Why not use some of these ideas to help you write a futuristic story of your own?)

But how far should writers go in imagining the future - especially for young readers? Should there be limits? The new dystopian fiction is marketed towards girls, though they are exciting stories with lots of boy appeal - are ‘labels’ and covers aimed at boys or girls helpful for readers? Or should you be free to make your own discoveries?

There's much more about us and our books elsewhere on Demention, and here...

Claire Merle’s The Glimpse was welcomed as a grippingly readable and deeply unsettling British dystopian thriller. Her new book The Fall will be out in June. Claire’s website

Julie Bertagna’s award-winning Exodus trilogy is a brilliantly imagined story of love and survival in a climate-changed world. Zenith and Aurora complete this highly-acclaimed, classic dystopian story of the future.’ Julie’s website

Teri Terry’s Slated, a dark psychological thriller, was published to great acclaim last year and has now been followed by the engrossing, fast paced Fractured. Teri’s website

DEMENTION HITS THE ROAD!

Here at Demention we're packing our bags and our books (but hopefully not our wellies) for the Hay Book Festival (Friday May 31st 5.30pm) and the Edinburgh International Book Festival (Wed 21st August am & pm) for DARK, DANGEROUS & DYSTOPIAN debates. Come and meet us - we’d love you to join in. Here’s a taster of what we’re all about...

JULIE BERTAGNA 

A boy and girl, oceans apart, fates entwined, fight for a future in a flooded world. 

Julie says, ‘An SOS from islanders at the mercy of rising seas on the other side of the world sparked Exodus, Zenith and Aurora. I kept thinking, what if that happens to us? How would we cope in a climate-changed world? So I began an apocalyptic tale of young survivors on a storm-ravaged Earth.

I set my story 100 years in the future - then climate change kicked in for real, affecting millions. The floods, tornadoes and storms are unnervingly close to my imagined world. Published in over 20 countries, I love that they’ve made lots of shortlists and won awards (even Green awards in the UK & US) but the most brilliant thing for me is that young readers across the world write and tell me how the books have made them think about the future - though some teachers and librarians in the USA have blasted them as too dangerous...’  

Why do we enjoy dystopian and apocalyptic stories when the real world is scary enough? Are they a thrilling escape? Dangerous? Can they inspire hope and change? 

Watch EXODUS TRAILER 

TERI TERRY

Imagine you’ve been SLATED - your memory wiped clean and you don’t know why. 

Teri says, ‘Slated grew from a dream in the dark murk of my unconscious, so it wasn't a plan to write a dystopian novel at all. But I think I end up writing about my obsessions, things that worry me. Whether I want to, or not. I didn't set out to consider big questions, but the story took me places, and the questions were there.’

If a young person commits a terrible, violent crime, why did they do it? Are people born bad, or made that way? If someone commits a crime as a reaction to horrible things that have happened to them, is it their fault? Should they even be punished? But if they are dangerous to everyone else, you can't just let them go...

CLAIRE MERLE

In a society divided into Pures and Crazies, a DNA test can destroy your life forever.  

Claire says, ‘I don’t write to be controversial, but I do hope to make readers think. My debut novel The Glimpse addresses mental health issues from a rather different dynamic than is more common in fiction. Some readers have completely embraced and understood the book in the way I intended, but interpretations have been wide and in some cases very surprising. 

I didn’t set out to be provocative. I just wanted to write about a subject that concerns me deeply – the direction western society is headed in terms of the perception, diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems. I’m not a particularly confrontational person, but I could easily end up having a heated debate about a pint of milk...' 

Are dystopias so popular because they take risks, exploring all kinds of possible futures in challenging ways? Should there be boundaries in YA fiction? How far dare authors go?

