When George R.R. Martin released A Game of Thrones in 1996, he helped to change the game with his grounded approach to fantasy tropes. At the same time, people sometimes talk as though Martin was the first to bring realism to epic fantasy. So here are 10 other authors who were doing "gritty" fantasy before Martin.
To be fair, Martin himself was also writing for a long time before A Game of Thrones came out — but Thrones, in particular, is usually referred to as a game-changer for epic fantasy. So these are works that don't necesarily predate Martin's entire ouevre, but do predate the release of the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series.
1) Stephen Donaldson
When you talk about works that brought a new darkness to fantasy, it's hard to overlook Lord Foul's Bane, the 1977 bestseller that launched Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series. Donaldson took all of the tropes of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and peered at them through an ugly light. And he gave us a protagonist that it's almost impossible to sympathize with, especially in the first book. Thomas Covenant is a self-loathing writer who's become a pariah after he's infected with leprosy — so when he goes to a fantasy world where he's hailed as the mythical savior, the first thing he does is to rape someone. And then he carries on being the hero of the series, slowly coming to invest in the reality of this strange fantasy world. Not surprisingly, this series has fallen out of favor somewhat — but it still deserves a place in the history of fantasy that challenged our heroic ideals.
2) Celia Friedman
Friedman's Black Sun Rising came out just five years before A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and it made a splash at the time. As Adam Whitehead writes in The Wertzone, it's "unrelentingly grim," and filled with unlikable characters. Friedman "isn't afraid to kill off major characters, and paints them in convincing detail." This series, like the Pern series and a few others, is a hybrid of science fiction and fantasy — the human race has colonized a new planet, Erna, which is full of perils. Over time, humans have fallen back to a roughly Renaissance level of technology, and meanwhile we've encountered beings called the Fae, which can pose a huge danger but also can be used by certain powerful humans for their own ends.
3) Robin Hobb
Hobb's novel The Assassin's Apprentice came out in 1995, a year before A Game of Thrones (and George R.R. Martin actually blurbed it, as Hobb blurbed the first edition of Thrones.) And this story of Fitz, a young bastard who's looked down on and mistreated by everyone — but who secretly gets trained in the ancient art of the assassin — has some obvious parallels to certain aspects of Martin's storytelling. In particular, Hobb's willingness to paint a dark and terrible world where virtue isn't always rewarded, and where horrors — in this case, the Red Ship Raiders that turn their victims into quasi-zombies — lurk just on the edges of the world.
Cook's Black Company series of novels began in the mid-1980s, and they're often hailed as important works in the history of military fantasy. But they're also important precursors to the current era of fantasy about real, flawed characters in a complicated and morally gray world. As Martin Lewis writes in Strange Horizons, The Chronicles of the Black Company "is the book that injected a shot of realism into the genre, and helped steer it on the course towards modern so-called 'gritty' fantasy." Instead of following knights or pure heroes, this series follows a company of mercenaries, who are slowly fading away as their members die off and nobody comes along to replace them. Like the crew in Firefly, they take whatever jobs they're offered, including helping a sorceress to put down a rebellion.
5) Michael Moorcock
Elric cover art by Chris Achileos
To be fair, Moorcock doesn't exactly avoid the trappings of high fantasy with his stories of Elric of Melniboné, a red-eyed, white-skinned antihero who goes around murdering people with his soul-eating sword, Stormbringer. It's full-on epic fantasy, with less of the overt political wrangling that you'll see in Martin's work and other gritty fantasy stories of the past 20 years. But long before most of these other authors were around, Moorcock was already challenging Tolkien's manichean vision of a struggle between good and evil. Elric is a total antihero, not to mention a drug addict, whose morals tend to be slippery at best.
