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Jason Heller

Fiction and Excerpts [2]
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Fiction and Excerpts [2]

Taft 2012 (Excerpt)

, || He is the perfect presidential candidate. Conservatives love his hard-hitting Republican résumé. Liberals love his passion for peaceful diplomacy. The media can't get enough of his larger-than-life personality. Regular folks can identify with his larger-than-life physique. And all the American people love that he's an honest, hard-working man who tells it like it is. There's just one problem: He is William Howard Taft . . . and he was already U.S. president a hundred years ago. So what on earth is he doing alive and well and considering a running mate in 2012?

Five Mechanical Animals Across SFF and History

For as long as humans have built machines, we’ve sought to emulate animals with machinery. Clockwork animals have long been playthings of royalty. Replacing animal power with steam power was one of the catalysts of the Industrial Revolution, and we still measure an engine’s might by horsepower. In our new anthology, Mechanical Animals, we asked some of our favorite authors of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and weird fiction to conjure their own unique and startling visions of the mechanized animal, be it in the distant, imagined past or some biomechanical future. But there are many real-life examples and archetypes of this trope throughout history that helped inspire us—and here are five we’ve particularly pondered.  Read More »

Strange Stars

As the 1960s drew to a close, and mankind trained its telescopes on other worlds, old conventions gave way to a new kind of hedonistic freedom that celebrated sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Derided as nerdy or dismissed as fluff, science fiction rarely gets credit for its catalyzing effect on this revolution. In Strange Stars, Jason Heller recasts sci-fi and pop music as parallel cultural forces that depended on one another to expand the horizons of books, music, and out-of-this-world imagery.

In doing so, he presents a whole generation of revered musicians as the sci-fi-obsessed conjurers they really were: from Sun Ra lecturing on the black man in the cosmos, to Pink Floyd jamming live over the broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing; from a wave of Star Wars disco chart toppers and synthesiser-wielding post-punks, to Jimi Hendrix distilling the “purplish haze” he discovered in a pulp novel into psychedelic song. Of course, the whole scene was led by David Bowie, who hid in the balcony of a movie theater to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, and came out a changed man…

If today’s culture of Comic Con fanatics, superhero blockbusters, and classic sci-fi reboots has us thinking that the nerds have won at last, Strange Stars brings to life an era of unparalleled and unearthly creativity—in magazines, novels, films, records, and concerts—to point out that the nerds have been winning all along. Available from Melville House.

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Different Notes, Same Page

In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to describe a specialty in their lives that has nothing (or very little) to do with writing. Join us as we discover what draws authors to their various hobbies, how they fit into their daily lives, and how they inform the author’s literary identity!

It’s so weird for me to think of myself as a writer. It’s not because I suffer from imposter’s syndrome or balk at the term “writer”—it’s because, for much longer than I’ve been a writer, I’ve been a musician.

I’ve been a late bloomer at just about everything in life. I didn’t start writing in earnest until I was thirty, whereas most of the writers I know began in their twenties or earlier. By the same token, I didn’t start playing music in earnest until I was in my twenties, whereas most of the musicians I know began in their teens or earlier. I got into the punk scene in the late ’80s while in high school, and it took me a couple years before one of the basic tenets of punk really hit me: Anyone can do this. So I bought a cheap pawn-shop guitar, stubbornly waved away any offers of instruction, and started bending my fingers into whatever shapes made cool sounds.

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The Dragonlance Reread: Guest Highlord Jason Heller on Raistlin Majere

Part of the joy of rereading Dragonlance is realising how influential and far-reaching they are. Everyone’s read Dragonlance—and, if not, isn’t now the perfect time to start? It is no wonder this series is so influential; it had its sticky claws in all of our childhoods. To demonstrate this, and to give us the occasional week off, we’ve asked some authors and artists and general figures of the fantastic to chime in with guest posts. They’ll take the reins for a post, and talk through what Dragonlance means to them.

Before we start on the second book in the Dragonlance Chronicles, here is Guest Highlord Jason Heller, on why Raistlin is so great.

Caution: unlike our normal reread posts, this contains spoilers for the rest of the Chronicles. But you probably would’ve gathered that from the title.