From the Hay Festival Programme...book here:

‘Claire Merle’s The Glimpse was welcomed as a grippingly readable and deeply unsettling British dystopian thriller. Her new book The Fall will be out in June. Claire’s website

Teri Terry’s Slated, a dark psychological thriller, was published to great acclaim last year and has now been followed by the engrossing, fast paced Fractured. Teri’s website
 
Julie Bertagna’s award-winning Exodus is a brilliantly imagined story of love and survival in a climate-changed world. Zenith and Aurora complete this highly-acclaimed, classic dystopian trilogy.’ Julie’s website

Seige by Sarah Mussi review by Julienne Durber

Siege by Sarah Mussi tells the story of Leah Jackson, a sixteen year old girl who finds herself trapped when her school is overrun by a gang of gun-wielding students, one of whom is her brother.  Told from Leah’s point of view we follow her as she rescues her wounded friends and tries to find a way to escape from the school.

From the cover design, which if it hasn’t featured in the pages of Creative Review I’d be surprised, the reader is fired into an uncompromisingly harsh situation.  The action zips along at just the right rate.  Leah’s internal voice is excelently written and really connects us with the claustrophobia and the harsh decisions she has to face.

Now I remember having a conversation with a friend about the Tarantino film Pulp Fiction after it first came out.  She decided that it was an average film that had been chopped up and re-edited in a funny order to make it seem interesting.  I argued that she was missing the point and that the re-editing was a vital part of the intertwined ‘pulp’ story feel.

But I fell into that exact trap when I started reading Seige.  In fact after twenty pages I was convinced I was going to call this review ‘Die Hard meets Columbine’ (and part of me hopes that was the phrase Mussi used to pitch the book to her agent).

Die Hard meets Columbine

It is undeniable how close to Die Hard this book is.  The violence is visceral and present from the first page.  Leah is caught unawares but escapes as others are captured.  The Nakatomi building is the school, the terrorists are the gang, and the twist … well, that would be giving the game away - if you have seen the film you'll spot the similarity.

And when Leah found herself having to negotiate a corridor strewn with broken glass, in my head she had morphed into a young, female Bruce Willis.  The bald head really didn’t suit her!

I was the one missing the point.

It doesn’t matter that certain elements are familiar.  This is a totally immersive story that raises real questions about society, community responsibility and personal choices.  Leah’s situation forces the reader to question what they would do in the same situation.  And the fact that there have been incidents like this in the news adds a truly chilling edge.  This is a book about today.  Society.  Right now.

Which is why the dystopian thread was the one thing I didn’t like.  It seemed to detract from the purity of the situation – terrified student against terrorising gang.  The events in the school would have had greater impact without it, and it ended up feeling like a device added to allow certain things to be rounded off blamelessly in the last chapter.

The actual ending, however, was excellent.

I don’t think that this is a genre defining book, though I predict some copycat titles are flying towards the shelves as I’m typing this, but it’s certainly genre influencing.

Read and enjoy.  Yippie kay ay …

Royalty free images from freedigitaphotos.net

Interview with Sam Hawksmoor, author of The Repossession and The Hunting

by Julienne Durber

After careers that involved teaching, travel and photography, and working in radio drama in Africa, not to mention being a tour guide in America and Europe Sam Hawskmoor finally committed to writing for real.  The Hunting, the sequel to his debut novel The Repossession is out this week and Sam has kindly agreed to an interview, and has provided a signed copy of The Repossession for us to give away.  Details of how to enter are at the end of the interview.

Note: If you haven't read The Repossession, there are spoilers in the interview, but my (spoiler-free) review is at the end of the post along with the details of how to win a signed copy of The Repossession.

Sam Hawksmoor

The Repossession and The Hunting are both out now in all good bookshops and online.  For more details visit Sam's website.

I found The Repossession extremely gripping from page one, and I particularly the juxtaposition of the small-town community of Spurlake and the huge, sinister Fortransco organisation. What made you choose to set the story in Spurlake, and was it a challenge to weave together the elements of the small-town community with the much broader technological themes?