6) David Gemmell
Gemmell famously began writing Legend in 1976, when he was misdiagnosed with cancer and needed to take his mind off his supposed illness. And not surprisingly, the result is dark as hell, and is frequently brought up as a precursor to Martin, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Bakker and the other writers of gritty, brutally violent fantasy novels. As Tor.com explains:
The fortress of Dros Delnoch represents the last remnant of a faded empire. A barbarian horde known as the Nadir threatens to overrun it. In desperation, the inhabitants of Dros Delnoch turn to one of the greatest heroes the world has ever known, the figure of Druss. Druss is a he-man sort, comparable to Conan in terms of physical stature and prowess, a man who has carved a name for himself throughout the world through decades of awesome deeds. Only in this tale, Druss is 59 years old. He has a balky knee. Age is creeping up on him. His best years are behind him. But duty calls and Druss has never been one to duck a battle. What follows is one of the bloodiest fantasy novels I've read.
7) Mary Gentle
Gentle's novel Grunts is an epic fantasy story from the point of view of the Orcs who have to go into battle and die by the thousands for a cause that they barely understand. At the time when it was published, in 1992, its darkly comic approach of viewing the story from the point of view of the "villains" was considered revolutionary, and it became famous for a joke about Orcs raping Elves that probably wouldn't be considered funny today. But there's also funny scenes of the Orcs eating their own wounded, and the war crimes trials that ensue. It's hard to get less uplifting, and nastier, than Grunts.
8) Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's Earthsea books aren't exactly filled with bloodbaths, or horrible human beings who behave in monstrous fashions — but she still deserves a place on any list of people who brought more realism and political nuance to fantasy. In particular, the fact that she returned to Earthsea for 1990's Tehanu, and started to chip away at the sexism (and species-ism) at the roots of her world, deserve a lot of recognition. To read the first three Earthsea books and then Tehanu is a bit of a mind-altering experience, because Le Guin's view of Earthsea in 1990 is a lot more ambiguous.
9) Karl Edward Wagner
Wagner's Kane series, published in the 1970s and 1980s, is more properly called sword-and-sorcery rather than epic fantasy — like Elric, it features an anti-hero who's immortal and has somewhat transcended our human ideas of good and bad... and Kane is another hero that it's difficult to identify or sympathize with.
10) Tad Williams
Book cover art by Michael Whelan
The Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy, begun in 1988, takes place in a magical realm wher the humans have been united at great cost — but now the King is old, and his sons are falling into feuds and dragging the realm into a civil war.
George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series has won plaudits from every corner but I have to say that in my view the foundations and first floor of his series were laid by Williams (Martin himself has indicated that he was heavily inspired by Memory, Sorrow and Thorn). Although much of Williams’ writing itself owes a debt, inevitably, to J R R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, it is in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, perhaps for the first time, that we truly see an adult take on the genre of epic fantasy. Expectations are turned over, beloved characters suffer (and die, over and over again) and the fantasy world that is presented is every bit as gritty, believable and sometimes unpleasant as our own.
For more on how this series inspired Martin, read here.
The authors are excited to see you on the 19th but in the meantime, check out these amazing titles!
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Genres: Young Adult Romance, Horror, Zombies, Science Fiction Series: Territory of the Dead Available free with Kindle Unlimited. Blurb:
Eighteen-year-old Tabitha Alexander had just graduated from high school when the dead invaded her small town of Pleasant, Louisiana. Working as a checkout girl in the only grocery store in town, she barely made it out with her life.
But the night was only beginning.
What started out as a group of three grows, as they are joined by the few that are still alive. New bonds are formed as old ones die, and Tabitha suddenly finds that the guy she’s always wanted might just want her back.
The timing couldn’t be worse, though. The zombies in Pleasant are smart, with an awareness that’s horrifying. And when the zombies discover the house full of survivors, those inside realize that the walls aren’t strong enough to keep them out.
All hope is lost. Or is it? Salvation comes in the form of a mysterious man, with a pair of steely-gray eyes and an arsenal to match. He rescues them, but at what cost? Kellan can’t seem to keep his otherworldly eyes off of her.
