Posted by Phil on September 27, 2012 – 4:56 pm
It’s So You Created a Wormhole’s United Kingdom release day. We’re very excited, primarily because we have a UK representative on the Wormhole team — Aled Lewis, the book’s illustrator. Working with Aled was kind of spectacular; he’s a phenomenal artist, and what’s more, he knew exactly what weirdness we were talking about, every single time we gave started talking weirdness at him.
The search for an illustrator was one of the early components of the book after we got our contract, but it still took a while to find the right person for the job. In the meantime, co-writer best friend Nick and I had been envisioning an illustrated guidebook akin to The Boy Scout Handbook since the original conception of the book. A lot of stuff in time travel needs illustration, and easily some of the funniest stuff in the book is in the graphics, not the prose.
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Posted by Phil on September 26, 2012 – 7:47 pm
Fiancée Caitlin brought to my attention an io9 article titled “Why Time Travel Stories Should Be Messy,” and I found author Charlie Jane Anders’s view of the subject pretty well in line with my own. In fact, it seems like she’s been having the same thoughts that co-writer best friend Nick and I had several years ago that caused us to write a book.
The premise of the article is that the best time travel stories are the ones that don’t wrap themselves up neatly as being closed-loop instances of time travel. That is to say, they’re not of the variety of stories such as Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” or The Terminator; the best stories are not those in which the future is antecedent to the past and the actions of the protagonists are preordained.
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Posted by Phil on September 25, 2012 – 2:26 pm
I try to do lists on Tuesdays, and I haven’t been doing much lately but watching movies and playing horror video games for the various projects I’m doing at Game Front. But I have caught a number of cool time travel films since the last time I did a list about time travel movies, so I figured I’d throw a few more your way.
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Posted by Phil on September 20, 2012 – 4:36 pm
Back before the release of So You Created a Wormhole, we whipped together a video promoting it. The two-day shoot was fast and a lot of fun, and it was largely possible at all because of the help of friends.
The primary thrust of the video, we decided early on, was that we didn’t want to do anything typical with our trailer, and thus we decided to create something that existed within the fiction of the work. So You Created a Wormhole isn’t technically a work of fiction, but it does exist within a fictional framework — the narration assumes some degree of internal fiction, and so we subsist with a sort of narrative, even if it’s not readily apparent.
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Posted by Phil on September 17, 2012 – 11:51 am
Despite a great deal of scrambling that occurred in the morning hours of Sept. 16, our So You Created a Wormhole panel Sunday at Stan Lee’s Comikaze went swimmingly. It was great fun.
But the hours between 6 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. were moderately horrific.
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Posted by Phil on September 15, 2012 – 12:31 pm
Reminder: Co-writer best friend Nick Hurwitch and I are doing a So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel panel at 11 a.m. Sunday in Room 301B at Stan Lee’s Comikaze, taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
You should come! Ticketing information is here.
We’ll be talking about time travel safety during the panel, signing books, and answering questions about everything Marty McFly to games journalism, from getting a book published to what it’s like writing on actual video games. Because Nick does that.
AND! We’re going to have some giveaways. Non-book giveaways. Exclusive, gently used, time travel item giveaways, direct from QUAN+UM. The picture above is a hint. No, the prize is not a cat or a cat-related item.
Posted by Phil on September 12, 2012 – 10:10 am
Sometimes, if you just ask for things, you get them.
That’s the case with Stan Lee’s Comikaze, a Los Angeles-based comic convention taking place this weekend. I’m pleased to announce that Nick and I will be taking part in a So You Created a Wormhole panel at 11 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 16.
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Posted by Phil on September 4, 2012 – 1:02 pm
Little bit slow coming off the holiday weekend today, so I figured I’d just drop a little reading list action your way.
This particular list is of a few things I enjoyed while doing research for So You Created a Wormhole and beyond, and if you’re already a time travel fiction fan, this likely isn’t new to you. If you’re not, however, these are some that are worth your attention for various reasons. I intend to drop lots more things in posts like this one. This is just a quick post because I’m a bit time-limited.
Without further adieu, three time travel stories I think you should read: Read More »
Posted by Phil on August 29, 2012 – 11:52 am
Co-writer best friend Nick Hurwitch and I have been doing quite a bit of book promotion since April when So You Created a Wormhole first hit shelves. A lot of that has concerned interviews, a few signings, and a lot of social media.
Oh, and we were on TV that one time.
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Posted by Phil on August 24, 2012 – 9:14 am
Slenderman freaks me the hell out.
I’m not sure what it is, exactly, about the notion of the Internet-invented urban legend. There’s just something about him. Primarily it is, perhaps, that he’s an infiltrator; that he appears at will, bends the laws of reality, and pursues relentlessly his victims. Also he has no face. And he’s like some kind of weird spider thing.
Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. If you’re not familiar, the Slenderman is that guy up there — a creature invented for a contest on the forums at SomethingAwful.com. He’s a creature of sorts, faceless, who seems to have dominion over children and apparently abducts them. Some or all of the rules of the creature are subject to change depending on which interpretation you’re talking about, and at this point there have been a few. Still, there seem to be a few steadfast elements: the Slenderman is tall, man-shaped although not a man, and keyed on sight. If you see the Slenderman, he will hunt you down. Your fate is sealed.
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