Spurlake is a composite taking in Hope (where the first Rambo was filmed) and other small places up the Fraser Canyon.  I have long been fascinated by these communities – many of them there following gold and silver rushes a hundred years ago or more.  The landscapes are totally inspiring and yes Fortransco is secreted in the mountains – sinister and sucking the life out of the small towns because it needs all that hydro power to make it work.  Canada is in the forefront of many new 21^st technologies in bioscience and energy so it was no stretch to believe that they could exist there.  The kids are going missing and sadly this is a fact of life in these small towns.  Around 70,000 kids go missing every year in Canada (most thankfully found) but a huge percentage are not – ending up in all kinds of desperate activities in the big cities.  I know from my own nephew and nieces friends just how many aimless kids there are not cutting it, not planning ahead and looking for short cuts (all of whom also grew up in a small BC town). Quickly I might add there are some bright successful kids who are doing well but clearly there is a problem with so many kids needing to escape the family home for one reason or another.

The Repossession

In The Repossession you use some complex theories relating particularly to physics and computer science. Did you have to do a lot of research into the subject, and how much of the science is based on current scientific thinking?

Teleportation is theoretically possible.  Possibly even proven (at the micro level) but of course it is still in its infancy and requires huge computer capacity.  To introduce a note of skepticism I have Rian and Mr Yates discuss it right at the beginning of the book

“All I’m saying, Rian, is that just because someone thought of it, it doesn’t mean it will come true.  Teleportation is bunk.  Pure bunk.  No one will ever beam up Scotty.  It’s impossible.  The future never happened.  There are no aliens and we don’t commute in flying cars.  Star Trek is rubbish science.  Bunk.”

A little trick played on the reader I guess as we discover later Mr Yates has a lot to hide.  Marshall the ex Fortransco employee is there to demonstrate just how dangerous playing with matter transference is.  I felt obliged to let him tell Genie some of the ‘science stuff’ because I think it’s important for the reader to know a: how expensive all this is b: how hard it is to dematerialize someone c: what mistakes can be made.  I was speaking in a school last month and mentioned Star Trek and NONE of the kids had ever heard of it.  Put me in my place I guess.  You can’t assume kids will have seen even the new versions.  But at the root of all this was my question as a teen when I saw Star Trek – who developed this?  How did they ever get anyone to volunteer?

We have an ongoing discussion on Demention looking at how much the inclusion of scientific and technological ideas affects whether a book is marketed more at boys or girls. Did you think about this when first writing The Repossession, and did you subsequently have to remove or expand any of the more technical aspects before publication?

As explained in the previous question – my editor didn’t want too much ‘science or exposition’ in the text but I figured that some kids, girls or boys like to explore the logic of a situation.  I was intriqued with the other kids, Denis, Renée etc who are materializing in Marshall’s house. Ghosts but not dead, suspended in a digital world, maintained on thousands of servers.  All of that had be explained as succinctly as possible – and I was using the Swiss Cern Project as my model.  Chasing Higgs Bosun as just as crazy as teleportation I guess but important to lets kids know that somewhere in the world there is a real project swallowing billions of dollars on pure frontier science – just like the Fortransco project.

As well as the sci-fi elements, there is the strong emotional story between Genie and Rian, the central characters. Did you enjoy writing from both Genie and Rian's perspectives equally or did you naturally lean more towards one or the other?

Hmm, I’d say I was definitely in love with Genie’s character but Rian is the rock she clings to.  I wanted Rian to be flawed, to be more human.  It’s Genie who gets him through illness, keeps him going, but they need each other.  I had a hard tussle when Ri goes to save her near the end because I really didn’t want him to storm in, guns blazing.  There would be a temptation to do that I guess in a movie, but I knew he couldn’t.  He’s just a boy, not James Bond.  He’s going to get his heart broken as he realizes this.

Their relationship is loving, and as romantic as it can be given their circumstances, but you touch on some extremely dark themes within their families and the wider community. Though all valid elements of the story, did you ever worry that some of these themes were too dark for your readers?

No. Going back to the 70,000 kids going missing every year in Canada (it’s a million in the USA and no one even counts how many in the UK).  We have the highest number of kids being fostered in the UK right now.  Things are going wrong in families, kids are suffering, reacting to the recession, or dysfunctional parents who put themselves before their kids.  Readers can perhaps take comfort that they aren’t in this situation themselves but the darkness is out there. Genie and Rian have found each other and together they are ‘safe’ no matter what.  That’s what I was striving for.