She’s no match for him. She knows this. Yet, he intrigues her… and Tabitha knows it’s the most dangerous reaction of all.
Excerpt:
I exhaled deeply as I finished scanning the last coupon. The woman gave me a sharp look of annoyance, as if I had no room for complaint. Really, what did she expect? Was I supposed to grovel and thank her for allowing me the honor of scanning her precious coupons ten minutes before closing time?
Apparently so. “You know, young lady, it wouldn’t hurt you to smile at your customers and thank them when they offer you their coupons. I don’t think I’ve ever had such poor customer service. I don’t have to shop here, especially with this kind of attitude.” She was working herself up into a rage, her expression full of self-righteous indignation.
I didn’t reply, but instead pushed the total button. Some of the customers in line groaned, while others shifted in impatience. They really didn’t want to be further delayed by her rant. She slammed a hundred dollar bill down on the counter. “Where is your manager? I want to speak with him now.”
I pointed towards Jim, as he straightened his shoulders and attempted to look professional. I could only imagine the holier-than-thou attitude he would have as he sympathetically agreed with her. Around here, I could never do anything right, or so it seemed.
I didn’t see anyone else standing around, though, willing to put up with his crap. If I didn’t need the money so badly, I’d walk out the door faster than he could blink. I was tired of the humiliation and tired of being blamed for the lines, just because he was too tight to hire on adequate staff.
I was silent as I quickly made her change. What could any person say? She was mad due to reasons of her own, something that really didn’t concern me. With one last glare, she huffed and moved on in his direction. She never made it, though.
It would have been worth the complaint and subsequent chewing out I would have received, if the events of the night just wouldn’t have happened. I would later look back on it and pray that things had ended differently. You can’t change events that are completely out of your control, though.
Even so, anything would have been preferable to that one moment when you find your reality has just been blown to pieces and would never be the same again. That’s assuming you live to survive it.
She was halfway to Jim, her teased hairdo bouncing, when it happened. A loud, panicked scream tore through the night, originating somewhere from the parking lot in front of the store. Even through the thick glass, we could hear it loudly. It sounded like someone was being murdered. I immediately stopped scanning, turning in an attempt to see what was happening.
A body slammed against the glass, his face and palms pressed to the surface. It was a horrid sight. His pupils were red and crazed, his face extremely pale and dirty. Dark red blood was smeared across his cheeks and chin. The man stood still for a moment, just watching us with his crazy eyes. Something reanimated him. He slid his palms down the clear, clean glass, leaving a trail of bloody streaks.
Sonar The Crashing (Sonar #1) by B. Truly Genres: Sci-fi/Fantasy/Paranormal Romance Blurb:
Is it more than déjà vu? With the Romeland family it may be destined to be true.
Life on Earth is not the only place where devastation occurs and hard
choices must be made. The Royal 4 of Kadan live in the Sonar galaxy three million light years from Earth. They travel to Earth to obtain the resources they need to give their world a fighting chance.
Their mission is compromised and they’re faced with life changing events. They have amnesia and no memory of their past. Strange dreams start to occur. They wonder if it’s more than a dream, or is it déjà vu?
The mind is a complex mystery. Amnesia is a secret unknown. The role it manifests in these characters’ lives is a catastrophic cyclone.
Shiray is frantic when she is the first to find out about their true destiny and that the love of her life no longer remembers who she is. She must find a way to restore her family before all is lost. They must prevail because the fate of their planet lies in their hand.
What would you do if you had amnesia and fell in love, only to learn upon regaining your memory, that you are already married? Find out in this Electric thriller!
Excerpt:
It had been several weeks since I had retrieved my memory and still had not found out any information. Would I ever see my husband again? Would I ever see my planet again? I wondered if King Julius had gotten our distress call from the ship before it went down. If he had gotten the call, why hadn’t he sent a rescue team? A Polar must have sabotaged our ship to make it crash and given us amnesia so our mission would fail. It’s the only thing that made sense. Syira and the others must have lost their memories also, because no one had tried to contact me in all this time. I hoped Kadan hadn’t lost the war already and we weren’t too late.
