In his debut novel, The Detainee, writer Peter Liney imagines a dystopian world where those who are incapable of taking care of themselves are sent to a prison called The Island. But while the book is fictional, Liney admits that the book’s origins, and thus its foundations, stem from some very real concerns about our society.
Written in the fourteenth century, Dante’s Inferno is one of the most influential works of literature, inspiring everything from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The House Of Fame and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman to the Daffy Duck cartoon “Book Revue” and, of course, the 2010 action game Dante’s Inferno. Now it’s the inspiration for The Ninth Circle, the debut novel from veteran comic book scribe, TV and movie writer, and book editor Brendan Deneen. But in talking to Deneen, he revealed that Dante wasn’t the only influence on his book.
Sometimes life works in mysterious ways. Take author Amy Talkington. Before she penned her first novel — the young adult ghost story Liv, Forever — she was going to tell her tale as a screenplay for a movie. But after she wrote it as a book, it got optioned by a film company…who hired Talkington to write the screenplay. Though in talking to her about the book, it seems that some of what happened while she wrote the novel wasn’t so mysterious.
Dark Horse Comics have announced that they will release three art books based on Bethesda Softwork’s games — Wolfenstein: The New Order, Dishonored, and The Evil Within — in the coming months.
Some people treat kids with kid gloves. But not Nick Cutter who, in his horror novel The Troop (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), subjects a bunch of scouts to an unspeakable horror you wouldn’t wish on someone twice their age. Though in talking to Cutter — whose real name is easily found online — it’s clear this Canadian writer actually likes children…well, when it comes to his books, at least.
With the novel Diablo III: Storm Of Light, writer Nate Kenyon isn’t just delivering another epic set in the world of Blizzard’s fantasy role-playing game, he’s helping set the stage for the game’s next chapter, Reaper Of Souls. Though in talking to him, it’s clear he didn’t just write this novel to get gamers from one plot point to another.
Released in 1976, the movie Network took a grim and darkly comic look at the state of television and TV news. In the almost forty years since it came out, though, the movie has become less of a satire of what could be and more of sad case of art imitating life. It’s a transition explored by New York Times writer — and my pal and former editor at Spin and Maxim — Dave Itzkoff in his new book, Mad As Hell: The Making Of ‘Network’ And The Fateful Vision Of The Angriest Man In Movies (hardcover, paperback, Kindle)
For many writers, penning a story about an astronaut stranded on Mars would ultimately lead to some such sci-fi elements as little green men or an ancient civilization destroyed by some unknown danger.
But in his first novel, The Martian (paperback, Kindle), Andy Weir is taking a different approach; a more realistic one that eschews sci-fi tropes, and makes this more of a thriller and a disaster movie in book form.
With his new medical sci-fi horror novel Pandemic (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Scott Sigler brings his Infected trilogy to a close. In honor of this, I spoke to him about his original influences, how this series could be adapted to other media, and which of his other books you should read when you’re done with Pandemic.