Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Six Wakes
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/25/1973
WEBSITE: http://murverse.com/
CITY: Durham
STATE: NC
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mur_Lafferty http://twitter.com/mightymur http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=james_maxey&article=001
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2006071073
Descriptive conventions:
rda
LC classification: PS3612.A3743
Personal name heading:
Lafferty, Mur
Profession or occupation:
Authors Podcasters
Found in: Walch, R. Tricks of the podcasting masters, c2006: t.p.
(Mur Lafferty) p. 4 of cover (produces and hosts Geek Fu
Action Grip and I should be writing; contributor to the
Dragon Page, Wingin' it podcast)
Shambling guide to New York City, 2013: ECIP t.p. (Mur
Lafferty)
Lafferty, Mur. The Shambling guide to New York City, 2013:
title page (Mur Lafferty) page 345 (Meet the author. Mur
Lafferty is a writer, podcast producer, gamer, geek, and
martial artist. Her books include Playing for keeps,
Nanovor: hacked!, Marco and the red granny, and The
afterlife series)
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born July 25, 1973; married; children: a daughter.
EDUCATION:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, B.A.; University of Southern Maine, M.F.A., 2014.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, podcaster. Podcaster, 2004–; I Should Be Writing, podcast, creator and host, 2o05–; Ditch Diggers podcast, creator and host, 2o15–; hosted and/or created podcasts for Tor.com, Lulu, and Angry Robot Books. Mothership Zeta, editor-in-chief ; Pseudopod and Escape Pod, former editor. Also worked as a writer for role-playing game companies, including White Wolf.
AVOCATIONS:Running, kung fu (Northern Shaolin five animals style), Skyrim, tabletop games, and the Durham Bulls.
AWARDS:John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, 2013; Manly Wade Wellman Award, 2014, for The Shambling Guide to New York City, and 2015, for Ghost Train to New Orleans; won the Podcast Peer Award and three Parsec Awards; Hugo Finalist for the 2017 Best Fancast Award, for Ditch Diggers podcast; inductee, Podcast Pickle Hall of Fame.
WRITINGS
Contributor to magazines and perodicals, including Scrye, Knights of the Dinner Table, Anime Insider, Grumble, Games Quarterly, and the Escapist.
Shambling Guide to New York City being adapted as a feature film on Netflix.
SIDELIGHTS
American author Mur Lafferty got her start in publishing with podcasts. She began podcasting in 2004, and used it as a way to get her essays out to a broad audience. Eventually, Lafferty also used podcasts to serlaize her fiction, including her first novel, Playing for Keeps, a spoof on the superhero tale, with its protagonist a female bar owner who has the questiobable super ability of preventing anything in her possession from being stolen. Lafferty has gone on to publish other novels, including Nanovor: Hacked; The Shambling Guide to New York City; Ghost Train to New Orleans; and Six Wakes. She continues to podcast as the host of her award-winning shows, I Should Be Writing and Ditch Diggers.
In an Orbit Books Website interview, Lafferty remarked on her earliest writing ventures: “I think I was around twelve, after reading Fred Saberhagen’s Swords series and getting my first itch for fanfic. Then I began an epic story about all my best friends, featuring different-colored unicorns. This book is, thankfully, lost to the ages.” Speaking with a Locus Online contributor, Lafferty–as both a podcaster and an author–further commented on the difference in the types of stories suitable for audio versus print publication: “Reading is a focused activity. You can’t do much else when you read. But with audio, most people do it while driving cars, or exercising, or cleaning. You’re already fighting for the mind’s focus. We know stories need a good hook, and shouldn’t drag to lose the reader, but in audio those rules are even more important. Stories have to be interesting immediately, have to grab the listener and hold on. Otherwise, the listener’s mind will wander and they’ll start to tune out and think about what they’re scrubbing or how many more minutes till they get home and can get some real entertainment.”
Nanovor
Lafferty, collaborating with Ryan Payne, writes for a tweener audience in Nanovor: Hacked, featuring high school nerdish freshman Lucas Nelson, who discovers something very surprising inside computers: monsters based on silcone live there. Called Nanovors, these monsters soon join Lucas, with the help of a digital micrscope, to engage in digital battle. Meanwhile, Lucas’s science project, a robotic fortune-teller, is a big hit. It uses face recognition to find personal information online, but Lucas and his friends are hacked by a rival gang of geeks who are collecting all this personal information for evil ends. The novel is one of a series of such works that are tie-ins to the Nanovor line of online and handheld video games.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer was unimpressed with this “mediocre tie-in,” noting that it “will likely only interest readers already familiar with the Nanovor world.” A Kirkus Reviews critic had a higher assessment, commenting: “Skillfully avoiding literary pitfalls while focusing on the target demographic, the team delivers a decent read.” Further praise came from School Library Journal writer Jessica Tymecki, who observed: “This book, which includes black-and-white manga-style cartoons, will be great for reluctant readers, especially those interested in video games.”
The Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans.
Lafferty pens a pair of books featuring book editor Zoe Norris, who scores an editing job on a line of travel books for spirits, monsters, vampires and all sorts of other superntural creatures. In The Shambling Guide to New York City, Zoe is out of work and despearte to find any editing job. Thus she does not look too closely at the fine print on a contract with Underground Press, run by a vampire. Zoe jumps at the job, but she has monsters to compete with for the editing position. She manages to deal with these and the “story is off and running, and it never pauses for breath,” according to Boingboing Website writer Cory Doctorow, who added: “There’s love, war, humor and a lot of heart, and by the time it’s done, you know exactly why so many writers have been buzzing about Mur Lafferty for so many years. It’s as strong a debut as I can remember reading.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly reviewer termed it a “charming debut,” and an “enjoyable tour of the city’s supernatural side,” while Booklist contributor Rebecca Vnuk dubbed it a “funny, thoughtfully conceived, and thoroughly entertaining romp.” Likewise, a Kirkus Reviews critic concluded: “Combine wit, style and acute observation: The result is irresistible.”
Zoe returns in Ghost Train to New Orleans, in which she heads south to test the pleasures of The Big Easy. But nothing is easy about this assignment,with betrayal and danger on all sides. “Lafferty’s writing has an easy style that draws the reader in,” noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer of this sequel.
Six Wakes
Lafferty creates a “taut science fiction thriller” in Six Wakes, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The novel is set in the twenty-fifth century aboard a colony ship leaving an ecologically devastated Earth for the planet Artemis. Aboard are 2,000 colonists, put into cryo-sleep for the long journey. The ship is “manned” by a crew of six clones, all of whom have a criminal past and are looking to create a new life for themselves. A quarter century into the journey, however, tragedy strikes. This crew of six awakens to a scene of carnage and now they realize that one among them is a murderer. Meanwhile, the ship has gone off course and the AI is down; there is no way to communicate with Earth.
A Kirkus Reviews critic offered a varied assessment of Six Wakes, commenting: “You have to wonder why, given Lafferty’s manifest talent for humor, she didn’t simply play it for laughs. Still, readers easily captivated and not overly concerned with structural dependability will find much to entertain them.” Others had a higher evaluation of the work. “Lafferty delivers a tense nail-biter of a story,” the Publishers Weekly reviewer stated. Booklist contributor Emily Compton-Dzak was also impressed, noting: “Six Wakes is a perfect blend of science fiction and mystery.” Writing in NPR.org, Jason Heller added further praise, observing: “As much depth as these intellectual conundrums bring to the story, Lafferty never lets them overpower what Six Wakes, at its core, truly is: a taut, nerve-tingling, interstellar murder mystery with a deeply human heart.” Similarly, an online Book Smugglers writer commented: “The characters are beautifully, slowly revealed … and build on twists and revelations that are lovingly executed. I truly appreciated the setup, and loved the central conceit of the novel. … This is a scifi mystery worth checking out.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2013, Rebecca Vnuk, review of The Shambling Guide to New York City, p. 33; December 15, 2016, Emily Compton-Dzak, review of Six Wakes, p. 33.
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2009, review of Nanovor: Hacked; March 15, 2013, review of The Shambling Guide to New York City; November 15, 2016, review of Six Wakes.
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May-June, 2017, Charles de Lint, review of Bookburners, p. 87.
Publishers Weekly, December 21, 2009, review of Nanovor, p. 61; April 1, 2013, review of The Shambling Guide to New York City, p. 46; December 16, 2013, review of Ghost Train to New Orleans, p. 42; November 28, 2016, review of Six Wakes, p. 52.