I got on the computer in the living room. I was going to try again to hack into the CIA or the FBI system to find some information on our crashed ship. I was skipping school today, but my foster mother was at work, so I had plenty of time.
I couldn’t get into either system, so I went to the garage to get some wires and bolts. I was going to use my Kadanan knowledge, which I finally remembered, to rig the computer’s hardware so I could get into their systems. I sat back down and set up the wiring and bolts to the computer. Then I went back to the CIA’s website. There had to be something on the crash. I started putting in codes. It took me about five minutes, and I was in. Bingo! That was easy. I should have thought about rigging the computer sooner. I started searching through random files and then typed in unidentified object and a code mission came up. I typed in some more codes, and a file opened. It was a recording. I pushed play, and a man spoke:
Two males and one female were found two miles east of Convey Valley on May fifteenth, two thousand eleven. They had no knowledge of who they were. Is there a relationship between them and the spacecraft? There was also another female found two point five miles west of where the other three were found. She also had no knowledge of who she was. None of them had serious injuries. They were sent to Denver Methodist for a day of observation and the three found east of Convey were sent to Dempstead Foster Home. The separate female was sent to Elite Foster Care. The two males and female that were found east of Convey Valley were taken into private foster care and reside in Denver, Colorado. The female who was found alone was also taken into private foster care, and resides in Parker, Colorado. Detailed personal records of these four are being kept in a separate file for Major Compton. At this time no hostile actions have been shown by the surveillances. Special agents on Major Compton’s team have been assigned to keep watch over these surveillances to see what transpires and if there is any form of extraterritorial activity between them.
The recording ended. I should have known we were being watched. Who was this Major Compton? I continued to hack through the files. Pictures came up on the screen of our ship. They had it! The first few photos of the ship were of the original wreckage. Our ship had a large hole in the side. In the next photos of the ship it had been fixed. I couldn’t believe they were able to fix it.
We must have all been thrown out of the ship at impact, or at least I had been. I had woken up on the ground and didn’t see our ship, Bryan, or the others. The recording said I had been found in the opposite direction of the others. I was amazed we all survived. I assumed the force field surrounding the ship saved our lives and kept the ship mostly intact, except for the large hole that had been on the side. I wondered what material they used to fix it, as the metals used to create it on Kadan were not available on Earth. I hoped it would hold together in space, if it could even fly.
I remembered how sore I’d been on the day they found me, but at the time I didn’t even know why I was hurt. I had a few cuts and bruises, but nothing was broken. I didn’t remember a lot from that day; it was all a blur. I remember waking up and wandering around lost. Then the police officers found me, at least that is who they told me they were. But now that I was recalling the memory, the four men had on black suits. I don’t think they were the police. They must have been CIA agents. It would make sense with all the information I was putting together.
It pissed me off we were being watched like guinea pigs. They must be in the shadows, waiting and watching for us to show signs we weren’t human.
I tried to search for an address to where Bryan was sent, but I couldn’t find one. It must have been in the other file for Mr. Compton the recording mentioned, but I wasn’t able to access it. I was so frustrated. All I had to go on was that he, Nile, and Syira had been sent to Denver.
I got out of the CIA system and did an Internet search for Denver high schools. Several came up. I would just have to start and go down the list. Cashmere High was the first one, so I would start there. I would go there during school hours and see if I could find them.
I caught the city bus the next morning to the school. When the bus got to my stop I walked up to the school. I took a deep breath and didn’t know what I would do, if I actually found Bryan. I might pass out.
As I approached the school the bell rung, and students scattered. I looked around, nervously, then walked toward the courtyard. Suddenly I heard a familiar voice. It was Syira! She was talking to some hunk. I moved a little closer; feeling relieved to see her, but would talk with her later. I wanted to find Bryan and wouldn’t be satisfied until I did.