And a technical question for all of the aspiring authors who may be reading this. Of all the current YA novels I have read, The Repossession has the most swearing (though all entirely in context) but you barely touch on any level of physical relations between Genie and Rian. Was this a conscious decision on your part or were you influenced by your publishers?

Gosh I don’t even recall any swearing (Pretty sure my editor chopped most of it out) and as for sex… she was Very particular about that not being there. Clearly they are intimate but hey, they are sick most of the time so you’ll just have to figure they do stuff off the page.  (There was a tender scene in the cave after the fire but snip snip…)

The Hunting

The Hunting, the sequel to The Repossession is in the shops now. Can you tell us anything about your future projects? Will we see more of Genie and Rian?

I have a plot for Genie and Rian in a third book. (Spoiler alert they manage to survive The Hunting but don’t come out emotionally unscathed).  I have delivered another book to Hodder – another set in Canada a harrowing post-virus novel.  We shall see what happens.

How can people keep up with your latest news, events, signings etc.?

I update my website from time to time and there’s dates when I’m at a school (Dunhurst 14^th Sept) or bookshop.  I think Chichester Waterstones August 25^th and Woking Waterstones on the 8^th Sept.  In October I’m hoping to sit down and start something new.  That’s when I’m happiest anyway.

Sam Hawksmoor, thank you for the interview.

You are very welcome.

For more information about Sam Hawksmoor visit his website.

Julienne's review of The Repossession by Sam Hawksmoor.


Tackling the emotive subject of disappearing children and examining the extremes of current technological theory, Sam Hawksmoor's first novel, The Repossession, thrills, entertains and disturbs from page one.

It tells the story of Genie and Rian, a couple fighting to escape the small-town attitudes in the isolated community of Spurlake, Canada.  But their escape leads them to a dark, sinister secret that is intertwined with the very community they are fleeing.

In the Repossession, Hawksmoor deftly wraps a tender teen romance in a disturbing vision of the power of corporate-funded technological advances.  Gripping and thought provoking - read it and you will buy the sequel!

The Repossession and The Hunting are both out now.

For more information visit Sam Hawksmoor's website.

WIN A SIGNED COPY

of The Repossession by Sam Hawksmoor

To enter the draw just post a comment below.  Have you read The Repossession?  Do you agree with my review?  Do you want to say something about one of the subjects Sam has touched on in his answers?

For an extra entry, repost on FB or Twitter (and tell us that you have).

So one comment, a FB post and a tweet = three entries to the draw.  Bargain!

Competition closing date - August 31st.  Winner's name will be posted here Sept 3rd.  

Winner to contact us within 7 days using the contact form so that we can arrange postage

And the winner is ... MICHELLE
A huge thanks to everyone who visited and commented
keep an eye out for more giveaways in the future

Dystopian fiction: Science Fiction for Girls?

by Teri Terry

Last week I attended an event, "Worlds of Tomorrow: the rise of SF in children’s and YA fiction". Presented by the UK Society of Authors and Foyles bookshops, in association with the Kitchies Awards, it was moderated by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre with special guests Steve Cole, Kim Lakin-Smith and Moira Young. 

Philip Reeve

Philip Reeve as moderator: Mortal Engines. Need I say more? Okay: also Fever Crumb, Larklight, and new release, Goblins.

Sarah and Steve

And co-moderator Sarah McIntyre, amazing illustrator: spaceships and aliens in picturebook You Can't Eat a Princess.

Moira Young's debut Blood Red Road won the Costa prize; Steve Cole's Astrosaurs are loved by younger readers; Kim Lakin-Smith is a prolific writer of SF for YA and adults.

Kim and Moira

Wow. If the moderators and panel weren't enough of a line up, the audience was sprinkled with authors – myself, Patrick Ness, Bali Rai, Sara Grant, Candy Gourlay, Jeff Norton to name a few. There were enthusiastic readers, bloggers, and librarians, too. 

This started at 7 but let's back up an hour: sat in the Café at Foyles with author buddies Candy Gourlay & Anita Loughrey, we were happy to be unexpectedly joined by Philip Reeve.

L to R: Candy, Anita, and me!

