Okay, so that sounds a little Star Trekky, I know. I am a big fan of Star Trek, especially the TV series, The Next Generation. (Most of the others, you know, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and/or Enterprise, I never did get as into.)
Maybe it was Captain Picard that really spoke to me, or how you can watch any episode in any order and understand the story, but I enjoyed Star Trek: The Next Generation. I know the graphics, and technologies, and special effects aren't as grandiose as today's standards (and the films coming out now!), but it was this series that first sparked my fascination with space travel.
Now, I have yet to pen a space travel novel, but I absolutely love novels set in space. There's something equally exciting and perplexing about being trapped in space. Yes, I view space as a place where I'd be trapped. There's no air out there!
Films like Gravity make me glad I'm on earth, watching as someone else endures the brutalities of extreme temperature and lack of oxygen. I've also enjoyed novels like Across the Universe by Beth Revis, These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan, and others.
It seems as though novels set in space are a bit of a trend right now, a "hot thing." I really do think it's one of the final frontiers, where the possibilities of new worlds, new species, new ideas, is endless. Maybe that's what draws authors and readers to write and read novels set in space.
How do you feel about space? Novels set in space? Space travel?
So there's been some excitement recently, what with the announcement of the Newberry, Caldecott, and Printz awards. The 2011 Printz was given to SHIP BREAKER, a fabulous young adult science fiction novel.
2011 Printz Winner
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group
In Ship Breaker, near a drowned New Orleans ravaged by hurricanes and global warming, Nailer and his young crew eke out a meager existence by scavenging materials on the ship-littered coast.
“This taut, suspenseful novel is a relentless adventure story featuring nuanced characters in thought-provoking conflicts. Bacigalupi artfully intertwines themes of loyalty, family, friendship, trust and love,” said Printz Award Committee Chair Erin Downey Howerton.
Another fabulous young adult novel has achieved acclaim. Beth Revis's ACROSS THE UNIVERSE debuted at #7 on the New York Times bestseller list. Congrats Beth!
I've read both SHIP BREAKER and ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, and they are brilliant examples of great young adult science fiction. What have you read lately in the sci fi genre that is paving the way with greatness?
A glimpse of the Godspeed's
blueprints from Beth's website.
Time to state the obvious (and get my geek on). Space is big, and it takes a really long time to get anywhere good. Science fiction writers have been dealing with this distance thing for as long as they’ve been dreaming of colonization and galactic empires. Some writers use some sort of FTL (faster than light) drive. (Think warp drive on Star Trek). Some (Star Wars, Stargate / SG-1, Bablyon-5) use hyperspace to get from point A to point B quickly. Others embrace the fact that it does take a while to get where they’re going. Beth takes this old school approach in ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.
The Godspeed is a generational sleeper ship. The colonists are frozen for the 300-year (or so) voyage. Meanwhile generations of crew are born, live, work, and die on the Godspeed without ever even seeing the stars. The colonists aren’t supposed to wake up until they reach their destination. However, Amy is woken up early and experiences the society that has developed over the centuries on the ship. (We could talk all day about the society on the Godspeed, but I don’t want to give anything away. )
So let’s talk about freezing people for the long sleep. Cryonics is the science of freezing living matter—with the aim of ultimately thawing it out. Alive and well. But, you can’t just dip someone in a vat of liquid nitrogen and hope for the best. Cells get damaged. (That is, you get a hell of a case of freezer burn.) Instead, the process (at least to date) involves pumping the body with a cryoprotectant—human antifreeze—to protect the tissue from damage in the freezing process. Then the temperature of the liquid is lowered. (This is actually called vitrification rather than freezing.)
Beth paints a vivid picture of the experience. A lot of fiction imagines the cryo process something akin flash freezing peas. Someone flips a switch, and then you wake up a thousand years later as fresh as the day went into the freezer. (Think Fry on Futurama. Or Woody Allen in Sleeper) In AtU, Beth does not gloss over how it must feel to be vitrified.
Hassan squeezed the bag of blue goo again. A line of blood trickled from under Mom’s teeth where she was biting her lip.
“This stuff, it’s what makes the freezing work.” Ed spoke in a conversational tone, like a baker talking about how yeast makes bread rise. “Without it, little ice crystals form in the cells and split open the cell walls. This stuff makes the cell walls stronger, see? Ice don’t break ’em.” He glanced down at Mom. “Hurts like a bitch going in, though.”
And this is just Amy watching her mom go through it. The process is agonizing for Amy, and the her poor neurons are still firing during her long journey. Check out the AtU trailer for a taste of how Beth so adeptly handles this part:
(And yes, that’s Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Under narrating!)
So, kudos to Beth for tackling the “reality” of the vitrification process head-on. It’s one of the many things that makes ACROSS THE UNIVERSE great science fiction—and an epic story.
So, you may be wondering how far-fetched (or far in the future) is the whole sleeper ship—or cryonics thing in general? You’ve probably heard about people wanting to be frozen after they die. (The whole Walt Disney thing is a myth, BTW. Baseball great Ted Williams, however, was indeed frozen—and evidently his body was not treated well.) There are a few places in the world (Alcor, Cryonics Institute) that will freeze you or your pet immediately following death. (In the US, you have to be legally dead before being frozen. Sorry, vitrified.) But no one is even close to being able to revive a corpsicle, let alone a still living “sleeper.” If you’re interested in the freezing process these places use, check out this Channel 5 documentary.
Given what you know now, would you sign up to take a sleeper ship across the universe? Or if you had an incurable (now) disease, would you want to be frozen with the hope of being revived--and hopefully cured a few centuries from now?
This week is the epic launch of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis! I'm starting off the awesome, and throughout this week, there will be much more to come, with Beth herself wrapping it up for us on Friday.
First up: The trailer for ACROSS THE UNIVERSE says everything.
Summary: A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.
Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awake on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into a brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.
Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone—one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship—tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn’t do something soon, her parents will be next.
Now, Amy must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there’s only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.
Hardcover, 400 pages
Published January 11th 2011 by Razorbill
ISBN 1595143971 (ISBN13: 9781595143976)
Audio Book also available:
Audio CD, 8 pages
ISBN 014242899X (ISBN13: 9780142428993)
Oh. My. Heck. Doesn't that sound amazing?
Well, it is. I've read it and it will blow your mind. Blow your mind, people! You can get signed copies (after tomorrow) and check out other awesomeness on Beth's book page.
My Twitter Review: With strong storytelling, brilliant writing, creepy characters, and a budding romance, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE has everything to satisfy readers. (Okay, so sue me. I have one extra character.)
Make sure you check out the official website for Across the Universe. I'm pretty sure there's going to be something amazing happening there tomorrow... And in case you haven't read the first chapter, you can read it there.
As if you're already not excited enough, Beth is having an amazing contest in celebration of Across the Universe. Click here for full details.
Congrats, Beth! Here's to a successful launch week!
So, who's had a chance to read Across the Universe? Let us know in the comments (no spoilers, please!). Who is going to die if tomorrow doesn't come like RIGHT THIS SECOND?? We wanna know that too.