I walked inside the school, searching different hallways. The bell rang again and there were not a lot of people in the halls. Suddenly I couldn’t move. I felt a presence behind me, and knew it was Bryan. I was almost too scared to turn around, and then heard a woman’s voice behind me. I forced myself to turn, and there he was, more gorgeous than I remembered him. He was talking with a girl and he gazed at her lovingly. This crushed my heart. Who was she? We looked so much alike. Her eyes were light green, and she was my height and petite frame. Her hair was long and wavy like mine too, except it was blond.
This pissed me off immensely. They started laughing, and I felt so jealous. Then they embraced in a tight hug. At that instance tears started streaming down my face. I turned and double-timed it down the hallway. He remembered nothing. What was I going to do? Whatever it was, I had to do it fast.
I have wanted to be an author since I was fifteen years old and grateful to have accomplished this dream. I have three wonderful children and a husband who defines the person I am today. I work full-time as an Ultrasound technologist in Sugarland, Texas.
I have very vivid dreams and a wild imagination. I like to read, watch tons of TV shows, and movies. I’m addicted to romance and get a thrill out of action and suspense. I write New Adult Fantasy, Sci-fi, and Paranormal-Romance.
In the Sonar series it was fun to explore different elements of Sci-fi romance and create various realms of powers for my characters. I want to show my readers that Sci-fi can be fun, but also traumatic. I hope you guys enjoy the Sonar Series.
Genres: Horror, Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Dystopian Tour Promo: Available free with Kindle Unlimited!
Blurb:
The zombie holocaust has come, and there is no place that is truly safe.
Four intrepid survivors, Sasha, Terrance, Virgil, and the little girl, Max, have escaped their island stronghold, only to find themselves in the arms of what is left of the worlds military forces just when a showdown is imminent between the armies of undead and the combined might of the human race.
From the mountains of Northern New York, to the shores of the Potomac, the battle is joined. Trapped in its net, the island survivors must learn more of their enemies, their allies… and the strange nature of one of their own.
Excerpt:
The breeze whistled softly through the broken window. In a lonesome, uncaring way, it played along the edges of papers and leaves that its more violent cousins had swept into corners or under the rows of school desks that filled the classroom. Rambunctious in its innocence, it tousled through the room’s scattered hopes and the dreams they had ensnared, and went off down the gray hallway and into other vacant rooms as though racing the footsteps of morning’s light.
At the entrance to the building, the zephyr gathered strength, drove itself, defiant and free, through the unclosed double doors, and out, out, out, over a schoolyard choked with weeds, with grass no mower would ever touch, with rusting swing-sets, with unused toys… and with the undead.
For they were there.
Shambling about in their thoughtless way, their eyes vacant pools containing a mystery no sane person could ever plumb, these human shells moved through the debris of their former lives like sleepwalkers that would never wake. They were all ages, all sexes, and of all different body sizes. The smallest, a petite redheaded girl of around two years of age, staggered aimlessly along with the rest, her chin hanging slack and useless over the torn stem of her neck. Beneath this, covering the cold flesh of her torso, were the rags of a bloodstained summer dress that roughly one year ago, before the rising of the dead, had been new.
Had she been living, she would have been a cute kid. So went Virgil’s thoughts as he, along with two other people, lay studying the undead from the shade of a wood line, one hundred yards distant, where the land rose slightly to form a natural observation platform. The heavily muscled man and his compatriots wore military helmets and were dressed in loose, green, camouflage clothing worn over a tighter fitting layer of leather that encased their bodies from neck to foot. The camouflage was needed to help shield them from sight, and the leather was needed to help shield them from the infectious bites of the undead, bites that would, in a matter of minutes, turn any living person into one of the aforementioned undead.
