Video from May 21, 2022 Book Talk at Avid Reader

 Here is video from my book talk last Saturday at Avid Reader on Broadway.

 

YouTube - 5-21-22 book talk

Book talk this Saturday, May 21 at Avid Reader on Broadway

Please come by the Avid Reader on Broadway this Saturday, May 21 at 2pm for a book talk.

RSVP here.

Kim Stanley Robinson Book Talk Feb. 3 - Register Now

Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson will be giving a book talk about his latest novel, The Ministry for the Future, on February 3. Register here to watch. The story is set in the future, when climate change creates several catastrophic, deadly wet-bulb temperature events and causes humans to rethink our relationship to atmospheric carbon. Like his previous novel, New York 2140, there is hope for humanity, but not before having to confront a very different world than the one we live in now.

Book talk now online

 Here is a recent book talk I gave on “I, Nausicaa."

 

https://youtu.be/9peeDDHIJdg

Bonus: List of Terms & Concepts Used in I, Nausicaa

Here's a partial list of terms and concepts from Japanese culture and made-up science that appear in I, Nausicaa:

Japanese culture

• Wabi sabi
• Tengu
• Sen-no-Rikyū
• Enka standard, “Futari no Ōsaka” (ahh, dakishimete…)
• Akafuku (brand) mochi
• Nantō mochi (from Okinawa)
• Waka (poem)
• Burakumin (Eta)
• Shintō (belief system)
• Shingyo (Korean origin of Shintō)
• Kingorō (name of Hana Maeda’s tryst partner)
• Shōwa 41 (1966 in Japanese calendar)
• Geta (clog sandals)
• Zōri (sandals)
• Wakizashi (sword)
  

Concepts unique to the novel (made-up)

• Verdant metacodone HCl (opioid, also known as “Deep Fried”) - green liquid, uses matcha tea as a source of caffeine, comes in individual glass vials, has a microchip activator in each vial that needs to receive a unique electronic pulse matched to the specific vial in order to turn the active substance into an opioid.
• DNA hotel
• Simulacrum (sing.) /Simulacra (pl.) - replicas are officially designated using “[original’s name]_2.”
• Cryo-neural transmitter - Allows you to communicate by text with the recently deceased. The corpse is stored cryogenically in a block of ice. (p. 211)
• AUTOMind cylinders - analogue of Alexa or other smart speakers
• Werner von Furstenburg (Kiernan’s cat name)
  

Irish Culture

• Kiernan is from Dublin. He was born in University Hospital the year Bob Dylan came to Ireland (1966). He mistakenly says he was born at Mid-Western Regional Maternity, near Clancy’s Strand, along the Shannon River. His mother’s favorite song was “Sandy’s on the Phone Again.” (p. 184)
  

American Culture

• Disco-era songs: “Groove Line,” “September,” “Flashlight,” “One Nation Under A Groove,” and “Boogie Oogie Oogie.” (P. 237)
• Black American writers: Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Chancellor Williams, Angela Davis, James Baldwin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. (P.4)
• The Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 over the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin (p. 4)

I, Nausicaa Now Available Through Waterstones

My New Novel: I, Nausicaa

I, Nausicaa is a modern take on Issac Asimov’s I, Robot where Nausicaa is a modern-day “designed being.” Nausicaa is on a mission to find a secret vaccine that will save their kind from being destroyed by a corporation bent on preserving licensing revenue derived from a sentient product line that has discovered how to reproduce illegally using open source methods.

The story begins at the height of the COVID pandemic at the end of 2020. Nausicaa is recalling to a deceased lover, Phylla, how the world has changed since an outbreak four years earlier killed Phylla but not Nausicaa. Contrary to the first of Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” Nausicaa is capable of killing humans, and because of that, robotics designer Yūji Morita spares Nausicaa’s life with a vaccine injection.

Nausicaa learns that a friend, Kiernan McCreighton, a former drug addict and harm reduction volunteer on the streets of San Francisco, knows Yūji from having taught English in Japan. Fast forward to the year 2038: a new generation of bootlegged, unlicensed Simulacra coexist with humans, and they’re suddenly dying from the same disease that killed Phylla. AUTOMind orders Nausicaa to find Kiernan, but Nausicaa discovers Kiernan knows about the vaccine and the disease that killed Phylla and joins forces with him to find Yūji and get ahold of the vaccine.

The story is in three parts: 2016, when the outbreak kills Phylla; 1991, when Yūji and Kiernan meet in Japan; and in 2038, when Nausicaa and Kiernan go to Tokyo to reach Yūji before he’s killed.

Similar books:
I, Robot, by Issac Asimov, The Children of Men, by P. D. James,
The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton (1969), The Plague, by Albert Camus (1947)