Jumperverse, rev. 2.0

The original Jumper introduced us to the adventures of Davy, who can teleport — instantly transporting himself to any place he’s ever been, if he can recreate a sufficiently detailed mental picture of his destination. Jumper: Griffin’s Story introduces Griffin O’Connor, providing the history and background to a character that was created especially for the adaptation of Jumper (the novel) to Jumper (the movie), slated for release in 2008. As such, Griffin’s Story comes with a significant caveat for fans of the “jumper” universe.

A Note about This Novel

My previous novels featuring teleportation, Jumper and Reflex, are the basis for the upcoming New Regency/Fox movie Jumper, to be released in early 2008. Like most novel-to-movie projects, the story’s events and circumstances mutate through the process of adaptation. This novel was written to be consistent with the movie, and, as a consequence, there are significant differences between its world and the world of the previous novels.

Steven Gould
Jumper: Griffin’s Story

Certain constraints come with the world of movie adaptation. While Griffin’s Story was not written to the movie script, I understand the manuscript was closely monitored to make sure it was consistent with what the director and producers wanted to achieve in the movie version. Sacrifices were made and some things have changed from the previous works in Jumperverse, most notably the bad guys.

What hasn’t changed is the breakneck pace, the engaging characters, the struggle to stay one step ahead of pursuit and the sense that the least mis-step could be the last.

Hello, Boys!

Griffin’s Story opens with a bang. Lots of them. As fans of Jumper know, teleportation is one of the world’s coolest powers. Except that someone wants Griffin dead. Before the story opens, a near miss has sent Griffin and his parents underground, moving from England to America where they hope to become lost in San Diego.

I held up four fingers and ticked them off one by one. “Never jump where someone can see me. Never jump near home. Never jump to or from the same place twice. And never, never, ever jump unless I must — or unless you or Mum tells me to.”

It doesn’t take long before the assassins find their new home and strike. Relying on the training his father has drummed into him, Griffin manages to escape. His parents are not so fortunate. At 9 years of age, Griffin is injured, alone in the desert and an orphan. Griffin goes into hiding, gains allies, grows older and learns more about his talent. Still, no matter where he goes or how careful he is, his mysterious pursuers are never far behind. With each encounter, Griffin gains valuable knowledge and experience but the personal cost is high. Bodies pile up in a one sided struggle as the assassins try to flush Griffin from cover. He flees again and again, puzzled by the source of the assassins and their motive for hunting him. He learns they can sense when he jumps, they call themselves “paladins” and they have an ancient history of seeking out and killing jumpers while they are still children.

The killer’s plan has a distinct flaw: a man with nothing left to lose is a man without fear. What follows after they rob Griffin of the last the thing that holds any meaning for him is left as an exercise to the reader.

Hint to Griffin: identify as many paladins as you can before offing them wholesale. Oh, and you might want to keep one alive and on ice so you locate surviving jumpers and get to them before the paladins do.

Rites of Passage

The comparison between Jumper and Griffin’s Story is inevitable. The prose in Jumper: Griffin’s Story is some of Steve’s best to date. The main characters are sympathetic and Griffin’s romantic entanglements are handled tenderly, as always. The original Jumper was action adventure, with the emphasis on the adventure as Davy explored how his talent works, its limitations and the implications on his life. Griffin’s Story is an action thriller, resembling nothing so much as a younger person’s version of The Bourne Ultimatum. Innumerable highly organized, lushly funded mysterious agents who hold themselves above law or morality engage Griffin in a desperate high velocity, life and death chase.

The premise of Griffin’s Story is highly charged. Personally, I wouldn’t want to go up against someone who can have as much money as he wants (by virtue of being able to step into any vault), any weapon or technology that he wants (by virtue of the same talents), who they can’t even locate without revealing their agents to Griffin’s tender mercies and who knows that his continued existence rests entirely on his being able to kill you before you kill him. Almost makes you sad for them.

Almost.

Hint to Griffin: get yourself some henchmen. With all of the cash lying around in bank vaults where you can see it, you should be able to afford some good ones. Personally, I would start with banks that hold paladin accounts. Maybe buy yourself the odd Congressman to be on the safe side.

Davy possesses power. In Jumper, he learns both how to use and abuse that power, and the decisions he makes shape the person he becomes. The question he faces is can he mature — create a balanced life — without becoming seduced and corrupted by that power?

Griffin, on the other hand, is possessed by a curse so powerful people he doesn’t even know are willing to kill him and everyone he loves. His adversaries have made it quite clear — Griffin must kill or be killed. His question is very elemental: can he stay alive?

Griffin’s Story offers more straight on action than the original Jumper. Still, I miss Davy’s thorough, Science Fiction-oid approach to his talent and situation. Where in Jumper we followed Davy as he rigorously explored the limits of his ability and how to use it, spending hours planning and practicing for some of his operations, Griffin’s Story is dedicated to keeping Griffin one step ahead of the assassins. Davy plans ahead, rehearses his operations, and his personal goals set the priority for much of the action. Griffin has no such luxury, in part because the assassins dictate the pace and in part because Griffin’s struggle is reduced to this basic struggle for survival.

Existing fans of Jumper and Reflex will get a bang out of Jumper: Griffin’s Story. Fans of Jumper (the movie) and readers who come to the Jumper Universe through Jumper: Griffin’s Story will be richly rewarded by reading Davy’s story in Jumper and Reflex.

Best regards,
Alan

That’s what the pundits of the SF field would have us believe. Personally, I take exception to the generalization that Fantasy is comforting, formulaic and irrelevant. Personally, I also believe that another word for “depressing” is “dangerous.” Those dangerous futures can produce — perhaps even require — SF works of insight, imagination and invigorating peril.

