Scott Westerfeld's Blog, page 46

One of the themes of the Uglies series is transhumanity. In other words, how we humans change when we use technology to alter our minds and bodies in radical ways. Throughout the series I tried to juxtapose the good (special reflexes and pretty health), the bad (being bubbleheaded or cutter-brained), and the ambiguous (manga heads and Radical Honesty) changes that our species is capable of.

At this year’s TED conference athlete Aimee Mullins spoke on that very subject. Aimee has no legs, or rathe

I haven’t done a writing advice post for a while, so here’s one for you.

Rambut = Indonesian for “hair”

Rambutan = a hairy fruit, common in Southeast Asia

Observe:

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These hairy eyeballs are one of the fruits that Justine and I like to gorge on while we’re here in Sydney, because you simply can’t find them in New York. (Or if by some chance you do, they’re both absurdly expensive and half rotten.)

How to describe the taste? Well, the only similar fruit available in the US is the lychee, but I never h

Behold my new beautiful Italian cover!

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I Diari Della Mezzanotte means The Diary of Midnight, I presume, which is quite pretty. And I like me a simple iconic rose for a cover image.

One of you can probably translate the tagline better than Google Translator, which can’t do better that, “When midnight chimes worst, nightmares are advancing in the dark.”

Um, yeah. What the machine said.

It comes in Italy out on Thursday, March 5!

Meanwhile, you should all head over to the new fansite, thesmokelives.com

First, Justine has revealed her paperback cover for How to Ditch Your Fairy. It is generally considered to be the best cover of ALL TIME.

Click here to see it.

Second, this Wii Balance Controller hack is hoverboard-tastic! These German guys use the Wii data to navigate Google Earth, so it’s like your hoverboarding at about 10 kilometers altitude.

Check it out:

Obviously, this is a fairly crude hack, and Google Earth is too satellite-scale for hoverboard-like action. But imagine a smaller-scale versi

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In exciting news for those of you in the New York City area, the first-ever NYC Teen Author Festival (March 16-22, 2009) has just announced its schedule. And this schedule is VAST! So vast, in fact, that I must pause before pasting it into this post to tell you what I’m doing.

(See the full schedule below for times and places.)

To kick off the festival on Monday, March 16, Justine and I have put together a Juvenilia Smackdown panel. It consists of us two, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Alaya Johns

Yes, you read that right, and I’m typing it again, because it’s that much fun:

Manga. Head. Explosive. Goo.

It’s a brand of hair gel made by Garnier, to create those delicious mohawk-tastic heads of hair just like your fave manga characters. Don’t believe me? Here’s the website.

And here’s a classic example of some manga heads:

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Ganked from Crystal Tip’s flickr stream. And thank you to Kerri for the heads up on Manga Head Explosive Goo.

Can anybody find a photo of actual Manga Head Explosive Goo in a

Okay, so it’s been an unusually long time since I posted. This is because I’ve been working very hard on both Leviathan and Mind-Rain, an anthology of essays by YA writers about the Uglies series. (More about this soon. It’s going to be very cool.)

But that hasn’t left me much time to blog. I’ve only blogged, like, twice this year! (So much for that resolution.)

So in consolation, I offer you some very cool fan/fine art from Yuriy Shikhanovich:
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Copyright Yuriy Shikhanovich (but cropped by me a litt

Over at at the Photoshop contest site Worth 1000, someone has taken the concept of manga heads a bit too seriously.

Behold these classic movie stars in horrific manga form:

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Anyway, Justine and I are moving into new digs today, so we may be internet-missing for a few days. So don’t expect much in the way of blogging by me for a bit. (Not that I’ve been very good this year so far . . . )

Instead check out the new Westerfeldian roleplaying board!

Those of you who’ve read Peeps will no doubt remember toxoplasma gondii, the cat-borne parasite that can infect humans and change their personality. An old pal of mine, science journalist and blogger Rebecca Skloot, is a bit of an expert on toxoplasma, having written this article on whether the parasite causes “crazy cat-lady syndrome.” Fascinating stuff.

She’s just posted this charming video of a possibly toxoplasma-positive rat who LOVES its little cat friend.

For those of you who haven’t read

About a year ago, Justine and I were guests of honor at High Voltage Confusion, a yearly convention in Detroit. As we blogged here and here, we had an incredible time and met lots of lovely people.

Our introduction to the local folks was via a long interview with blogmeister John Scalzi, best known for his crankiness at the Whatever. He asked us the usual stuff about ourselves and our work, but then we branched into a far-ranging discussion of YA. I listened to the interview recently, and it was