Virgil kept the little girl in the telescopic sights of his MP5SD sub-machine gun. From there, she looked different… better. She was a target. Not someone’s little girl. Not a precious little thing that someone had held, rocked, sung to, and played with, whose hair smelled like peaches and whose smile could turn the day bright and new. None of that. Through the hard, round tube she was a thing. Or at least it made it easier to see her that way. It helped him to do what he had to do.
He flicked the safety off.
His finger squeezed the trigger… gently, gently.
For some reason, she stopped, and turned her back to him. The breeze caught her shining hair and lifted it slightly, her back and arms were smooth and white like marble in the sun.
Breathe evenly.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t…
Pause the next breath…
With a suppressed hissing punch, the 9mm hollow point round burst from the barrel of the weapon and struck the girl’s skull a quarter of a second later. There was an explosion of blood and brain matter, skull and hair, and without another sound, she returned to the earth where she belonged.
David Monette was born and raised in the cold rural hinterlands of upstate New York. As a typical kid in a typical community, life for him was pretty… typical. He liked to draw creatures and contraptions but as the second born of four sons, such ability was merely a convenient way of standing out from the crowd. As he inexpertly stumbled through high school, his talent for capturing the images in his head onto paper was noticed and encouraged by both teachers and family members.
Without any other idea of what to do with himself after graduation, besides a vague idea of doing something art oriented, he decided to attend Mohawk Valley Community College where he received his associate’s degree in Advertising Design and Production. Acting on excellent advice from his teachers at this institution, he went on to Syracuse University where he learned a great deal about art and eventually wound up with a bachelor’s degree in Illustration.
With a disturbingly large amount of student debt and a decent portfolio, he learned what it was to be a starving artist. Namely, he found that artists don’t starve; they simply pick up an endless series of part time work to pay the rent while continuing to plug away at their true passion. This was essentially what he did until he received his first illustration job and from that point on, he didn’t look back. As an illustrator, his highly detailed fantasy and science fiction work has appeared in many books, magazines, board games, and collectible card games for such varied publishers as Dell Publishing, Wizards of the Coast, and Atlas Games. Initially, he had completed these diverse projects utilizing oil and acrylic paints as well as pen and inks.
As digital technology continued to improve, however, he decided it was time to tackle the arduous task of mastering the computer and eventually figured out a way to adapt his style to a digital format. With this knowledge and experience, he went back to school and received his master’s degree in Illustration from the University of Hartford. While there, his instructors reviewed his written work and had strongly suggested that he combine his writing ability with his talent as an illustrator to chart his own path.
And at the end of this arc, an author was born. Connect With The Author:
What happens when Joe, a teen prodigy makes drastic changes to his life and attends high school incognito with Mike, an artificial intelligence? His plans take an unexpected turn when he buys a neglected former racehorse.
Bringing Up Mike is a tapestry of intertwined stories over the course of a school year: A teen genius who has grown up too fast, a neglected former racehorse, a bereaved couple morning the death of their son, a girl struggling to attend college, and a former mobster determined to be top dog.
Bringing Up Mike is about people given a second chance at happiness and success and how they become better people and mature.
Enjoy an Excerpt:
Martha walked to the barn, the shotgun stock tucked firmly against her side, then stopped fifteen feet from the back of the horse trailer.
“Any reason why I shouldn’t shoot you trespassers?”
Three men who were struggling to get the stallion into the trailer froze. The fourth, a big burly man, stood in front of Martha, the horse directly behind him.
“This isn’t what you think. We’re retrieving our lost stallion,” said Sly.
“At dawn? Without asking permission?”
“It didn’t seem polite to wake you up so early.”
“Seems to me you sold him for four thousand dollars.”
“It was a joke to teach the kid a lesson. That horse is worth twenty thousand, I knew the contract wasn’t valid, because he’s a minor.”
“There’s no way I’d let that stallion go back to someone who starved him.”
“He had plenty of pasture! Once he learned not to bite the hand that fed him, he’d get his grain.”