School Library Journal, March, 2010, Jessica Tymecki, review of Nanovor, p. 162; July, 2017, Sarah Hill, review of Bookburners, p. 96.
SciTech Book News, September, 2006, review of Tricks of the Podcasting Masters.
ONLINE
Boingboing, https://boingboing.net/ (June 28, 2016), Cory Doctorow, “Mur Lafferty’s Shambling Guide to NYC is Coming to Netflix!”
Book Smugglers, http://thebooksmugglers.com/ (February 1, 2017), review of Six Wakes.
Jim C. Hines Website, http://www.jimchines.com/ (May 1, 2012), “Campbell Interview: Mur Lafferty.”
Locus Online, http://www.locusmag.com/ (November 25, 2011), “Mur Lafferty.”
Mur Lafferty Website, http://murverse.com (September 11, 2017).
NPR.org, http://www.npr.org/ (January 31, 2017), Jason Heller, review of Six Wakes.
Orbit Books Website, https://www.orbitbooks.net/ (September 11, 2017), “Mur Lafferty.”
Whatever, https://whatever.scalzi.com/ (January 31, 2017), John Scalzi, review of Six Wakes.
Writertopia, http://www.writertopia.com/ (September 11, 2017), “Mur Lafferty.”
About Mur Lafferty
Ditch Diggers: Hugo Finalist for the 2017 Best Fancast Award
Mur Lafferty: Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
The Shambling Guides 1 & 2: Winner of the Manly Wade Wellman Award (2014 & 15)
“one of the worst-kept secrets in science fiction and fantasy publishing.” – Cory Doctorow via BoingBoing
Download my press kit! (750k)
Welcome to Mur Lafferty’s ever-changing website where you can find podcasts, my books, my nonfiction, and various and sundry other things.
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Six Wakes is out now!
Bookburners by Mur Lafferty and others
Bookburners Season One is out now!
My books are available in stores, online retailers, and through this site. The two newest, Six Wakes, a clone murder mystery in space, and Bookburners, a collaboration effort about a group of demon hunters for the Vatican, both came out January, 2017.
The Shambling Guide to New York City won the 2014 Manly Wade Wellman Award, and I was lucky enough that its sequel, Ghost Train to New Orleans, won the 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award! More info about my books here.
I’ve been a podcaster for 11 years, starting in December, 2004, and since then I’ve won the Podcast Peer Award and three Parsec Awards. My show Ditch Diggers is currently nominated for the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Fancast. In 2015 I was inducted into the Podcaster Hall of Fame for my solo work, and the shows I’ve hosted and/or created for Tor.com, Lulu, and Angry Robot Books. My longest running show is I Should Be Writing (11 years strong as of August 2016!)
I’ve been the editor of Pseudopod, Escape Pod, and am currently the editor of the Escape Artists ezine: Mothership Zeta.
Other Sundries:
My nonfiction essays have appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table, The Escapist, and on the podcast The Dragon Page.
I live in Durham, NC, with my husband and teen daughter.
In January, 2014, I graduated from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine with an MFA in popular fiction.
The best way to contact me is via email – mightymur AT gmail, and I will do all I can to get back to you, but I can’t promise a quick turnaround. I am most social-networkingly connected at Twitter (@mightymur), and am not on Facebook because it’s evil.
Snail Mail:
Mur Lafferty
8311 Brier Creek Parkway
Ste 105274
Raleigh, NC 27617
Mur Lafferty
Mur lafferty headshot.jpg
Mur Lafferty
Born July 25, 1973 (age 44)
Occupation Author
Nationality American
Genre Science Fiction/Fantasy
Website
www.murverse.com
Mur Lafferty (born July 25, 1973) is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina.[1] She was the editor and host of Escape Pod from 2010, when she took over from Steve Eley, until 2012, when she was replaced by Norm Sherman. She is also the host and creator of the podcast I Should Be Writing. She was, until July 2007, the host and co-editor of Pseudopod. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Escape Artists short fiction magazine Mothership Zeta.
Contents
1 Education
2 Podcasting
2.1 Early Contributions
2.2 I Should Be Writing
2.3 Escape Pod and Pseudopod
2.4 Ditch Diggers
3 Writing
3.1 Early Writing Career
3.2 The Shambling Guides
4 Awards and honors
5 Selected bibliography
5.1 Novels
5.1.1 The Shambling Guides
5.2 Novellas
5.3 Short Fiction
5.4 Serial fiction
5.5 Anthologies
5.6 Non-Fiction and Essays
5.7 RPGs
5.8 Magazines
6 References
7 External links
Education
She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with a degree in English. In 2014 she received her MFA from the University of Maine’s Stonecoast program.
Podcasting
Lafferty performing a live episode of the Ditch Diggers podcast at the 2017 Worldcon.
Early Contributions
A friend introduced Lafferty to podcasting in October 2004. She immediately seized on the medium as a novel opportunity to publish her essays on geekdom. Her first podcast, Geek Fu Action Grip, launched in December 2004.[2] Early topics included her obsession with Alton Brown and her uncomfortable crushes on the hosts of her child's TV shows, and expanded to discussions of games, movies, and television shows. In later episodes she began podcasting her fiction, most notably her serialized novels Heaven and Heaven Part 2: Hell. Geek Fu Action Grip ceased production as of episode 103.
Lafferty's essays also led to her becoming an early contributor to Wingin' It: a sci-fi variety show podcast hosted by Michael R. Mennenga and Evo Terra.[2] While she is no longer a regular, her essay produced during their 2006 Dragon*Con show is considered one of her best.
In September 2006, Lafferty, along with Michael R. Mennenga and Tracy Hickman, founded the Parsec Awards,[2] which recognize excellence in science fiction podcasting. After a general nomination period, the Steering Committee compiles a shortlist, from which an independent panel of judges selects the winner of each category. The awards are presented yearly at Dragon*Con.[2]
I Should Be Writing
Lafferty's second podcast arose from her desire to share her experiences as a struggling fiction writer. I Should Be Writing is a self-described "podcast for wannabe fiction writers."[2] Each show covers a specific topic about the writing world, from battling self-doubt to crafting queries and cover letters, interspersed with interviews with published professionals.
I Should Be Writing won the 2007 Parsec Award for Best Writing Podcast.
Escape Pod and Pseudopod
From May 2010 to December 2012, she was the editor and host of the sci-fi podcast magazine Escape Pod,[2] taking over from former editor and founder Steve Eley.[3] Under her editorship, Escape Pod began paying SFWA pro rates for the first time.[4]
Lafferty was also co-founder, along with Steve Eley and co-editor Ben Phillips, of Pseudopod, a spin-off of Escape Pod presenting "the best in audio horror." In July 2007 she stepped down as co-editor of Pseudopod.
Ditch Diggers
Mur Lafferty and Alasdair Stuart prior to the Hugo Awards ceremony in 2017.
In January 2015, Lafferty started a new podcast with a recurring I Should Be Writing guest host Matt Wallace. The new show, titled Ditch Diggers, focusses on the professional and business side of writing and is intended to be honest to the point of brutality, in contrast to the more optimistic and uplifting tone of I Should Be Writing. It was a Hugo Award finalist for Best Fancast in 2017.
Writing
Early Writing Career
Her early career began with her writing for White Wolf and other role playing game companies, and she has expanded to writing about games for such publications as Scrye, Knights of the Dinner Table, Anime Insider, Games Quarterly, and The Escapist. Her popular podcast novel Playing For Keeps was published by Swarm Press on August 25, 2008.
She has also written essays for the online magazine Grumble, many of which have ended up on Geek Fu Action Grip and published fiction in Hub magazine. Her short story. “1963: The Argument Against Louis Pasteur” (published in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities) qualified her the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, which she won in 2013.
The Shambling Guides
In May 2013, Orbit Books released the first in Lafferty’s urban fantasy series: The Shambling Guide to New York City. It received favorable reception; Kirkus Reviews stated: “The hip, knowing and sometimes hysterically funny narrative, interspersed with excerpts from the guide of the title, lurches along in splendid fashion… The result is irresistible.”[5]
The second novel in the series, A Ghost Train to New Orleans, was published on March 4, 2014.
