Lauren Beukes

I’ve been dying to share the Zoo City cover artwork by the amazing (and amazingly humble and generous and nice) John Picacio for ages and ages and ages. Trust me, AGES. And I’m terrible at keeping things in.

So I’ve very happy it’s finally out there in the world (and here on BookSA, which is technically part of the world) and it’s been getting some great reactions already.

Here’s a round-up of some of them.

Dave Brendan’s SciFi and Fantasy Webblog was first to break the news.

Stomping On Yeti on how newer genre imprints are more forward-thinking in their publicity and art departments (even if Patrick preferred the Moxyland cover) with “bonus points for avoiding any potential Liar-esque RaceFail. (refer Mandy Watson’s upcoming story for more on this).

And here’s John Picacio on the making-of.

As for what Zoo City is? Here’s Angry Robot’s blurb:

Zinzi has a talent for finding lost things.

To save herself, she’s got to find the hardest thing of all:

The truth.

FILE UNDER: Modern Fantasy [Black magic noir / Pale Crocodile / Spirit Guardians / Lost stars]

It’ll be out in June 2010 worldwide.

This is not a happy story. It’s not a story at all. If you can, please help.

Thomokazie Zazayokwe, 23, died on Sunday morning.

She was murdered four months ago.

Three weeks ago, her mother, Gertrude Mdelele stood in my kitchen and told me proudly, ‘I am not Gertie today, I am detective Gertie,’ because she’d caught the bastard who did it when the police couldn’t.

We didn’t know then that Thomo would die from her wounds, that the police would lose the culprit.

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I have a wicked little festive vampire story over at Paul Cornell’s blog (novelist, comics writer and Dr Who scribe).

Here’s a taster…

…There were more crashing sounds from the roof. A clatter and a long scraping sound, as if of the world’s largest sword was being drawn from, like, the world’s largest scabbard.
‘It’s that gorgeous werewolf of yours again!’ Edward snarled. ‘This time I swear, nothing you can say will prevent me from tearing his lupine throat out.’
There was another thump and a bump. Now they seemed to be coming from inside the walls. I clung to Edward in terror. And then there was a terrible crash and the sound of something big and rustly and adorned with tiny bells being knocked over. The Christmas tree. Dad and I had hung the decorations this afternoon before he went on shift. Well, I hung the decorations and he just watched and drank a beer, until I tripped over a chair and he had to help in case I broke a leg on a bauble or something.
‘The living room!’ I yelped. Edward burst through my bedroom door and tore downstairs. I limped after him, still holding the gold box.

I emerged into the living room to find Edward still snarling, but with a confused, impenetrable glaze in his eyes, looking down at a large pudgy guy with a beard and a red suit, covered in a dusting of soot and sitting among the remains of our Christmas tree. There was a large bulging sack beside him.
Santa Claus stood up and dusted himself off. He seemed pissed off. ‘A Christmas tree right in front of the fireplace? Really? Do even you know what kind of fire hazard that is?’
‘We weren’t planning to light it…’ I said, defensively.
‘Who are you? What do you want in this house?’ Edward moved towards Santa, his teeth bared, his fists clenched at his sides. He was restraining himself for now, but only barely.
Santa shook out his hat and replaced it jauntily on his head. ‘Hey there, I’m Santa. Although you might also know me as Father Christmas, Grandfather Frost, Papá Noel or Baba Chaghaloo. And I’m here to see the little lady. So buzz off, Twinkles.’
‘“Twinkles?”’ Edward said, incredulously. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
Santa sighed. ‘Didn’t we just go through this? Is your brain made of marble too?’
‘But you’re a myth,’ I muttered.
‘Exactly!’ Santa grinned, ‘And way I hear it, Bella Swan, you’re practically the village bicycle for mythical creatures – romantically at any rate. That’s why I’m here!’
‘What?’ I was dazed by the accusation. ‘Who said that? I’ve never even had sex.’
‘That’s what I hear too. Don’t worry, I can help you with that.’
It was too much for Edward. With a strangled noise he leapt at Santa, his lips pulled back to reveal his fangs, bright as steel. I screamed. The gold box dropped at my feet…

Read the full story here.

So, after trying to take over Equatorial Guinea, South Africa’s dogs of war have got off with the equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper slap on the nose and the promise to piss on Mark Thatcher’s leg for orchestrating the whole thing.

We could arrest the sorry bastards and try them again the moment they cross the border, but that would be a waste. After all,  these are some well-trained puppies! They could be put to all kinds of uses rather than being impounded on charges of trying to take over other people’s dictatorships.

