SL Huang wrote a book that turns math into a goddamn superpower, which is a thing I’d love to have because I have the math skills of a stump. I love too her journey for this book, as it is now released with Tor in a bee-yoo-tee-ful hardcover edition that you totally want. For the record, here’s what I said about this book: “This book lines up like a perfect, elegant equation — it’s fast, furious, and adds up to one of the coolest, most crackin’ reads this year.” So, here she is to talk about the supremely rad Zero Sum Game:

* * *

Coming off of a pretty damaging week in the news cycle, I was having a difficult time writing this post. I finally said to my partner, “what on earth should I write about?” and gave her a list of topics I was considering. She said, “You know what? Right now, I want to read about something fun.”

So I’m going to talk about math.

WAIT WAIT WAIT DON’T RUN AWAY!

I’m going to talk about math as something that gives me joy, and how much it matters that we put what gives us joy into our books. Because it does. It matters. It’s important.

People often do a double-take when I say my antiheroine’s violent superpower is math. Then they see I have a degree in it from MIT and they kind of nod and say, “ah!” It fits with the old chestnut of writing what you know, sure—but I’m not only writing what I know. I’m writing what I love.

Even before I chose it as my major, math has always been something that has delighted me on a personal, visceral level. Like burying your face in a cat’s fur—that’s what I want to do with math. I remember in college sometimes curling up with my favorite Apostol textbooks and falling to sleep on them, just because they were freakin’ comforting to have next to me.

One memorable time, I blurted, “Antiderivatives give me orgasms!” and someone wrote it up on our dorm whiteboard, where it stayed for about six months, in infamy. Later, my friend and I wanted to get T-shirts with our favorite topological space, because it’s a COOL SPACE and it makes me grin and gives me warm fuzzies and if you catch me at a con and ask me about it I will squeal and tell you JUST WHY IT’S SO COOL.

(Most people laugh and tell me I’m cute when I do this. A small percentage back slowly away.)

Just like any other pursuit, even for people who love it, math can be horribly hard—I’ve had struggles with it throughout my studies, often. But at the core has always been that delight.

So in interviews, when people ask me why I chose to write a superheroine whose power is being good at math, my answer is always the same: Because I love math. It gives me joy. It makes me want to jump up and click my heels together. And I want to share that joy with others—even people who personally hate math, I want them to be able to read and glory in an entertaining ride, just for the few hours they’re with me, and say afterwards, holy mackerel I hate math but that was SO FLAT-OUT FUN.

Right now especially, I feel like we need that. You need that, I need that, we all need that.

When it feels like the world is burning down around us—both metaphorically and literally, because holy hell climate change and I can’t even hold that in my HEAD—it’s so easy to feel helpless. Utterly powerless. And, as a writer—it’s so easy to feel like our writing is pointless, like why are we even crawling up another day and banging down fake words on a keyboard when so much else is all going wrong.

Sometimes we can answer that bleakness by writing our rage—which I fully, thoroughly encourage. But I also want to encourage everyone out there, everyone who writes, or reads, or reviews… goddammit, let’s also write our joy. Claim it, celebrate it, blow it into the book marketplace for everyone else to escape into also. Don’t let the abusers in power take that away from us, too. Dig down and find the good things that matter to you, that make you want to laugh out loud or dance and twirl or give someone bone-crushing hugs—and grab those things with both hands and claim them and celebrate them. Whether it’s bees or languages or feminism or your family, let’s take those moments of glee together and share them with each other. Let’s glory in all our vast diversity of geekery and passions, and remind each other of all the reasons, small and large, why our world is worth fighting for.

Find your joy. Write your joy. That, too, is resistance.

* * *

S. L. Huang has a math degree from MIT and is a weapons expert and professional stuntwoman who has worked in Hollywood on Battlestar Galactica and a number of other productions. Her novels include the Cas Russell series (formerly known as Russel’s Attic). Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Nature, Daily Science Fiction, and The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016.

S.L. Huang: Website | Twitter

Zero Sum Game: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Terry Brooks is legendary. Legacy. OG. So, when Terry Brooks wants to pop by your website to talk about his new book, you don’t simply say yes, you throw him the keys to the blog with such ardor and glee you nearly break the sound barrier. Here is Mister Brooks to talk about his newest, Street Freaks.

* * *

When I write a book I am always writing about more than the story you read. Street Freaks is no exception – and yet at the same time it is. Almost my entire life’s work has been in the field of fantasy, save for a couple of movie adaptations and a book on writing. Street Freaks is different. You might want to call it science fiction, but since my actual knowledge of anything scientific could be measured in a thimble, I’ve coined a different term. I call the book a futuristic thriller.