Awards and honors
Member of the Podcast Pickle Hall of Fame
One of the Top Ten Savvy Women in Podcasting, 2006[6]
Tricks of the Podcasting Masters was named one of the top reference books for 2006 by Amazon.com.[7]
2007 Parsec Nomination for Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form): I Look Forward To Remembering You[8]
2007 Parsec Award for Best Writing Related Podcast: I Should Be Writing
2008 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novella Form): Heaven - Season Four: Wasteland[9]
2008 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Story (Long Form): Playing for Keeps
2010 Parsec Nomination for Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novella Form): Heaven - Season Five: War[10]
2011 Parsec Nomination for Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novella Form): Marco and the Red Granny[11]
2012 Nomination for John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer[12]
2013 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer[13]
Selected bibliography
Novels
Playing for Keeps, Podiobooks.com 2007 [1]
Playing for Keeps, Swarm Press 2008
Nanovor: Hacked, Running Press Kids 2010
Six Wakes, Orbit 2017.
The Shambling Guides
A Shambling Guide to New York, Orbit Books, 2013
The Ghost Train to New Orleans, Orbit Books, 2014[14]
Novellas
Heaven - Season One, Podiobooks.com 2006 [2]
Heaven - Season Two: Hell, Podiobooks.com 2007 [3]
Heaven - Season Three: Earth, Podiobooks.com 2007 [4]
Heaven - Season Four: Wasteland, Podiobooks.com 2007 [5]
Heaven - Season Five: War, Podiobooks.com 2009 [6]
Marco and the Red Granny, Hub Magazine 2010
Short Fiction
I Look Forward To Remembering You, Escape Pod 2006 [7]
1963: The Argument Against Louis Pasteur, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer)[15]
Produce 1:1-10, Daily Science Fiction 2014 [8]
Serial fiction
Bookburners (created by Max Gladstone)
Bookburners Season One (with Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, and Brian Francis Slattery)
Episode 4: "A Sorcerer's Apprentice" (2015)
Episode 8: "Under My Skin" (2015)
Episode 11: "Shore Leave" (2015)
Episode 13: "Keeping Friends Close" (2015)
Anthologies
Voices: New Media Fiction (editor), Podiobooks.com 2006
Non-Fiction and Essays
Tricks of the Podcasting Masters (with Robert Walch) Que 2006 ISBN 0-7897-3574-1
Lessons From a Geek Fu Master, Lulu 2006
RPGs
D20 Fright Night Haunted School, Hogshead Publishing 2004 ASIN B000RI8HFA
Magazines
Mothership Zeta, Escape Artists 2015 onwards (Editor-in-Chief)[16]
QUOTE:
I think I was around twelve, after reading Fred Saberhagen’s Swords series and getting my first itch for fanfic. Then I began an epic story about all my best friends, featuring different-colored unicorns. This book is, thankfully, lost to the ages.
About the Author
Mur Lafferty is a writer, podcast producer, gamer, geek and martial artist. She loves to run, practice kung fu (Northern Shaolin five animals style), play World of Warcraft and Dragon Age and hang out with her fabulous geeky husband and their eight-year-old daughter.
An Interview With Mur Lafferty on THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY
When did you first start writing?
I think I was around twelve, after reading Fred Saberhagen’s Swords series and getting my first itch for fanfic. Then I began an epic story about all my best friends, featuring different-colored unicorns. This book is, thankfully, lost to the ages.
Who are your biggest writing influences?
As a child, I was most influenced by Anne McCaffrey and Robin McKinley. As an adult, it’s been Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, and Connie Willis.
Where did the idea for THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY come from?
I used to write for role-playinggames, and in 2005 (post–Hurricane Katrina), I got together with some friends to do a print‑on‑demand RPG book about New Orleans to benefit the Red Cross. New Orleans has such a history with myth and magic, I had the idea to see the city from a zombie tour guide’s POV, so I wrote a short story called “The Shambling Guide to New Orleans.” After I wrote that short piece for the book, I began thinking of other cities that would have an underground monster population that might be in need of guidebooks.
What was your inspiration for Zoë? Why publishing?
Embarrassingly enough, only after I finished the book did I realize how much Douglas Adams influenced my writing. One of my favorite parts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the actual travel book within the book. As for Zoë, she is a woman who thinks she can handle things bigger than herself; she has a reckless streak that I’ve always wanted to have.
How much of you is in your characters?
I think there’s a little bit of me in all of them, else I wouldn’t be able to write them. My protagonists are often braver than I am, though.
Why New York City?
I am from a small town, and currently live in Durham, North Carolina. While we have the cities of Raleigh and Durham, they suffer from sprawl, and so they never feel like proper cities to me. Cars are ubiquitous instead of subways and buses. And forget walking anywhere. Cities that pack their residents in create their own mythology with the layers from the ultra-rich penthouses to the squalor in the abandoned tunnels. I’ve always loved visiting cities, even though the small-town girl inside me fears getting hopelessly lost!
How much research did you have to do for this novel?
I did a lot of reading on different monster mythologies, especially those tied to different locations. For the city, I drew on media about New York, maps, and my experiences visiting the city. A lot of reading and a lot of Internet research.
Spread the Word
Mur Lafferty is an author, podcaster, and editor. She lives in Durham, NC, with her husband and 11 year old daughter.
Mur has written for several magazines including Knights of the Dinner Table, Anime Insider, and The Escapist.
Mur is studying for her MFA in Popular Fiction at the Stone coast program at the University of Southern Maine.
Series
Afterlife
1. Heaven (2011)
2. Hell (2011)
3. Earth (2011)
4. Wasteland (2011)
5. War (2011)
6. Stones (2015)
The Afterlife Series Omnibus (omnibus) (2014)
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Shadowsfall Legends
Pawn, Deception, and Sacrifice (2011)
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Galactic Football League Novellas (with Scott Sigler)
3. The Reporter (2012)
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Shambling Guides
1. The Shambling Guide to New York City (2013)
2. The Ghost Train to New Orleans (2014)
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Novels
Playing For Keeps (2008)
Nanovor: Hacked (2010)
Marco and the Red Granny (2010)
Six Wakes (2017)
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Collections
Merry Christmas from the Heartbreakers (2012)
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Series contributed to
Bookburners Season 1
4. A Sorcerer's Apprentice (2015)
8. Under My Skin (2015)
10. Shore Leave (2015)
14. Keeping Friends Close (2015)
Bookburners Season One (omnibus) (2017) (with Margaret Dunlap, Max Gladstone and Brian Francis Slattery)
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Bookburners Season 2
5. Debtor's Prison (2016)
Bookburners: The Complete Season 2 (omnibus) (2017) (with Margaret Dunlap, Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone, Andrea Phillips and Brian Francis Slattery)
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Bookburners Season 3
5. Time Capsule (2017)
8. Making Amends (2017)
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Non fiction
Tricks of the Podcasting Masters (2006)
Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster, creator of the podcasts I Should Be Writing and the Angry Robot Books podcast.
She is the editor of Escape Pod, the premier SF podcast magazine. She has written for the gaming magazine Knights of the Dinner Table, Games Quarterly, Suicide Girls, and Anime Insider. She is also the editor of the new Worldbuilder project for Angry Robot Books.
Called the "podcast SF doyenne" by Cory Doctorow, Lafferty has been bringing award-winning commentary and SF to the podcasting sphere since 2004.
Based in Durham, NC, She enjoys running, kung fu (Northern Shaolin five animals style), Skyrim, tabletop games, and the Durham Bulls.
Bibliography
Mur Lafferty's Campbell-qualifying work:
"1963: The Argument Against Louis Pasteur" in The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. Harper Voyager, 2011.
Other Work
Novels
Playing For Keeps, Swarm/Permuted Press, 2008
The Shambling Guide to NYC, Orbit Books, 2013 (Forthcoming)
Novellas
Nanovor: Hacked!, Running Press Kids, 2010
Marco and the Red Granny, Hub Magazine, 2010 (Audio) (Reprinted by Suicide Girls, 2011, in text form)
Short Fiction
The Rogue Plague, Leviathan Chronicles, 2012 (audio) (script)
The Ward, Leviathan Chronicles, 2012 (audio) (script)
"Third Date Questions," Gimme Shelter Anthology, 2011
Zuzu's Bell, Drabblecast, 2010 (Audio)
Nanovor, Smith and Tinker, 2009 (web animation scripts)
I Look Forward to Remembering You, Escape Pod, 2006 (Audio) (reprinted in Hub Magazine, download PDF here)
Merry Christmas from the Heartbreakers, Escape Pod, 2006
Editor
Escape Pod
Angry Robot Worldbuilder Project
QUOTE:
Reading is a focused activity. You can’t do much else when you read. But with audio, most people do it while driving cars, or exercising, or cleaning. You’re already fighting for the mind’s focus. We know stories need a good hook, and shouldn’t drag to lose the reader, but in audio those rules are even more important. Stories have to be interesting immediately, have to grab the listener and hold on. Otherwise, the listener’s mind will wander and they’ll start to tune out and think about what they’re scrubbing or how many more minutes till they get home and can get some real entertainment.