I mean, I could do with a private mercenary army. Just think how useful it would be to be surrounded by burly men with automatic weapons. No-one would ever push in front of me in the supermarket again!

Blackwater Mercs (almost as good as Simon Mann's)

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A huge thank you for everyone who took the time to write a story inspired by some aspect of Moxyland for the Authonomy/Moxy competition.

The stories were fantastic, from canny perspective switches on major events in Moxyland to sheer insanity I don’t know if I would have come up with if you shot me full of hallucinogens and locked me in one of those floaty sensory deprivation tank things. I’d often catch myself grinning at stories, at the wild inventiveness.

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Judging the Moxyland short story competition has been hellish.

It started off well enough, getting to read 52 stories and pretending like it was work? Especially when those stories had DNA in common with Moxyland and all the things that excite me? Brilliant!

But then I had to start culling them down to a longlist. And then, god help me, a short list, and then the final three. Just three. It nearly killed me. Curse you all.

I looked for stories with smarts, that were playful or surprising, but also had bite. If they found a sneaky way to bring in Moxyland’s characters or major events or ensure that it was very much at one with the universe, so much the better.

Generally, the calibre of the writing was very good, and even when it wasn’t or when the writers faltered and couldn’t quite deliver on their premise, the ideas fizzed and popped like sherbet laced with C4, from a live guitar that had to be tamed to nano-goo sex dolls to body armour made of meat.

I’d strongly encourage the writers who didn’t make the shortlist to rethink and rewrite their stories – the potential is there. (Steffan Evans, Adrian Ellis, Poppet and Rolland get honourable mentions for kick-ass ideas that need more work)

Without further ado  - or any more bitching about the talent out there - here is the shortlist.

(These stories are all available to be read on Authonomy as the cherry-picked entries at the top of the comments section).

Winners to be announced on Tuesday.

SHORTLIST (in alphabetical order by author)

1. Khanyi by 821202 – a cunningly brilliant perspective switch on Moxyland’s gallery scene

2. Raw Materials by Anitero – Death and architecture in Manila with a dose of brand sabotage.

3. @nother by Bryan Steele – The story about the online equivalent of the repo man, booting users and shutting down illegal accounts, seamlessly latches onto Moxyland.

4. The TICK-TOCK-MAN by B. Saint V – a queasy mash of identity and art with beautiful characterisations and explosive results.

5. No Cure For Cancer by Decca – A secret nano-cure for cancer and reality TV are not a good combination in this raucous fast-paced frolic of a story.

6. Nostrum by Duffy5000 – Before Kendra’s Ghost, there was another lurking in Foo Bear’s tai-chi classes. A sly, smart tale about what’s wrong (or right) with the kids today.

7. Digem 1.0 by Keith Harvey – Tobacco industry advertising at its finest and vilest with compelling characters and a real sense of Cape Town.

8. Land of the Blind by Newmouse – Secret drug trials, disturbing art, a working class stiff stricken with epilepsy, virtual espionage and dodgy dealings and an anti-corp struggle hero who is going down.

9. Shade by TobyOne – When even sunshine has become a commodity, Startek finds a unique solution to dealing with an unwanted intruder in their Kalahari solar plant. A provocative, relevant and spiky story.

10. Inatec Biologica Inc by Unpresuming – one possible answer to the burning question of what Toby did next.

Some great reading I picked up today:

1. Salon.com on Vooks (video books) cos, you know, YouTube and all that are killing literature! And the only way to win is to fight back with ill-conceived bastard hybrids: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/10/06/vooks/

...The unfortunately named vooks consist of text and video clips produced in concert to form integrated works. You can read/watch them with a Web browser, but they’re primarily intended for mobile devices like the iPhone and meant to win over those people you see on the subway or in airports frantically pounding their thumbs through endless rounds of Frogger instead of reading a David Baldacci novel. The spectacle of people not reading in public has become a motivating trauma for many publishing executives of late. Brian Tart, publisher of Dutton Books, told the Times’ Motoko Rich, “You see people watching these three-minute YouTube videos and using social networks, and there is an opportunity here to bring in more people who might have thought they were into the new media world.”

And sums up with:

Somehow, the old-school format of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romance series hasn’t alienated the vast army of Twi-hards, most of whom, by the way, qualify as digital natives, the generation who supposedly have no patience for print. These are also the same kids who buried themselves in 500-page Harry Potter novels for entire weekends not long ago. Some even claim to find printed books a welcome break from staring at screens all day.