Read More »

Series: Dragonlance Reread

Taft 2012 (Excerpt)

We’re sure you’re going to love this excerpt from Taft 2012 by Jason Heller, out today from Quirk Books. (And here’s a great book trailer for it!):

He is the perfect presidential candidate. Conservatives love his hard-hitting Republican résumé. Liberals love his passion for peaceful diplomacy. The media can’t get enough of his larger-than-life personality. Regular folks can identify with his larger-than-life physique. And all the American people love that he’s an honest, hard-working man who tells it like it is. There’s just one problem: He is William Howard Taft . . . and he was already U.S. president a hundred years ago. So what on earth is he doing alive and well and considering a running mate in 2012?

Jason Heller’s extraordinary debut novel presents the Vonnegut-esque satire of a presidential Rip Van Winkle amid 21st-century media madness. It’s the ultimate what-if scenario for the 2012 election season!

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Frequency Rotation: Orbital with Matt Smith, “Doctor Who”

Each week, Frequency Rotation spotlights a song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

It’s no secret that the Doctor Who theme song has had a massive influence on electronic music over the past five decades. Not only has Ron Grainer’s and Delia Derbyshire’s original 1963 version been reinterpreted numerous times for the show itself, various electronic acts have have sampled, remixed, or otherwise paid homage to one of the most epic and recognizable pieces of science-fiction-related music of all time.

This summer, Doctor Who paid it back. Matt Smith, the Eleventh and current Doctor, appeared onstage with legendary electronica duo Orbital at England’s Glastonbury Festival in June to perform a triumphant version of “Doctor Who” (first covered on their 2001 album, The Altogether). Orbital’s Phil and Paul Hartnoll are no strangers to SF; everything from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Beneath the Planet of the Apes to Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds has popped up in their work, and they provided the soundtrack to the film Event Horizon. (Even more interesting: Orbital’s 2004 song “You Lot” samples Christopher Eccleston’s dialogue from Russell T. Davies’ The Second Coming, before Eccleston and Davies worked together on the 2005 Doctor Who revival.) Regardless of how you feel about electronic music—or Matt Smith—it’s hard not to feel pumped watching a few thousand festivalgoers lose their collective shit over Doctor Who.


Jason Heller writes for The A.V. Club, plays in some bands, and wants “Doctorin’ the TARDIS” played at his funeral.

Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: Spizzenergi, “Where’s Captain Kirk?”

Each week, Frequency Rotation spotlights a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

I’m speaking from personal experience here, so trust me: Most punks are geeks. Granted, punk rock—in all its manifestations over the past four decades—is best known for being crude and stupid. Certainly no one would accuse the punk band Spizzenergi of being otherwise. And yet, the quirky English outfit made its admittedly subatomic mark on music history in 1979 with “Where’s Captain Kirk?”—a song that, while cruder and stupider than most, wasn’t shy about flaunting its obsession with one of the icons of high geekitude.

Read More »

Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: David Bowie, “The Laughing Gnome”

Each week, Frequency Rotation spotlights a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

Fairies, elves, dwarves, halflings, hobbits, goblins, gargoyles, ogres, orcs, hell, even trolls: All seem to have a better public image than the lowly gnome. For every noble portrayal of the mythic race in fantasy literature (e.g. Tolkien), there are negative or ambivalent ones (e.g. Rowling). Not to sound racist or anything, but gnomes just ain’t sexy.

So why did one of the sexiest rock stars of all time—David Bowie—write a trippy, goofy, far from flattering novelty song called “The Laughing Gnome”? Explanation #1: He was 19 years old at the time, not yet famous, and desperate to do anything that might grab some attention. Explanation #2: It was the ’60s.

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Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: Helium, “Aging Astronauts”

Each week, Frequency Rotation spotlights a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

Heard any good Buzz Aldrin jokes lately? No? Okay, maybe there aren’t any. Maybe there shouldn’t be. Aldrin’s media blitz over the past couple years has left an aftertaste of indignity in the mouths of some (i.e. anyone who thinks Apollo astronauts shouldn’t be reduced to hawking their autobiographies and acting like clowns on TV). Seriously, how does a man who WALKED ON THE FRIGGIN’ MOON get reduced to mugging it up on The Price is Right, Dancing with the Stars, and 30 Rock? (We’ll mercifully restrain ourselves from mentioning his 2009 rap song, “The Rocket Experience.” Oops.). Chalk it up to a lousy agent, if you must. Or the fact that Aldrin may simply be turning into a wacky grandpa. Hey, even astronauts get old. Not that it should come as a surprise. Way back in 1997, Mary Timony and her indie-rock band Helium had pondered the issue in their gorgeous, haunting song, “Aging Astronauts.”