Spotlight on Mur Lafferty, Podcaster
— posted Thursday 25 November 2010 @ 10:31 am PDT
Mur Lafferty has been called the ‘‘Podcast SF doyenne’’ and is the host of I Should Be Writing and editor of Escape Pod, podcasting’s first SF magazine. Her first book, Playing for Keeps, was released in 2008, and currently her novella ‘‘Marco and the Red Granny’’ is being serialized in audio at Hub Magazine. She has won the Parsec Award and the Podcast Peer Award. She’s a freelance writer, author, and podcast producer, and lives in Durham, NC with her husband and daughter.
Tell us about your podcast, I Should Be Writing.
When I created ISBW in 2005, there was only one other podcast (that I knew of) for writers, and that was Mike Stackpole’s show, The Secrets. Since that was a show focusing on the craft from a pro’s point of view, I figured I’d do a show focusing on it from the POV of someone who’s still learning, still trying to get published. After college I had taken some discouraged years off writing, and was starting to get back into it, learning about ‘‘good’’ rejections and that the publishing industry really wasn’t out to get new authors. Since I was still very much a new writer, I incorporated my thoughts on being a ‘‘wanna-be’’ writer with interviews with pro writers on the show. Although it is not specifically an SF show, since that’s what I write, it skewed that way regardless.
What made you decide to take over Escape Pod? Aren’t you busy enough?
When they asked me about it, I thought they were joking (because I do have several projects ongoing). But after talking to Ben Phillips (publisher of Escape Artists magazines) and Steve Eley (founder of EA and original editor of Escape Pod), I realized it would be a fantastic venture. And I’m a freelancer; I’m programmed to take jobs, especially if they’re interesting. And taking the helm of Escape Pod was definitely interesting. They also had an excellent team of readers available, a producer, and Norm Sherman of the Drabblecast agreed to help me with hosting duties twice a month, so it’s not the one-person-show Steve started five years ago. It’s much easier to work with a team. And I’ve almost got the workflow under control!
What’s surprised you most about the experience of running Escape Pod so far?
I was honestly shocked at how well I’ve been accepted as the new editor. Audio is interesting; people hear your voice and feel closer to you than when they read your words. And Steve Eley had been hosting for nearly five years, interjecting snippets of his life into the intros and outtros. People were not just fans of the show, they loved him. And when he stepped down, many people were understandably upset. But enough of the fans were listeners of mine, or had heard my stories and narrations on Escape Pod, that they were happy with his choice. Most of what I read on the forums and in emails was, ‘‘Whew, if Mur’s taking over, it’s in good hands.’’ Faith like that is humbling.
How does choosing a story for audio publication differ from choosing a story for print publication?
Reading is a focused activity. You can’t do much else when you read. But with audio, most people do it while driving cars, or exercising, or cleaning. You’re already fighting for the mind’s focus. We know stories need a good hook, and shouldn’t drag to lose the reader, but in audio those rules are even more important. Stories have to be interesting immediately, have to grab the listener and hold on. Otherwise, the listener’s mind will wander and they’ll start to tune out and think about what they’re scrubbing or how many more minutes till they get home and can get some real entertainment. I’ve had to reject wonderful – even award-winning – stories that simply took too long to grab me because I know the audience would lose interest.
Are there any particular episodes of Escape Pod or ISBW that you’re especially proud of, and want our readers to seek out?
Steve started a fantastic tradition of buying the audio rights to the Hugo nominees, mainly for the Hugo voters, so that’s always a popular summer series. But one thing I love about this job is when I manage to pair the right voice with the right story. Since I’ve taken over, one of my favorites has been ‘‘Eugene’’ by Jacob Sager Weinstein, about a police dog in a man’s body, which I paired with the enthusiastic voice of Shoebox from the comedy band Worm Quartet. As for ISBW, I’m a huge geek and fangirl, and so my favorite interviews have been with my favorite authors. I’ve had both Neil Gaiman and Connie Willis on the show twice. I try to get my geeking out over with before I record, but I don’t always succeed. I also love it when I get to feature a listener of the show because he or she has sold their first book, which I got to do with Blake Charlton (Spellwright) or Gail Carriger (Soulless, Changeless, Blameless).
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about you or your work?
My superhero fiction, afterlife fiction, zombie audiodrama, and all of the other plates I spin can be found at Murverse.com. At cons I can be found at the bar quizzing the bartender about available gins.
Mur Lafferty's "Shambling Guide to NYC" is coming to Netflix!
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Mur Lafferty, an amazing author and podcaster, had her mainstream publishing debt in 2013 with the wonderful Shambling Guide to New York City, about a travel writer who gets tapped to write a guidebook for spooks, haints, vampires and werewolves.
Now Lafferty has announced that her book is being produced as a feature film by Netflix, overseen by Sarah Bowen, who produced Netflix's recent films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and Pee-wee’s Big Holiday. Go Mur!
Here's my 2013 review of Shambling Guide:
Mur Lafferty is one of the worst-kept secrets in science fiction and fantasy publishing. "Secret" in that her fiction has not been widely published (until now). "Worst-kept" in that she has been such a force of nature -- the podcaster's podcaster, author of a huge corpus of excellent self-published work, and a skilled editor currently running Escape Pod -- that anyone who's been paying attention has known that there were great things coming from her.
Great things have come from her. The Shambling Guide to New York City is the first volume in a new series of books about Zoe Norris, a book editor who stumbles into a job editing a line of travel guides for monsters, demons, golem-makers, sprites, death-gods and other supernatural members of the coterie, a hidden-in-plain-sight secret society of the supernatural.
The volume opens with a desperate, out-of-work Zoe prowling the streets of New York, looking for a publishing job -- any publishing job. She finds herself chasing down a mysterious advertisement for an editor for Underground Press, which turns out to be the hobby-business of an ancient vampire with a modern idea. Phil, the owner, wants to produce the first-ever line of tour-guides for travelling coterie. And it just so happens that Zoe's last job was editing a successful line of (human) travel guides, a gig she excelled at and would have held still save for her philandering boss, who neglected to mention that he was married (to a psycho police chief!) before he seduced her.
After being rebuffed, Zoe bulls her way into the job, only to discover that she has bitten off more than she can chew -- or rather, that several monsters are vying for chance to bite off a rather large chunk of her. Chief among them is a sleazy incubus who is fixated on having sex with her and feeding off her sexual energy (workplace harassment is complicated in the coterie).
From this, the story is off and running, and it never pauses for breath -- there's love, war, humor and a lot of heart, and by the time it's done, you know exactly why so many writers have been buzzing about Mur Lafferty for so many years. It's as strong a debut as I can remember reading, and I can't wait for the follow-on volumes.
May 1, 2012 / Uncategorized
Campbell Interview: Mur Lafferty
Campbell Award, Mur Lafferty /
Welcome to the second of my interviews with this year’s finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. You can read them all by clicking the Campbell Award tag. For now, meet Mur Lafferty: author, podcaster, and owner of a very cool hat.
1) In exactly 25 words, who is Mur Lafferty?
Photo by JR BlackwellA carbon-based life form, podcaster, editor, and writer (obviously). I like martial arts, gin, and dogs. Contrary to popular belief, I do own dresses.
2) Tell us about the kind of fiction you write, and where we can find some of it.
All of my fiction can be found linked at Murverse.com – I wrote superhero satire (Playing For Keeps, Swarm, 2008), afterlife adventures – aka Bangsian Fantasy – (The Afterlife Series), lunar gladiatorial adventures (Marco and the Red Granny, Hub, 2010), and zombie audio dramas (The Takeover). I also write for scripts for others (The Leviathan Chronicles, audio, and Nanovor, animation scripts), have a history of writing for role-playing games, and have a love of writing Christmas short stories. I have a book (title TBA) coming out in 2013 from Orbit concerning a woman working on a travel book for monsters.
ETA: Shortly after this interview went live, Mur announced that she would be giving her fiction away for free for the next two months. Details are here.