Once I stopped smiling and gazing off into space in a star-struck manner (pardon the pun), a conversation on all the labeling and label dodging that goes on in publishing and bookselling followed. My novel Slated has been referred to as dystopian; then as a futuristic thriller; then back to dystopian. It is set in the future and has future technology in it, yet the words science fiction are avoided. These questions came up in discussion:

Is dystopian fiction science fiction for girls? Is there a difference in what it is, or just in what it is called? 

Later when all the seats were filled and everyone listening, these were the questions in my mind.

One of the topics of discussion: publishers and booksellers seem to edge away from the label science fiction. There seems to be a perception that this label puts people off. 

When I'm writing, I don't focus on classifying my work. Moira Young said much the same about Blood Red Road: she thought she was writing a Western, albeit one set in the future; she didn't think of it as SF.

When I think back to when I first started Slated and was asked what I was working on, I shrank away from calling it science fiction - and this wasn't with any thought at all about what label was good for sales.

Why the hesitation? There is so much that is good about SF: you can make more comments about society by setting it in the future instead of today. As Philip Reeve pointed out, SF shows us in a strange mirror.

I read a lot of SF as a teen and into my 20s, Asimov, Heinlin, basically everything in the SF section of the library. And all that stuff that crossed between SF and fantasy I devoured: Julian May (LOVED Intervention); the Dune series; the Pern books. 

I think at least part of the discomfort I have with the label is a feeling that there is no way I can write SF. Even thinking about it scares me. In my head you have to have advanced science and engineering degrees and be some sort of mad boffin inventor to even attempt it. Yet, give it a different label....sneak up on it, sideways, and....
I've done it.

I wonder now if this is the same thinking behind why publishers and book sellers avoid the label for children's and YA novels - that the word 'science' may put readers off, think they can't cope with it. And hence the wave of current science fiction for YA has been relabeled: some steam punk, some futuristic thrillers; even more, dystopian.

"Dystopia is code for science fiction. It is the science fiction you are allowed to like." Philip Reeve

And OF COURSE dystopian YA isn't just for girls. The majority of readers of YA are girls, though, and many of the dystopian phenomenon feature girl main characters, like Katniss in Hunger Games, Kyla in Slated; many are written by women authors also, where traditional SF seems dominated still by male writers. SF for YA seems, in general, to be more about the characters and story, and less about the science. But the big issues and stories they cover should and do appeal to both sexes.

So, have I answered my questions? At the end of it, I don't care what label my books are given, so long as it gets them into the hands of readers. But I'm thinking I need to embrace my SF roots: it is part of where I came from, and part of where I want to go.

We'd love to hear from you:

Do you think dystopian fiction is SF for girls - or for YA in general? Is it really science fiction in disguise?

Sarah

p.s. I can see if I'm going to get in touch with my inner SF goddess, I need to get me some space boots

Kim & Moira

Special thanks to Candy Gourlay for the photos in this blog, and to Foyles and Neil Jackson for hosting the event. I love Foyles at Charing Cross: if you love books and are in, around or visiting London, go there. It is massive, and the cafe at Foyles is perfect for a few hours writing. And just now I especially love that they have Slated as a staff pick, and let me sign some copies.

If only all the adults were dead... Dystopian YA at the British National Science Fiction Convention

by Teri Terry

Enter to win one of the books featured in this blog! Find out how at the end.

(editor's note: this competition is now closed, but please read on!)

A week ago I went to a dystopian YA panel event at Olympus 2012: the really BIG British National Sci Fi convention. It was my first time at Eastercon. I was a little nervous, but it was weird and wonderful: my kind of place! I got the impression anything goes, and the natives were friendly. Besides, it is hard not to like a place that gives you a mug and an Easter Creme egg.

This is what I was there for: the Dystopian YA panel. Here they are:

From left to right: Caroline Hooton (chair and author-in-waiting), Emma Newman (author of Twenty Years Later), Amanda Rutter (editor with Strange Chemistry Books), Tom Pollock (author of The City's Son - Skyscraper throne, book 1, out in August 2012 ) and Cory Doctorow (author of Little Brother).