As they talked, Sly edged closer to Martha, then tried to grab her shotgun. Martha pivoted, pointed the gun at the wheel on the horse trailer, and shot.
There was a CRACK-BANG as a burst of birdshot exploded the tire. Startled and frightened, Comanche reared up and dragged Reuben and Sam, who had wrapped lead ropes around their hands. Martha threw herself flat on the ground, followed by the crack of a bullet that stopped Sly in mid-step.
KIRKUS REVIEW A boy and his AI friend find adventure in Duncan’s sci-fi debut.
Secretive young prodigy Joe Lawrence moves to Tennessee to quietly attend high school where not too many questions will be asked. He’s accompanied by the disembodied voice of Mike, a self-aware computer program with the emotional maturity of a small boy. Joe and Mike move in with George and Martha, a good-natured couple recovering from the death of their teenage son, Marvin. Presenting Mike as a handicapped friend and computer genius telecommuting to aid him in his everyday life, clever Joe soon becomes a real friend to George and Martha, filling the void in their lives and helping rekindle their love of life. After Joe purchases a rundown former racehorse from ex-mobster Sly, now in the witness protection program, Joe and Mike help the neglected horse while aggravating Sly by getting the better of him in the bargain; they also become involved with Sly’s smart and focused stepdaughter, Sue. As they help heal George and Martha, evade Sly’s revenge and aid Sue in her struggle with the school principal over her newspaper, Joe and Mike undergo a curious metamorphosis as human and AI. Mike was supposed to be the one being tested and trained to grow up—but Joe finds himself growing up, too. The clean, clear text trusts readers to fill in some blanks, and Mike is a prominent but not physical presence throughout the story. The characters are a little old-fashioned and broad but eminently likable and sweet.
Warmly human sci-fi for the YA set.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Mark Duncan grew up in Pasadena, not far from Caltech. In high school he spent Friday and Saturday nights at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) and subsequently was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club. He received his BSEE from UC Berkeley. He has worked or consulted for numerous startups in Silicon Valley. He lives in Menlo Park, near Stanford and has written extensively on emerging technology topics. He enjoys photography, movies, theater, fine dining and has visited all 50 states and much of Europe. He is the author of Bringing Up Mike, www.askmarpublishing.com, mark@askmarpublishing.com
I grew up in Southern California in Pasadena, but moved to Northern California the summer before I started 8th grade. In Pasadena, I attended a YMCA in downtown Pasadena that was close to Caltech.
This why you did choose Pasadena and Stanford University as locations in the novel?
After moving to the San Francisco Peninsula, during my last year of high school, I had access to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory on Friday and Saturday nights. Currently, I live in Menlo Park, a few miles from the university.
How did you get into writing?
I love reading and movies. On two occasions, I wrote screenplays for movies that were never produced. Subsequently, I started doing electronic book publishing of out-of-print books, and republished Write and Error by Jack Woodford, and The Craft of Fiction by Will Knott—two great books on how to write novels. They provided me with the inspiration to write a novel.
Do you have strange writing habits?
I write in four- or five-day cycles to write a scene. I do background research, then gradually start to do more and more writing and less research. Working out the rough plot / outline for the novel took two months.( In Many answers I got it was more kind of feverish thing)
Why did you set the novel in Tennessee?
A semi-rural, religious, conservative setting provided an ideal setting for creating the maximum conflict.
Did you do any kind of research to determine the details of your characters’ lives / lifestyles?
It depends. Some characters are composites of people I already know well. Other’s like Martha’s father, Ed Alexander—who is a retired U.S. Army Colonel—I did considerable research to determine the Army bases he would have been assigned to. As much of the novel is situated in Tennessee, I needed to know when various produce was in season, and the dishes that might be consumed.
Did any real-life political incidents or maneuvering make it into the book?
Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA started being published while I was in the midst of writing the book. It caused me to change the plot to reflect how I saw the NSA would behave in the future, e.g. having a much more active internal Inspector General office.