3) What has been the best moment of your writing career thus far? (And if you’re comfortable sharing, what was the worst?)
Gosh. One best moment? Campbell nomination? The phone call from Orbit? Those two tie, I think.
Worst moment was coming to terms that my afterlife series, which is by far my listeners’ favorite of my work, would not find a home with a publisher, and I’d have to be content with it living in audio and epub.
4) If you had to incorporate that wonderful red hat into a superhero costume, what would your superhero name and powers be?
OMEGA MUR – a mild-mannered woman who, upon imbibing caffeine, loses all fear and gains super strength and rage. A child of Daredevil and the Hulk, if those two wacky kids would ever get together.
5) As a writer, where would you like to be in ten years?
One thing I’ve discovered is a love of writing for many different media. I’d love to be writing books, but also scripts for web series, and still putting out original, episodic podcast fiction. Of course, being a best-seller, Hugo-winner, and “making enough money to live off of” are nice goals too.
6) You run or work with several different podcasting sites (Escape Pod, I Should Be Writing, Princess Scientist’s Book Club, and the Angry Robot Books Podcast), and have podcast at least one of your novels as well. What is it that draws you to podcasting?
I was drawn to podcasting in the beginning, 2004, when it was a new medium – that excited me. I wanted to play with all the new ways of storytelling. I didn’t need NPR to publish essays, I didn’t need the BBC or a US radio station to do an audio drama, and I didn’t need a publisher to make an audiobook. I was able to build an audience for my work well before I got a book deal. Podcasting has been instrumental for building my career, when I never expected it to.
7) For anyone who might want to get into podcasting, what resources would you recommend, and what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about doing a successful podcast?
Microphone: Start small. A $20 mic from the store will do just fine.
Software: Windows – Audacity is free. Mac – Garageband is free. (Aside – Audacity is also available for the Mac, but crashed a lot for me, so I got Amadeus Pro, which is quite affordable and much like a stable Audacity.)
Host: Libsyn.com – The first podcast host, designed to handle the greater demands of large audio and video files.
Other resources: Tricks of the Podcasting Masters, by Lafferty/Walch (Come on, I had to!), Podcasting for Dummies, by Morris/Terra
Advice: Interact with your listeners. Give them a place to contact/follow you and respond to them; when your voice is in peoples’ ears, it creates an intimacy not found in providing text.
Bookburners
Charles de Lint
132.5-6 (May-June 2017): p87.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Spilogale, Inc.
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
Bookburners, by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, and Brian Frances Slattery, Saga Press, 2017, $21.99, tpb.
This is for all you paper people who prefer to read a physical artifact rather than from a digital screen, which is where the sixteen chapters of Bookburners originally appeared. They were marketed like a prose TV show, with a different episode appearing each week through the run of the "season." You could also download audio versions as part of your $1.59 weekly admission.
We discussed the contents of the digital version in a previous column, but here's a brief recap:
The Bookburners is a secret group of--well, they don't call them librarians, but that's pretty much what they are. They chase down magical books (not spell books or grimoires, but books that actually are magic) and store them in a cavernous subterranean library hidden under the Vatican. The mood of the series runs from police procedural through weird fiction and wouldn't have been out of place in the old pulp magazines.
Like a TV show, each episode of the series tells an individual story while adding to the overall arc of the season. It begins with an NYC police detective named Sal Brooks who joins the team as a way to help her brother, who has been infected by the dire magic in a book he acquired.
After that, it becomes hard to discuss without giving too much away. I really liked parts of it; a few plot twists kind of annoyed me. The writing--considering there are four different cooks in the kitchen--delivers a pretty consistent voice, but I found myself appreciating the characterizations by Margaret Dunlap and Max Gladstone better than the sections written by the other two authors. If I was to have any real criticism, it's that the Big Bad of the season arc just switches in the middle.
I have to admit that the series makes a handsome, and hefty, book. And while I made some grumbly noises about the cost of the digital edition when you added up $ 1.59 per episode over its sixteen-week run, this paper edition is a real bargain.
The second season of the series has now finished its own run and can be found at the Serial Box website. I'm assuming that if this paper edition does well, we can expect a similar paper edition of Season Two somewhere down the road.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
de Lint, Charles. "Bookburners." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May-June 2017, p. 87+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491230380&it=r&asid=e2f9b280efb80436b2709ac7442a050d. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491230380
QUOTE:
Six Wakes is a perfect blend of science fiction and mystery,
Six Wakes
Emily Compton-Dzak
113.8 (Dec. 15, 2016): p33.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Six Wakes.
By Mur Lafferty.
Jan. 2017.400p. Orbit, paper, $15.99 (9780316389686); e-book (9780316389662).
Imagine a world in which dying is inconsequential because people can easily transfer their "mindmaps" to clones and essentially live forever. Even in such a world, it is shocking for the entire crew of a spacecraft to wake up in newly cloned bodies and discover their previous incarnations had all been murdered. Maria Arena and five other crew members on the Dormire mission to colonize a distant planet wake up in the middle of a gruesome murder scene with no memory of what happened. Not only do they have to solve the mystery of who murdered them; they must also work together to keep their malfunctioning ship on track--no easy task when you don't know whom you can trust. Six Wakes is a perfect blend of science fiction and mystery, complete with Clue-like red herrings and thought-provoking philosophizing about the slippery slope of cloning technology. Lafferty (the Shambling Guide series) jumps back and forth in time, developing each character and building a world in which human cloning is completely believable. Highly recommended for Firefly fans and fans of a good mystery. --Emily Compton-Dzak
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Compton-Dzak, Emily. "Six Wakes." Booklist, 15 Dec. 2016, p. 33. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA476563509&it=r&asid=9fe33d0a1d255c628798193e36c09aa5. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A476563509
QUOTE:
taut science fiction thriller
Lafferty delivers a tense nail-biter of a story
Six Wakes
263.48 (Nov. 28, 2016): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Six Wakes
Mur Lafferty. Orbit, $15.99 trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-316-38968-6
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Lafferty (The Shambling Guide to New York City) takes readers aboard an ill-fated colony ship crewed by criminals in this taut science fiction thriller. Ecological collapse and social and political upheaval have convinced humans to colonize another world: the Earth-like planet Artemis, orbiting Tau Ceti. The ship Dormire carries 2,000 cryo-sleeping colonists and a crew of six clones with criminal pasts who are hoping to build new lives with clean slates. But nearly 25 years into the mission, the crew awaken in the middle of a bloody crime scene. One of them--maybe more than one--is a murderer, the ship is off course, the ship's AI is offline, all records have been deleted, and there's no way to communicate with Earth. As suspicions and hostilities rise, it's not certain who, or what, will survive. Interleaving urgent scenes with telling flashbacks, Lafferty delivers a tense nail-biter of a story fueled by memorable characters and thoughtful worldbuilding. This space-based locked-room murder mystery explores complex technological and moral issues in a way that's certain to earn it a spot on award ballots. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Six Wakes." Publishers Weekly, 28 Nov. 2016, p. 52. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473149916&it=r&asid=649043c3842ac239fe41cd9788a01675. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473149916
QUOTE:
You have to wonder why, given Lafferty's manifest talent for humor, she didn't simply play it for laughs. Still, readers easily captivated and not overly concerned with structural dependability will find much to entertain them.