On a quick reading, I think you would agree with this designation. But there are other aspects to the book that transcend both ‘thriller’ and ‘futuristic’ – enough so that either or both terms are really not sufficient to describe it. There is a kind of weird and poignant love story. There is a vision of the future that suggests the United States will break apart and become the United Territories. There are transmats (aka matter transporters) by which we can now send our bodies to any point on the planet. Vehicles fly, but throwback versions of dragsters and muscle cars from an earlier time still race on the composite surfaces of city streets. There are elite police units with a license to kill.

More important to me than all of these are my efforts to address recognizable social issues that exist today and will almost certainly exist in the future in spite of all our efforts to change the culture. They will wear new clothes and speak different languages and morph into different forms, but they will still be with us. Prejudice is not about to go away because we decry the inhumanity and unfairness of it. Efforts to control people through government oversight are not going to become outdated or shunned by revelations of misuse. Prejudices centering on race, sexual orientation, nationality and religion are here to stay. They have been with us since the first humans walked the earth, and they are with us still. If you want to address the problems they pose, you have to come to terms with the reason they persist.

My solution to such conundrums has always been to write a story.

I decided to write this particular story as a way to showing how things might evolve, but not with any intention of solving the problem. I wanted to tell a story about how I saw the future and how those issues might evolve into something different than what exists today – but not so different that we wouldn’t recognize them for what they are.

So let me start at the beginning, because it took a long time to put the bones of the story together with sufficient clarity that I could attempt to write it. I can trace the nescient stages back to when my grandson was participating in a Christmas pageant, and my wife and I were there to lend support. It had been years since I had gone to something like this – our kids long since grown – and what startled me was how different the audience was. It wasn’t all one race, all of the same sexual orientation, or all family-traditional; it was a United Nations of people and families of every sort. I remember thinking that this was the future – not only of this state or this country but also of the world. Technology in communications, social media and travel was making it possible for a One World future to become a reality.

But what were the challenges to making this happen?

Prejudices, of course. All sorts of prejudices.

I decided to write about how prejudice of any form would always provide a challenge to common decency and the resilience of the human spirit. I wanted to write about what other prejudices might supplant the ones of race, nationality, sexuality and religion that were slowly becoming less and less of a hindrance to people understanding one another and accepting their differences.

One thing led to another. What, I asked myself, will be the prejudice of the future, and what will bring it about? The answer seemed obvious. We are engaged in genetic studies, in exploring new ways of rebuilding bodies and minds, of pushing the frontiers of expanding robotics, and of finding ways in which we can extend and even create life. Many would view such progress unfavorably. Successful creation of hybrid humans would create a new form of prejudice, which would join quite comfortably with those already firmly established.

So what if we have humans who are entirely synthetic? What if we can build robots that are as capable and intelligent as humans? What if we can repair damaged humans by using composite materials and synthetic organs to make them whole again? What if we were able to grow humans in test tubes and through genetic manipulation?

What if a human boy and a synthetic girl fell in love?

What if the boy wasn’t sure he was human after all?

Science and science fiction alike have posited as much for decades. Why couldn’t it one day become a reality of our lives?

Many would not like the idea. Many would proclaim it unacceptable. There would be prejudice and anger and mistrust directed towards these ‘fake’ people. They would be marginalized everywhere. They would band together as all marginalized people tend to do.

And what might their detractors call them.

Tweeners.

Freaks.

Or, more specifically for the purposes of my story, Street Freaks.

And these not-quite-entirely-humans would become the heroes of my story.

I was up and running. And I don’t think I’m done yet.

* * *

Terry Brooks: Website

Street Freaks: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

SoooooOOOOooo, in case you hadn’t noticed, yesterday’s news cycle was…

Uhhh.

Ahem.

I mean it was?

Hrrrgh.

You know, it was…

*gesticulates wildly*

*makes a face*

*barfs in mouth a little*

*sweats*

WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY IS, hey, I bet you need an Escape Hatch, however, temporary, to escape the horrific amusement park ride to which we all seem irreparably strapped to, and I am now here to deliver you that precious escape in the form of —

*thunder rumbles*

ME AND ANTHONY CARBONI TALKING ABOUT HOW MUCH WE LOVE THOR: RAGNAROK. AHHHHHHH. AHHHHHH. EEEEEE. OHHHHH.

Yep, that’s right, the first episode of Ragnatalk is live.

“The Son of Odin as a Custom Van.”

You just click that link with your clicky finger, and hear us talk about the first ten minutes of the movie. Every episode is exactly that — us, talking about how even more amazing one ten-minute-increment is than the last ten-minute-increment. That link too contains a number of wonderful subscription options for you, like iTunes and such. So!

HIE THEE HENCE. Take some time to escape, if only a little.

Art by the unstoppable Lar deSouza!

*cues up some Zeppelin*

Let’s do this.