With that spirit, I was delighted to chance upon John Brunner’s definition of Science Fiction among Neyir Cenk Gökçe’s collection.

As its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent skepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.

Best regards,
Alan

Since Kelly Link did OK last year (2005) sweeping both Hugo and Nebulas and Bujold has done quite well, historically, with 3 Hugos to her credit, I was curious.

Looking at just the awards — not the nominees — for novel, novella, novelette and short story since 2000 (a completely arbitrary cutoff point):

2006 Nebs: 1 / 3.

2005 Nebs: 3 / 1.

2004 Nebs went mostly to women: 3 / 1.

2003 Nebs 2 / 2.

2002 Nebs 1 / 3.

2001 Nebs: 3 women, 1 man.

2005 Hugos: 2 to 2

2004 Hugos: 1 woman, 3 men.

2003 Hugos: 0 / 4

2002 Hugos: 0 / 4

2001 Hugos: 2 / 2.

I don’t see a bias in the Nebs at the award level. Haven’t had time to look at the nominations, which can be more important economically — a lot more people get to say “Nominated for a Nebula Award” than get to say received same.

There’s a page about the history of the Nebs that shows a clear gender bias, historically. I don’t know if there are enough data points for the results to be statistically meaningful, but it looks like the bias is at the nomination step. For example, 21% of the nominees are women, but 26% of the winners are women. I don’t know if his data has been corrected for the gender of the writer as opposed to the gender of the name on the work. In earlier days of SF, many women published under a male name. It was enlightening and entertaining to attend the retroactive Tiptree Award and find out how strong a presence women writers have had through out the history of SF, as the panelists went through the list of proposed candidates going “he’s not a he, he’s a she.”

Appears to be a gender bias in the Hugos at the award level. I can’t, from this information, figure out where the bias is. You have to get published, nominated and have sufficient recognition among the members to get the votes necessary to win. Could be at any of those steps. For example, many members of BroadUniverse publish in smaller, less well known outlets that are often online. Even without gender bias, it would be hard to accumulate the votes needed to win.

It is interesting that the fantasy bias in the Hugo is fading. A fantasy novel has won every other year since J. K. Rowling won for Harry Potter.

Best regards,
Alan

A prince among men, author of pages of books, creator of the Berserker universe,

In lieu of flowers donations would be appreciated to any of the following - Doctors without Borders. Catholic Relief, SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, John 23rd Catholic Church in Albuquerque.

Best regards,
Alan

Of the 1,200,000 titles tracked by Nielsen Bookscan in 2004, 950,000, or 79%, sold fewer than 99 copies. The next 200,000 titles sold fewer than 1,000 copies, meaning that only 50,000 titles sold more than 1,000 copies. In 2005, only 10 titles sold more than 1,000,000 copies, and fewer than 500 titles sold more than 100,000 copies.

With payout so unlikley, no wonder the standard advance for a first book is a meager $5,000.

Best regards,
Alan

Being a numbers man, I can’t say that spending two years writing a book for a $5,000 advance sounds all that thrilling. Instead, we should all get degrees in computer game design, where the average computer game artist makes $42,500 3 years out, the average computer game programmer makes $54,300 3 years out and top artists will pull in over $200,000.

Still, the sad news is that long fiction _still_ pays better than the short fiction market, word for word, after you take into account acceptance rates.

Best regards,
Alan

For those of you — and you know who you are — who missed the Earth shattering news, Pluto is no longer a planet.
The sky is falling! Quick. Let’s summon the mercenaries, gather the change from our change jars, pool our resources and start a “Save Pluto” foundation.

I guess this is an example of what passes for “excitement” and “controversy” within the SF field. (At least it managed to keep the various news groups i belong to buzzing for a week or so.)

For me, it was a painful measure of the relevance of the field of SF. I live in a state where all forms of intellectualism are under attack, including education. Science — thanks to its association with Darwin — is pariah even among college educated, advanced degreed, intelligent types who ought to know better.

This end of the country is on the blank part of the map, where scientific method is dismissed as nothing more than a belief system. Maybe I’m just oversensitive but when SF types dance the “Tempest in a Teapot” tango over whether Pluto is a planet while there is real — perhaps permanent — damage being done to the intellectual capital of this nation in the name of religion, I can’t help but think maybe we’re conspiring in our own extinction.

I can wish the problem would go away but wishing isn’t going to turn the tide. Effort is what is called for. Effort and leadership that should be — but is not — coming from us brainy think-tank types here in the SF world. We’re the ones who are supposed to forecasting the future and reporting back to the rest of the world on what we find. That’s our job. That’s why they pay us the big bucks.

Remember. There are NO stegosaurs in the Bible. Now! Think like a dinosaur!

Best regards,
Alan

Somewhere along the way, I’d gotten tired of hearing myself shout the same thing over and over again. There’s only so many ways I found to say “Where’s the Future in Science Fiction gone?”

I’m still a rant-o-holic. That hasn’t changed.

I’ve surrendered on the multi-blogger approach. There are things I want to say about the current state of SF — particularly short SF — and I don’t want to drag anyone else through the mud. I will attempt to remain optimistic. I will attempt to remain respectful. I don’t expect the opinions I express here to exactly endear me to most of the publishers for which I am sorry but can’t apologize. I hope I don’t piss anyone off — especially when I start to name names and use published examples — for that’s not the point.

By the same token, I have been reluctant to engage on some fronts because I don’t want others who wrote for the old FutureTense blog to be tarred with the same brush that I intend to work hard for.

Ever yours, dear reader,
Alan

No.

[Updated 6/10/2006]
I set up WordPress and planned to move over the geeklog content but there’s no easy way to do it. So we’re back to Geeklog for the time being.

Read anything exciting in SF recently? Let’s spread the word about the good stuff!

Best regards
Alan