Lafferty, Mur: SIX WAKES
(Nov. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Lafferty, Mur SIX WAKES Orbit (Adult Fiction) $15.99 1, 31 ISBN: 978-0-316-38968-6
The fantasist author of the hilarious The Shambling Guide to New York City (2013) ventures into science-fiction horror.The immediate setup will be familiar to mystery fans: five dead bodies, variously stabbed, poisoned, or hanged, and no survivors. Whodunit? We're in the 25th century, however, on a sub-light speed starship whose controlling artificial intelligence, IAN, is offline. The six--gofer Maria Arena, Capt. Katrina de la Cruz, navigator/pilot Akihiro Sato, security chief Wolfgang, engineer Paul Seurat, and Dr. Joanna Glass--wake in new, cloned bodies, covered in slime, surrounded by vats, tubes, gore, and the horror of their own slaughtered corpses, with no idea of what's been happening since the voyage began. They do recall earlier lifetimes, but evidently they were all criminals, so nobody can afford to reveal anything or trust anybody else. And with both the clone-growth and memory-backup processes sabotaged, the bodies they now occupy are their last. Maybe this is all just too devious for its own good. In any event, the narrative never quite lives up to that remarkable opening. Momentum dissipates amid frequent pauses to belabor the cloning process and laws relating to clone succession, not to mention a succession of scientific howlers (for instance, the ship depends for power on a solar sail--but there's no "solar" in interstellar space). Still, as the characters delve separately and together into their previous lives in search of an explanation for their predicament, the tension rises, personalities are revealed, and common factors emerge--some of them, we learn, are retired, recovering, or repurposed homicidal maniacs. You have to wonder why, given Lafferty's manifest talent for humor, she didn't simply play it for laughs. Still, readers easily captivated and not overly concerned with structural dependability will find much to entertain them.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lafferty, Mur: SIX WAKES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865844&it=r&asid=8cd7092293e4430fefc87c2f09f66adc. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469865844
QUOTE:
Lafferty's writing has an easy style that draws the reader in
Ghost Train to New Orleans
260.51 (Dec. 16, 2013): p42.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Ghost Train to New Orleans
Mur Lafferty. Orbit, $15 trade paper (354p)
ISBN 978-0-316-22114-6
Zoe Norris (introduced in The Shambling Guide to New York City) writes travel books for the coterie, America's community of supernatural entities. Zoe is human, but her boss is a vampire, her bestie is a death goddess, and at least one of her coworkers wants to eat her. Dispatched with her team to create a guide book for exotic New Orleans, Zoe finds betrayal, disquieting revelations, power, and danger. Team members go rogue and demon dogs stalk the streets while Zoe learns more about the history of her fellow citytalkets and sleepwalks into a confrontation with one of New Orleans's deadliest figures. Lafferty's writing has an easy style that draws the reader in, and while many of the elements are familiar from other urban fantasies, she manages to shape the well-worked clay in entertaining new ways. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Ghost Train to New Orleans." Publishers Weekly, 16 Dec. 2013, p. 42. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA354575788&it=r&asid=7c54fc6b68139f6b45aeecb0130571fa. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A354575788
QUOTE:
This is a funny, thoughtfully conceived, and thoroughly entertaining romp
The Shambling Guide to New York City
Rebecca Vnuk
109.18 (May 15, 2013): p33.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* The Shambling Guide to New York City.
By Mur Lafferty.
May 2013. 300p. Orbit, paper, $14.99 (9780316221177).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Most new hires try to negotiate a higher salary. When Zoe takes a job editing a new travel-book series for Underground Publications, she needs to decide whether to get paid in hell notes, blood tokens, occult favors, or regular dollars. In Lafferty's entirely believable world, New York City is secretly inhabited by vampires, zombies, fay folk, and assorted monsters. Public Works not only takes care of streets and sanitation, they are also responsible for keeping the balance between humans and "coterie"--the preferred term for nonhumans. Zoe's pretty tough, and she thinks she can handle her assignment of creating a coterie guidebook to the city. But she's ill-prepared for what awaits her in the underworld and soon finds herself succumbing to the erotic advances of an incubus coworker, tracking down raging zombies, and ultimately getting involved in an epic battle for the (literal) soul of the city. This is a funny, thoughtfully conceived, and thoroughly entertaining romp that will be a sure bet for urban-fantasy readers--and might even surprise people who don't think they'd enjoy a paranormal novel.
Vnuk, Rebecca
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Vnuk, Rebecca. "The Shambling Guide to New York City." Booklist, 15 May 2013, p. 33. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA333064577&it=r&asid=54200465f5011846634d59147bf10a25. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A333064577
QUOTE:
charming debut
enjoyable tour of the city's supernatural side.
The Shambling Guide to New York City
260.13 (Apr. 1, 2013): p46.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Shambling Guide to New York City
Mur Lafferty. Orbit, $14.99 trade paper (300p) ISBN 978-0-316-22117-7
Surviving in New York City is tricky even if one doesn't encounter paranormal entities, but Lafferty's charming debut offers a helping hand for coterie ("monster is pejorative") and humans alike. Desperate for work after a disastrous affair sends her back from Raleigh, N.C., to New York, guidebook expert Zoe Norris applies for a gig with Underground Publishing and lands an interview with a company rep who turns out to be a vampire. Undeterred, she quickly takes to her job as managing editor for a coterie guidebook to New York. She becomes fast friends with a water sprite and a death goddess, has to fend off the attentions of an incubus, and starts self-defense training with Granny Good Mae, a homeless assassin with connections to the government anticoterie department called Public Works. Zoe's romance with a Public Works agent lacks credibility, but excerpts from the guide and adventures at coterie hangouts make the novel an enjoyable tour of the city's supernatural side. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Shambling Guide to New York City." Publishers Weekly, 1 Apr. 2013, p. 46. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA324980204&it=r&asid=e15963fbb59b9f97d1ee2acec72e514c. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A324980204
QUOTE:
Combine wit, style and acute observation: The result is irresistible.
Lafferty, Mur: THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY
(Mar. 15, 2013):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Lafferty, Mur THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY Orbit/Little, Brown (Adult Fiction) $15.00 5, 28 ISBN: 978-0-316-22117-7
From the author of Playing for Keeps (2008), a comedic fantasy about monsters and New Yorkers--and, as residents will be unsurprised to learn, monsters who are New Yorkers. Fresh from the North Carolina train wreck that was her previous job--she was seduced by her boss, and his wife, a cop, found out--Zo� Norris hopes for a gig as a travel book editor in New York. She finds what seems to be the ideal job, but business owner Phillip Rand proves extremely reluctant to hire her despite her excellent credentials. Why? Well--she's human. Phil, it turns out, is a vampire, and among the other employees are an incubus, a water sprite, a death goddess and several zombies who keep a supply of brains in the office refrigerator--they're a little slow but OK unless they get hungry. Zo� can't help but wonder what other "coterie" are out there. Werewolves? Ghosts? "Banshees? Now everything about Britney Spears made sense." Not to mention Granny Good Mae, a homeless bag lady who for some reason terrifies the coterie. Then Phil hires a construct (a Frankenstein's monster) as head of CR (that's Coterie Resources, Zo� being the sole human). What Zo� finds horrible and suspicious is that the new guy wears the head of an old college boyfriend. As things rapidly get out of hand, Zo� will learn just how hard it is to resist a hungry incubus and the pivotal role played by the employees of the city's Public Works department--you will never look at those figures in reflective vests and hard hats emerging from mysterious dark apertures in the same way again. The hip, knowing and sometimes hysterically funny narrative, interspersed with excerpts from the guide of the title, lurches along in splendid fashion. Combine wit, style and acute observation: The result is irresistible.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lafferty, Mur: THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2013. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA322002983&it=r&asid=f34cc51f3a6eaf20de4c6f82b3975a3b. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A322002983
QUOTE:
this will likely only interest readers already familiar with the Nanovor world.
Hacked
256.51 (Dec. 21, 2009): p61.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Hacked
Mur Lafferty and Ryan Payne. Running Press
Kids, $7.95 paper (228p) ISBN 978-0-76243756-6
This mediocre tie-in to the Nanovor online/handheld video game created by Jordan Weisman (Cathy's Book) opens with a note from protagonist Lucas Nelson, in which he explains how he discovered the microscopic nanovors, which he and his classmates use in Pokemon-style combat ("They live to fight! As soon as we figured that our, we realized it wasn't a big step to collect them and fight them"). In the story itself, Lucas learns that Dana, a rival classmate, is planning on using her technical expertise to hijack his science fair project in an attempt to clear her father's name. Lucas and his friend Drew have no choice but send their avatars into the nanosphere to stop Dana. Lafferty and Payne are not without their strengths: while most of the characters are unsubtly good or bad, Dana, whose actions are wrong bur whose desire to help her father is noble, is an exception. The contrived fight scenes are thankfully brief. With little background given other than what's in the introduction, this will likely only interest readers already familiar with the Nanovor world. Ages 7-10. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Hacked." Publishers Weekly, 21 Dec. 2009, p. 61. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA215249451&it=r&asid=b87d46dc450370dfd60e6043ec7df9bc. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A215249451
QUOTE:
Skillfully avoiding literary pitfalls while focusing on the target demographic, the team delivers a decent read.