Read More »

Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: Cannibal Ox, “Battle for Asgard”

Each week, Frequency Rotation spotlights a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

Hip hop and science fiction have always had a flirtatious relationship. Way back in 1984, Afrikaa Bambaataa’s Time Zone—with a little help from the Sex Pistols/Public Image Ltd. frontman John Lydon—harrowingly outlined the apocalypse in the seminal single, “World Destruction.” Since then, everyone from Dr. Octagon to Deltron 3030 to current nerdcore rappers like MC Chris and MC Lars have slipped slivers of science fiction into their rhymes. But few hip hop artists have saturated their sound with SF, fantasy, comic books, and even mythology as lavishly as New York’s Cannibal Ox.

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Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: The Misfits, “Halloween”

Each week, Frequency Rotation spotlights a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

My ghoul-friend Jesse Bullington and I briefly dug up The Misfits for our undead playlist, “I Rocked with a Zombie.” But the infamous horror-punk group always pops back into my festering brain just as soon as the leaves turn brown, the wind blows cold, and Halloween comes howling at the door. Why? Well, besides the fact that The Misfits loved dressing up in terrifying costumes as much as their predecessors, Kiss, and their offspring, Gwar, the band wrote one of the most haunting (and succinctly titled) Halloween anthems of all time: “Halloween.”

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Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: Lionel Jeffries and friends, “The Roses of Success”

Each week, Frequency Rotation digs up a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

In honor of Steampunk Fortnight, I figured I’d pick a steampunk-themed song for this week’s installment of Frequency Rotation. Easy, right? After all, there are dozens of bands out there today hoisting the steampunk banner. But rather than pick a new song by a new artist, I wanted to go back a little further. How much further? 1968: the year of the great, often overlooked steampunk milestone, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

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Series: Steampunk Fortnight

Frequency Rotation: Gary Numan/Tubeway Army, “Down in the Park”

Each week, Frequency Rotation probes a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

This Sunday, synthesizer icon Gary Numan will kick off a North American tour in support of the 30th-anniversary reissue of The Pleasure Principle, the innovative album that contains his lone U.S. hit, the new-wave classic “Cars.” It’s hard to believe—especially for those of us who grew up in the 1980s—that Numan is still active and popular in the far-flung future he once so icily, nasally warned us about. Yet here he is; and strangely enough, his music sounds as futuristic and frigidly hypnotic as ever.

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Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: Franz Nicolay, “The Ballad of Hollis Wadsworth Mason, Jr.”

Each week, Frequency Rotation probes a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

Say you want to write a song about Watchmen, Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ landmark graphic novel. Which of the book’s many superheroes would you sing about? The detached, godlike Dr. Manhattan? The morally complex (or is that totally amoral) Comedian? The grim, Nietzschean Rorscach? All of the above?

If you’re Franz Nicolay, solo artist and former keyboardist of The Hold Steady, you skip all of those obvious choices and head straight for one of Watchmen’s true underdogs: Hollis Mason, retired auto mechanic and the erstwhile masked adventurer once known as Nite Owl.

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Series: Frequency Rotation

Frequency Rotation: Kate Bush, “Deeper Understanding”

Each week, Frequency Rotation probes a different song with a science fiction or fantasy theme. Genre, musical quality, and overall seriousness may vary.

The fact that Kate Bush is a kind of a geek—albeit an impossibly cool and sexy geek—is common knowledge. Her music, after all, is suffused with the fantastic, and she’s contributed to the soundtracks to everything from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil to the big-screen adaptation of The Golden Compass. But when it comes to Bush’s science fiction side, it mostly boils down to one song: the frigid, depressing, microchip-obsessed “Deeper Understanding.”

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Series: Frequency Rotation

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