2. Why Science Fiction Authors Just Can’t Win cos, you know, Orwell and Vonnegut and Dick and Atwood and Ballard aren’t really science fiction. They couldn’t be. Because, well, science fiction is crap. http://sffmedia.com/books/science-fiction-books/417-why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant-win.html

…Just keep insisting that everything science fiction is tacky, silly and sad and ridicule its creators at every opportunity. Disown the genre as emphatically and publicly as possible. As a writer there are tremendous advantages to avoiding the label science fiction, and Margret Atwood has successfully done that throughout her career and gained literary credibility in exchange.

In her defence, Atwood’s apparent fear that once the label “science fiction” is attached to a novel the literary establishment will treat it differently seems well founded.

“I am going to stick my neck out and just say it,” begins Sven Birkerts’ review of Atwood’s science fiction novel, the Oryx and Crake, “science fiction will never be Literature with a capital ‘L’” (New York Times, 18 May, 2003).

3. Plot Advice from a Star Trek Role-Playing Manual. Neatest narrative structure guide I’ve seen in a long time as contemplated by Dan Wells, author of I Am Not A Serial Killer, cos you know, Spock would totally take that Robert McKee guy. http://www.fearfulsymmetry.net/

I think that Roleplaying Game supplements have some of the best story structure advice I’ve ever read… because the games themselves are based on the idea of storytelling; teaching you how to tell good stories is, in a sense, the very product they’re selling.

I’ve always known this, but it didn’t occur to me until recently just how good some of this RPG advice is, and how much I rely on it. A week or so ago someone asked me what my favorite “story structure” book was, presumably hoping to have some kind of deep conversation about, I don’t know, Robert McKee or Orson Scott Card. I thought about it, determined to give the best answer I could, and realized that the only “structure” book I keep next to my desk is an RPG supplement: the Star Trek Roleplaying Game Narrator’s Guide by Decipher.

I love this book; I should probably put together a workshop or something for a convention. Put simply, it’s a twist on 3-act format with seven specific points: hook, plot turn 1, pinch, midpoint, pinch, plot turn 2, and resolution.

Lately, it feels like reality has plunged down the rabbit hole, lurched through the looking glass, and tumbled us into Backwards Land where everything is topsy-turvy and logic needn’t apply.

It’s the kind of place where sports gets twisted like a pretzel to suit dubious agendas, so a girl accused of being a boy gets bounced around like a hapless hedgehog in a mad game of political croquet where everyone’s coming out swinging.

The one-time mother of the nation has turned Queen of Hearts, nurturing melanin-deprived conspiracy theories and yelling ‘Off with their media heads!’ at the slightest provocation.

Mad Hatter Malema is throwing madcap tea party press conferences and serving up steaming hot cups of bile topped with a froth of racism and chocolate hate-speech sprinkles. His tea party pals hand out big sticks and party-loyalty blindfolds so they can wish a very merry un-revolution to you.

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The crime stats are out! Murder is down! Everything else is up! And it’s time for an all new round of shoot-to-kill populist propaganda! It’s a good thing I’ve taken the time to watch a LOT of cop shows and movies to figure out what the South Africa Police Force (neé Service) really needs:

1. Good coffee (doughnuts optional).

Most cops get their caffeine fix for night shifts at 24-hour garages where the beverages served in paper cups more closely resemble liquid tar than coffee. Serve up good, free coffee and cops will be more alert and more efficient! (Reducing the number of double shifts worked and paying proper overtime also good.)

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A year ago today, a pterodactyl kitten thing had the sky of her wombiverse sliced open and was brought out into the world, howling in outrage. It was a shock; this yowling bloody creature lifted up from behind a screen like a cheap magic trick - and the doctor claiming it was our daughter.

But we took her and bundled her up against my chest and she was cute and snuffling and mewling and so tiny Matthew’s hands shook for half an hour afterwards the first time he had to dress her.

The hospital were kind, but schmoozy (blame a family connection to head office). On day two, fried on a combo of sleep deprivation and painkillers and my own fumbling, humbling incompetence, I was trying to breastfeed when a nurse popped in to say, with great reverence, that Mr Semen was here to see us.

‘I think Mr Semen has already been,’ I snapped, indicating the baby.

It turned out to be Mr Seaman, the hospital administrator. He wished us well. I wished him gone so I could focus on the overwhelming job at hand - or rather, boob.

Those early weeks were hard, like concrete, like string theory, like Wolverine’s claws.

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