Lafferty, Mur: NANOVER: HACKED
(Dec. 15, 2009):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Lafferty, Mur NANOVER: HACKED Running Press (Children's) Jan. 1, 2010 ISBN: 978-0-7624-3756-6
Book tie-in to massively multiplayer online game. Sophomore Lucas Nelson has perfected a data-mining program that can crack open even the most secure system. When information from his creation is used to plant falsified material in a major research lab, Lucas must face the culprits in the Nanovor universe, made up of microscopic creatures that live inside computer systems and battle for supremacy. The authors, working off gamemeister Jordan Wesiman's concept, waste no space on character development, packing pages of action into this thin volume, and rightly so: The appeal to fans and reluctant readers overpowers any literary necessities. Cleverly named creatures have powerful-sounding special abilities, and there's an abundance of goofy science projects for humorous touches. Dr. Sapphire's barely-there mentoring adds a witty adult without distracting from the pell-mell plot. Skillfully avoiding literary pitfalls while focusing on the target demographic, the team delivers a decent read. (Science fiction. 9-12)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lafferty, Mur: NANOVER: HACKED." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2009. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA214551945&it=r&asid=d1fe09293166223cb7ecbde62f3fe0f6. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A214551945
Gladstone, Max, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, & Brian Francis Slattery. Bookburn ers
Sarah Hill
63.7 (July 2017): p96.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
* GLADSTONE, Max, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, & Brian Francis Slattery. Bookburners. 800p. (Bookburners: Season 1). S. & S./Saga. Jan. 2017. Tr $34.99. ISBN 9781481485579; pap. $21.99. ISBN 9781481485562.
NYPD detective Sal Brooks is rudely introduced to the magical underworld when her brother becomes possessed after opening an old book. To save him, she joins a Vatican task force of eclectic heroes. Together, they travel the globe capturing magical objects, destroying evil demons, and protecting the world. The plot may be familiar (see: the television show The Librarians), but the inspired character development and the breakneck action set this briskly written, hefty volume apart. The title was originally published online serially in text and audio form, like a Dickens novel, and each episode ends on a cliffhanger. Though the chapters were written by four different authors, the volume is a strong, cohesive whole. The 13 episodes of the second season of Bookburners are already available for purchase online. VERDICT Highly recommended for urban fantasy fans (think: Cassandra Clare's City of Bones combined with the "Indiana Jones" movies) and readers of engaging, thick books.--Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hill, Sarah. "Gladstone, Max, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, & Brian Francis Slattery. Bookburn ers." School Library Journal, July 2017, p. 96. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA497611197&it=r&asid=22e1dd236f6a349121ecd30d8935209a. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497611197
QUOTE:
This book, which includes black-and-white manga-style cartoons, will be great for reluctant readers, especially those interested in video games.
Lafferty, Mur & Ryan Payne. Hacked
Jessica Tymecki
56.3 (Mar. 2010): p162.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
LAFFERTY, Mur & Ryan Payne. Hacked. Bk.1. 128p. (Nanover Series). Running Pr. 2010. pap. $7.95. ISBN 978-0-7624-3756-6. LC 2009932169.
Gr 6-9--While learning about dust mites, high school freshman and science whiz Lucas Nelson stumbles upon ancient silicone-based monsters called nanovor, who live inside computers. He invents a digital microscope to communicate with them and match them in battle, creating an underground sport at Hanover High School. The teen is helped by his trusty group of friends, referred to as the Lab Rats, and their science teacher Doc Zap. The story focuses on electronic devices, especially Lucas's science fair project, a robotic fortune-teller that uses face-recognition software to tap into personal information published on the Internet. The Snake Pit--chief rivals of the Lab Rats--hack into the fortune-teller's data and take the information into the nanosphere to start trouble. The story's fast pace and references to trendy computer technology make it an enjoyable light read for science-fiction fans, who can participate in nanovor battles on an associated Web site. This book, which includes black-and-white manga-style cartoons, will be great for reluctant readers, especially those interested in video games.--Jessica Tymecki, North Bellmore Public Library, NY
Tymecki, Jessica
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Tymecki, Jessica. "Lafferty, Mur & Ryan Payne. Hacked." School Library Journal, Mar. 2010, p. 162. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA221270933&it=r&asid=e96d9c808ada28ad8af824279ba45972. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A221270933
Tricks of the Podcasting Masters
(Sept. 2006):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
0789735741
Tricks of the podcasting masters.
Walch, Robert and Mur Lafferty.
Que Publishing
2006
362 pages
$24.99
Paperback
TK5105
Podcasting, once known as "audioblogging," is a relatively new means of delivering audio and video over the Internet. This work provides advice on improving the content, presentation, and promotion of podcasts, paying relatively little attention to the technical aspects of the new technology. Throughout, they incorporate the observations of successful podcasters they have interviewed.
([c]20062005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tricks of the Podcasting Masters." SciTech Book News, Sept. 2006. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA151852056&it=r&asid=b82df966c52c436798e6ec50676c9d30. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A151852056
QUOTE:
As much depth as these intellectual conundrums bring to the story, Lafferty never lets them overpower what Six Wakes, at its core, truly is: a taut, nerve-tingling, interstellar murder mystery with a deeply human heart.
'Six Wakes' Is A Nerve-Tingling Interstellar Murder Mystery
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January 31, 201711:30 AM ET
Jason Heller
Six Wakes
Six Wakes
by Mur Lafferty
Paperback, 391 pages
purchase
Imagine waking up on a malfunctioning spaceship: The artificial gravity is disabled. Blood floats through the air. And the corpse that blood is coming from is ... your own. Kind of. You're a clone — and your original self, along with most of your crewmates, are dead. As your ship plummets through interstellar space, off course and carrying thousands of hibernating colonists to the planet Artemis, you and your fellow clones take on a daunting task: solving the mystery of what happened to the six people from whom you were cloned. Was it mass murder? Mass suicide? Or something far more complicated and sinister?
This is the predicament facing Maria Arena and the other five crewmembers of the Dormire at the start of Six Wakes, the new novel by Mur Lafferty. It's the 25th century, and Earth is a mess. Wracked by climate change, wars over dwindling water, and clone uprisings, civilization is disintegrating — and those wealthy enough to afford a life raft book passage on the Dormire, setting out for a fresh start among the stars. Maria and company not only have to confront their terrifying new reality — that a killer may float among them — they have to deal with the submerged memories of their prior incarnations. As it turns out, each of these clones has secrets that not even they are fully aware of — and a conspiracy that's centuries old lurks behind them.
Lafferty is best known for her groundbreaking working as a geek-culture podcaster, but over the last couple years she's come into her own as a novelist — and Six Wakes drives that point home. With pitch-perfect pacing and dialogue, she unfolds the investigation aboard the Dormire with chilling grace. Flashbacks to the clones' prior lives heighten the accelerating tension, suspicions, and peril aboard the ship. And the climax comes together like a Rube Goldberg device, a beautifully constructed, circular firing squad of guilt, regret, and haunting memory that leaves no character unchanged. While forcefully character-driven, the book also digs into the hard sci-fi of gene hacking, clone politics, and the inner workings of the Dormire itself, a three-mile-long "giant metal jelly roll" inhabited by an artificial intelligence named IAN who has his own part to play in the drama.
... the climax comes together like a Rube Goldberg device, a beautifully constructed, circular firing squad of guilt, regret, and haunting memory that leaves no character unchanged.
Jason Heller
Six Wakes is prefaced by a list of seven laws governing the existence of clones, established in the year 2282. They're reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics — and the similarity feels wholly intentional. Like Asimov's work, Six Wakes offers a set of science-fictional rules that, of course, are going to be bent, broken, and tested throughout the story. Ethical and philosophical dilemmas abound, from the definition of the individual to the nature of identity. Rather than posing them abstractly, Lafferty tethers these big quandaries to an exquisitely wound plot, one that shifts from whodunit to howdunit to whydunit with a breathless sense of escalation.
Along the way, the very notions of causality and culpability are flipped around, poked, and interrogated. If people can be cloned and imprinted with a copy of their psyches — or mindmaps, as they're called — how does that alter the parameters of personal responsibility and moral truth? As much depth as these intellectual conundrums bring to the story, Lafferty never lets them overpower what Six Wakes, at its core, truly is: a taut, nerve-tingling, interstellar murder mystery with a deeply human heart.
The Big Idea: Mur Lafferty
January 31, 2017 John Scalzi16 Comments
Rules for clones? According to Mur Lafferty, you need to have them. But why do you need to have them? And what are the rules, as far as they apply to her new novel Six Wakes? She’s here to give you the details.
MUR LAFFERTY:
Cloning stories are hard to tell because they’re such a staple in SF history that it’s challenging to come up with a new twist. But I tried to do it with Six Wakes by combining a few different Big Ideas.