How did you come up with the title? Names?
Dan Kaufman, Director of the Information Innovation Office of DARPA observed that the problem with today’s artificial intelligence systems is that sooner or later they tell you something stupid. He suggested that one avenue of solving this would be to have a baby AI that grows up with you, with which you would have a two-way conversation, correcting and educating it over time—like raising a child. Since Mike is the artificial intelligence in the novel, this resulted in the title, Bringing Up Mike.( You Know! Suddeenly, It is hard for me not to think about 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke orThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1) byDouglas Adams )
With respect to names, I tried to keep all the names unique; having two different women named Martha was confused editorsand readers (LOL! how surprising).
In some cases, I used first and last names of people I have met over the years ( Nice solution! But, I hope these guys love this, As you know most author claiming that the their story connection to reality is accidental).
I have a preference for short, first names, since they are faster to type (LOL! What a great idea!).
And specifically, What were the origins of Mike’s names?
Mike is named after the artificial intelligence computer in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.(OH! I loved this Book!)
Mike gets his last name from John McCarthy. John McCarthy was a computer scientist who coined the term “artificial intelligence” and helped establish the Stanford AI Laboratory in 1962. John’s parents were socialists, hence he was a red diaper baby. He loved to sing the song, “The Very Fat Man That Dilutes the Working Man’s Beer.” The scene were George holds up a cat sitting on his lap while talking to making a point is based on an anecdote told by his daughter, Susan McCarthy.
Mike uses the pseudonym Al Fansworth as the publisher of the Daily Rebel and as a student who attends classes at the high school. At Caltech, a long standing prank was the existence of an imaginary student, Alluvial Fansome, a 1950s elusive resident of Fleming House, one of the eight undergraduate Caltech houses. He was known to receive lots of mail and for throwing unforgettable parties despite never being seen.
How is artificial intelligence like controlled nuclear fusion?
We’ve been working on both topics for fifty years without success.
Controlled nuclear fusion has always been ten years in the future. While tremendous advances have been made in artificial intelligence—we still lack the key breakthroughs that will result in consciousness. Bringing Up Mike examines the consequences of such an advance.
What was the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
After a few chapters, the characters in the book started to come to life as real people. When confronted with a new situation, it became straightforward to see how they would behave. For example, when Sly and his hands are attempting to steal the stallion, Martha, having been brought up as a military brat, is the one who takes decisive action in stopping them.
Why the extensive discussion of slavery?
If an artificial intelligence can pass as human, is it right to treat it as property? As the adage goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In the United States, we fought the Civil War over slavery. We should heed its lesson and not repeat the mistake.
Why did you address many of the issues facing young adults?
Raising a young artificial intelligence has many of the same issues. As it matures, it should have increasing discretion and options.
What is your favorite quote?
One that I coined is,
“No one ever asked me if I wanted to be forged, said the sword.”
What do you think of “trailers” for books?
If you can create a book trailer that goes viral, it can be a wonderful means of publicity. It requires a great deal of skill and luck to create a viral video. I feel that many book trailers do not provide a good return on the time and money required to create them. (I think about this a lot ... and I have an idea ... I think YouTube isn't the only place to introduce trailers it should be on the TV too, then maybe it will ignite people interest..........And even though it is not appear here, I think that the cover of your book is very beautiful and it seems, that in this case it was important to you.)
What’s the worst job you’ve had?
The summer I graduated from high school, I worked for two weeks at McDonald’s before getting a better paying job. But while the job was menial, I met my first girlfriend there. (at least !)
Thank you mark It is nice to have you on my blog !
If you don't mind , I permit to myself to add few QAs that I should ask and didn't, from Askmar publishing site.
THE AUTHOR WILL BE GIVING AWAY:
Mark will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host. a Rafflecopter giveaway
Charlie Jane Anders
Elric cover art by Chris Achileos
Book cover art by Michael Whelan
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