They were there to talk about dystopian young adult fiction. Dystopian stories - set in dark future worlds – are in the spotlight now with the release of the Hunger Games movie, based on Suzanne Collins’ novel.

Is dystopian fiction for young adults a new trend, or one we've only just noticed? 

Emma Newman

Emma: it is nothing new, but it has never been marketed in this way before. Also it reflects anxieties of the time. That moment when you look at the world, and think: it’s all rubbish, why aren’t you doing anything?!

Amanda: it is both new, and not new. It is a cyclical trend, but for YA readers who are reading it for the first time now, for them it isn’t a trend. And when they love something, they really love it. They want more.

Tom: it reflects the level of anxiety about the future at the moment; it resonates in a new way.

Cory Doctorow

Cory: it is part of adolescence when you wake up and think the adults have ruined it all. There is a craving for the cosy apocalypse: if only all the adults were dead…

Amanda: getting rid of adults isn’t new, from Enid Blyton to Harry Potter.

Tom: there is a distinction between books where adults disappear, and those where adults are the problem (eg. Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness; Divergent by Veronica Roth). Also there are books where the adults are gone but it isn’t their fault, like Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now: sometimes you are on your own, and just have to cope.

Is the focus in dystopian YA on bringing things down, not rebuilding?

Amanda Rutter

Amanda: it is more about bringing it down. This leaves the reader’s imagination free to think how they’d rebuild things, how things should be.

Cory: rebuilding isn’t dramatic; a well rebuilt society lacks drama

Scott Westerfeld has been quoted as saying: ‘High School is a dystopia.’

Tom Pollock

Tom: Divergent is a metaphor for high school: choose your destiny – pick your A level subjects.

Emma: it is not just High School in the US sense, more it is the internal struggles at this age, not always to do with school culture

Amanda: YA emphasizes issues – making decisions about who you want to be and where you fit in, not just in school, but in everything in life. It reflects adolescent fears that every decision you make is SO important, and affects your life forever.

A question from the audience: why do you write dystopian tales?

Emma: we’ve been sucked into the system and feel disempowered: maybe we’re trying to give ourselves therapy. Anyhow we’re all writing from our unconscious mind.

Amanda: don’t look at dystopian YA in isolation; much of YA is also hopeful where dystopian YA is dark.

Cory: dystopian YA is not necessarily pessimistic.

Amanda: endings are often more open – whether the future will be good or bad. YA is the bravest area of fiction being published today: it doesn’t tread the same old paths.

Emma: YA is popular with adult audiences also: it is fast paced, and stuff happens; vs. adult contemporary literary fiction where nothing happens, it is reflective and boring.

Concluding remarks?

Tom: need more gender neutral covers. Recommends Patrick Ness, Knife of Never Letting Go, and Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now.

Amanda: be brave in choices in YA fiction: try it! YA isn’t all dystopian, try other things for balance.

Caroline (chair): recommends Dark Parties by Sara Grant, and Slated by Teri Terry (honest: she did! I’m not making it up!)

My thoughts on this:

I can speculate how/why my unconscious mind taps into dark, future places, but at the end of it, to me the appeal of stories like Hunger Games, Divergent, How I Live Now to name a few, is all about character, and story. The 'what if' of the world created may be what gets me to pick up the book in the first place, but it is Katniss, Tris and Daisy that keep me there. Take an interesting character, put them in an impossible situation – and have them do something. Even if it doesn’t work out – at least not at first. Surviving impossible odds in a dark world isn’t pessimistic to me at all: it is full of hope.

The giveaway: you pick the prize!

(editor's note: this competition is now closed)

The winner can pick as prize any one of any of the books pictured in this blog - or, if you prefer - the official Olympus 2012 mug (without the creme egg. It's long gone).

To enter, leave a comment below, saying which prize you will pick if you win - and any other comments you'd like to share about this event - and follow this blog if you aren’t already. If you tweet it as well, mention that in your comment; you’ll get an extra entry.

Open internationally. This closes at noon UK time on April 30. The winner chosen from the comments using a random number generator will be posted here, and then they have 7 days to contact us with their details before another winner will be chosen. Good luck!