You know, there are some weird sex things in a lot of cloning stories.
It seems in classic SF, any man who clones himself will inevitably end up having sex with himself. (I am including stories where a character travels to the past and meets an earlier or later version of himself in this category.)
Having a bunch of clones running around willy-nilly, sexing the place up, messing with their children’s inheritance, and giving each other alibis when they commit crimes, seemed… irresponsible. Most religions also wouldn’t like it. Authorities would come down pretty hard on cloning once these things became possible to the populace at large.
Thus, I first thought about what kind of international rules involving cloning would have to be developed. They might include no multiplying yourself, sterilization, and no changing of the DNA matrix stored on the computer…. among other things. These are some of the basic rules governing cloning in Six Wakes.
Another key element of the story came to me when I was playing the game FTL, a space battle game where you manage the lives of your crew and the state of your ship. One of the technologies available to your ship in the game is a cloning bay to extend your life if you die. It’s not foolproof, though; if your cloning bay goes down during battle, and someone dies, they have to wait for someone to fix the system so they can be cloned again. But, I wondered, what would happen if the whole crew died at once?
Six Wakes is set on a generation ship. When I read books with similar settings, I thought it was sad that generations (hence the name) of people are born and live and die on a ship for the benefit of the future, knowing they will never set foot on the planet upon which their whole existence is built around. What if the ship had the same crew the whole time, cloned whenever they die, while the rest of the population slept?
My opening scene was the first one I thought of, with the crew all waking up in vats. Usually, in this world, when you wake up in a new cloned body, doctors and lab techs are there to help you out, help you acclimate, and get you clothes – and there certainly weren’t any dead bodies all around you. But our crew all wake up on their own, have to handle their own way out of their vats, and figure out what the hell is up with the gore floating around their heads. Someone has killed them, turned off the gravity drive, and damaged their AI. Time has passed and memories are missing, so each person doesn’t know which of the six was the murderer; they have to suspect even their former self.
So those were the building blocks. Murder clones in space. Or “Murder Clone Space Bastard,” as a friend calls it. I made it my working title.
I worked out the laws governing clones, and then of course looked to see how many of them my characters could break. You see, the crew are all criminals, promised a clean slate and a bit of land at the end of the road if they can get the ship to its destination. Rot as a clone in prison on Earth, or help humanity get to a new planet with a new life at the other end? Pretty clear decision. Worried about the implications of the nature of their crimes being known, the powers that be declared an absolute gag order regarding the clones’ past. Only the AI, the ultimate overseer in case the clones got out of hand, knows what everyone had done.
Lastly, I’d like to talk about the title. When beloved writer Jay Lake was in his last days, he threw himself a wake so that people could come and say good-bye. I loved the idea as a poignant way to celebrate someone’s life when they were still around to appreciate the party. The idea of the living wake stayed with me, and I thought if the clones woke up with their cloning technology smashed, they would fear death for the first time in their lives. It would still be forty to sixty years in the future, but they would have a clear death sentence after living for hundreds of years. The title of Six Wakes is a tribute to Jay’s memory.
QUOTE:
the characters are beautifully, slowly revealed (think: Season 1, Lost) and build on twists and revelations that are lovingly executed. I truly appreciated the setup, and loved the central conceit of the novel.
this is a scifi mystery worth checking out.
oint Review: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Title: Six Wakes
Author: Mur Lafferty
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Orbit
Publication Date: January 31 2017
Hardcover: 352 Pages
Six Wakes
It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.
At least, Marie Shea iv had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died: from illness once and from injury once…
Maria’s vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Pituitary, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. Apparently Maria wasn’t the only one to die recently…
How did we get this book: ARC from the publisher
Format (e- or p-): ebook
REVIEW
Ana’s Take:
Thousands of years in the future, Earth is plagued by multiple disasters and corrupt governments. Technology has advanced to a point where colonising the moon and other planets is a reality. High on the list of tech breakthroughs though is cloning: not only humans are now capable of creating clones, but they can also download their own mindmaps from one body to another, retaining their memories and personality with each new transfer – thus effectively achieving immortality. There are laws of course, implemented after a long period of warring when genetic modifications were rampant: there can only be one clone of one person alive at any given time for example and hacking of a mindmap – i.e. changing one’s basic personality – is considered unethical and strictly forbidden. But of course, humans being humans – even clones – laws are still broken.
This is how six clones who committed crimes find themselves in a position where they can’t refuse a life-changing offer: to become the crew in a generation ship carrying thousands of sleeping humans toward another planet. The journey is to last hundreds of years and each crew member will die and be reborn into a new, younger clone multiple times before they reach their destination. When they do, their criminal records will be deleted and they can start anew. There is only one rule: they are not supposed to talk to each other about their past crimes so that they have a true chance of a new life. And IAN, the ship’s AI is to make sure they comply.
These are the voyages of the generation ship Dormire…
The six crew members of the Dormire wake up one day to find themselves floating in a room, surrounded by the murdered corpses of themselves. One of them poisoned, a few of them were stabbed, one committed suicide. Not only that, but they immediately notice that the bodies look much older than they should be and that’s when they realise that 25 years have gone past of which they have no memory of and clearly, clearly something went really, really wrong.
But that’s not all: the ship’s gravitational system is not working and they don’t seem to be on-course, the AI is not responding and one of the crew’s original body is not really dead: the captain is in a comma in the medical bay and it’s possible that she knows what happened but according to the laws, they now need to kill her because her clone has been awakened.
So to recap: their minds have been hacked, the ship is malfunctioning and off course, IAN is offline and at least one of them is a murderer. But who did it? Maria, the maintenance lady? Joanna, the Doctor? Wolfgang, the law enforcer? Paul, the IT guy? Katrina, the Captain? Or Hiro, the navigation pilot? And what about IAN, the AI? Could it know what happened if they manage to fix it?
A locked-room whodunit in space, with unreliable, memory-less characters, a malfunctioning AI and multiple clones, Six Wakes is FUNtastic. It works on many ways: as a whodunit, as a character exploration piece, as a science fictional piece, and it features multiple threads that examine ethics, morality, humanity and forgiveness. The book alternates between now and the past following each clone’s background and past history through the centuries in order to form a full picture of who they are: and the twists and red herrings keep on coming, fast and furious, as the building blocks fall into place to reveal whodunit. It’s not only brilliant in the way that the stories converge and how the author buried the clues deep into the storylines but it also raises really interesting questions about cloning, hacking, nature and nurture. It’s a deeply philosophical book as well as an incredibly fun one. I loved it.
Thea’s Take:
OK. So here’s the thing–I really love science fiction novels that ask philosophical and provocative questions. I also love locked room mysteries. Six Wakes, from a premise level of promise, is essentially Thea-candy.
The time is the future, and on a generation ship in deep dark space, six crew members wake up in the worst possible conditions. They are resurrected clones–and it becomes very clear immediately that something on the good ship Dormire has gone terribly, terribly wrong. For one thing, there’s the floating blood. For another, there are the dead bodies of their previous iterations are bobbing about in zero-g.
Six clones wake up, missing memories, with their ship’s AI down, the clone tanks sabotaged, and their corpses as their only clues as to what happened. Six clones, six secrets, and one killer. It’s up to these very different characters to figure out what is going on–and save their skins before the killer strikes again.
So. Six Wakes. It’s smart, fast-paced, energetic, and has the bonus of asking big questions about ethics and cloning and what it means to be human. In addition to that goodness, Mur Lafferty pulls off a helluva whodunit–at least for the first three-quarters of the novel. (The book’s final act is a little transparent, and I was hoping for more.)
On the plus side: the characters are beautifully, slowly revealed (think: Season 1, Lost) and build on twists and revelations that are lovingly executed. I truly appreciated the setup, and loved the central conceit of the novel.
On the negative side: there are certain aspects of this particular world that don’t add up, and had me questioning the foundations of a society of ever-replicated clones. Perhaps this is unfair, but last year I finished reading a book with a similar conceit of immortality (Scythe by Neal Schusterman), which addressed these issues in a much more fulsome way. What happens when everyone can live forever? Beyond the divisions between human and clone, there are other strains on society–Six Wakes looks at these stress-fractures at a surface level, and it had the potential to do so much more.
Still, these issues voiced, I truly enjoyed this book very much–this is a scifi mystery worth checking out.
Rating:
Ana: 8 – Excellent
Thea: 7 – Very Good