[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

This week, in time for the change of season, we asked about Winter:

The first novel that leaps to mind is Geraldine McCaughrean’s The White Darkness. It’s a wonderfully bizarre tour de force about a girl, Sym, who is obsessed with all things Antarctic, including her imaginary boyfriend, the deceased Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates. Her mad “uncle” takes her on a once in a lifetime trip there, which turns out to be a nightmare. He believes in the hollow Earth theory and that they will prove it’s true. Along the way, McCaughrean masterfully reveals more and more about Sym’s own past and her phony uncle. Sym’s voice is arresting despite how very in her own head she is—and it’s perhaps because of how that works with a backdrop that is spectacularly isolated and physically challenging. Some people may argue this isn’t a true fantasy, but I would debate them (citing spoilers), and regardless of which of us won I maintain it’d still be of interest to many genre readers because of the hollow Earth fringe science driving the plot.

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[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

Places. Be it distant cities, or even beyond Earth entirely, strange, unusual and beautiful places can inspire creativity and ideas for stories and novels.

New Zealand has been my inspiration. Even though it is home there are still places there that I cannot get out of my mind.

Everyone thinks of New Zealand as beautiful and green, but there are places that are far different. They did film Mordor in New Zealand too!

The desert plateau right in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand is a pretty bleak, but it is full of secret rivers, volcanoes some dark and dreary, some topped by snow. Wild horses can still be found racing across the plains there. There are skree slopes that if you don’t keep running down, you’d get buried in. In other words it is beautiful and frightening…just the place for me.

It’s a place made for adventure…and consequently the final showdown in my last book of the Order, Harbinger.

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Aliens are a classic trope dating back to the earliest days of science fiction, so we asked this year’s panelists this question:

Here’s what they said…

I always thought the alien in The Thing was great, because at its heart, it deviated from the ‘actors with bumps on their forehead’ sort of approach you get in movies so much. A parasite, with some intelligence (it builds that spaceship out of spare parts), it really is quite a fun stretch that you don’t see too much of. It never communicates (language is already such a gulf between us, let alone something truly alien). You get a strong sense out of that movie that you’ve encountered something truly alien.

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• The Examiner lists Top 10 SciFi/Fantasy movies coming this Fall. Included is the premise for the new Rambo film, which involves technologically-enhanced soldiers. They’d have to be: Stallone is 63 years old.
• Newsarama points us to Neil Gaiman talking about Vampires.
• The latest Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast features Matthew Rotundo, Jordan Lapp, Lou Anders
• Karen Wester Newton asks: Has reading changed? “For centuries if you wanted to read a book, you needed a physical copy of it, and either you had to read it, or another human had to read it to you. Now, in addition to print copies, a book can be recorded by the author or an actor, podcast, sold on CD or as a download, or sold as an ebook, and read on (or by) an eReader.”
• Meanwhile, Louise Marley asks: What Do Readers Want? “As writers, all we can do is tell the story that’s ours to tell, in the very best way we know how to tell it.”
• EVENT: The Singularity Summit is coming to NYC October 3 – 4. The list of speakers is impressive, including Anders Sandberg, Gregory Benford, and Ray Kurzweil. [via Gravity Lens]
• One of our recent followers on Twitter is The Clockwork Quartet, a steampunk band. Cool idea!

• Interviews & Profiles:
  • Fantasy Book Critic interviews Gary Gibson (Nova War).
  • The Future Awaits interviews Tobias Buckell.
  • Tor Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden on ebooks, Star Trek fanfic, and the future of publishing. [via Tor.com]
  • In the Australian paper The Age, Scott Westerfeld and China Miéville are quoted on the public image of science fiction. [via Bibliophile Stalker]
  • @Paraoddity: Catherine Asaro. [via Saving my Sanity]
  • SF Universe interviews Wil Wheaton.
• Art:
  • Meanwhile, Wil Wheaton shows off the cover of his upcoming book Memories of the Future, Volume One.
  • Louise Marley talks about book cover art, too.
  • And speaking of fantastic art, the Spectrum Exhibit Opens September 1st & Honors Dave Stevens.
• Authors reviewing authors:
  • Nancy Kress recommends Elizabeth Moon’s 2004 Nebula winner, The Speed of Dark.
  • Jo Walton likes Roger Zelazny’s Doorways in the Sand.
• Jeff VanderMeer presents an overview of Steampunk at FilmFocus.
• @SF Gospel, Gabriel McKee is wondering Where’s the love for Defying Gravity? So, where is it, huh?
• Jason Sanford asks: Is the term SciFi still derogatory?
• Kristine Kathryn Rusch offers another installment of her Freelancer’s Survival Guide with Patience.
• From LifeHacker: Owners of Sony eReaders, users of the Stanza iPhone book reader, and anyone else with a device that reads the ePub format can now grab more than 1 million works from Google Books’ archives.
• Here’s a mesmerizing visualization of time travel plots in various films and TV programs. [via Information Is Beautiful]
• More chart fun: Here’s a nice poster of Jocks vs. Nerds at the Box Office by the folks over at MovieFill. Short version; Nerds rule the box office. [via Screen Rant]
• The Stargate Universe trailer hits theaters today before Halloween II and The Final Destination 3D. Hands up if you’re tempted to leave after the trailer…
• Howard Waldrop & Lawrence Person Review District 9.
• The Prisoner is coming out in a sexy Blu-ray edition.
• Rob Zombie will remake The Blob.
• Real Science: Suicidal planet seems on death spiral into star. [via BBT Magazine]
• Website: Moonbase Central is an offbeat chronicle of the past, present and future of lunar exploration.
• Lists:
  • Here’s 20 Outstanding Examples of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Origami. Is it me, or does the Jedi look the Scarecrow from the Batman comics?
  • James Long lists his own 7 Essential Second-Step Fantasies.
  • Cinematical lists The 10 Greatest Sci-Fi Deaths Ever.
  • Mary Robinette Kowal lists Fantasy’s Ten Best Treks.