Archive for the ‘Guy Hasson’ Category
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Welcome to the Guy Hasson THE EMOTICON GENERATION blog tour! Today we kick the tour off, and be sure to check here for the schedule and links to the other blogs.
Guy Hasson writes near-future science fiction, intimate stories suggesting technologies that fifty years away, or twenty years away, or maybe twenty minutes away. His stories are all different, but what they share in common is characters the reader instantly cares about, and a story that pulls you right in. THE EMOTICON GENERATION deals with a wide range of technological questions, but most importantly (at least for me), the idea that just because we can create a technology that does something, that doesn’t mean we should use it, that we should play God with it. Guy Hasson is also serializing his new mythology/fairy tale story TICKLING BUTTERFLIES on his blog. After a handful of e-mails back and forth with Guy I finally formalized a few questions for him.
You can find Guy Hasson at his blog, Guy Hasson’s Imagination and on twitter at @VisionEtc. Short stories, comics, movies, screenplays, serialization, talk about a Renaissance man!
Guy took time out of his busy day to answer a few questions for me, what a great way to kick off the blog tour!
You publish in both Hebrew and English. Do you find certain words, phrases, or even types of scenes work better in one language or another?
Oh, there are many, many differences, even between two Western societies that are basically similar. I’ll give you an example from The Simpsons. In season one’s first episode, five hundred years ago, what did Bart call a mailman that’s actually a woman? He called her a ‘fe-mailman’ (or a ‘femaleman’, depending on how you want to spell it). Try translating that into another language you know. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
I’ve lived in two different countries, in two different societies, speaking two different languages, and I write my science fiction to fit both of them equally. To do that, I use a few tricks. Here’s one of them: Americans find it very hard to have the ‘hero’ of a science fiction story or novel be anyone but an American. Now you’d think that for other countries, they would need the hero to be from their country. But that’s not the ‘foreign’ mentality. The US has dominated world SF for practically a hundred years now in stories, books, and film. So readers and movie-goers in foreign countries expect to see American heroes star in their SF. So Americans and ‘foreigners’ expect to see the same thing, for completely different reasons.
Have any funny stories about translations gone wrong?
None that have to do with my stories come to mind. But here’s one that didn’t happen to me. Once, a translator had to translate the sentence “I saw Christian Slater.” You’d think that’d be a simple enough sentence to translate.
But this translator never heard of the Christian Slater the actor. So the translation read, “I saw a Christian roofer.”
That really happened.
You work in films and the written word. When an idea forms in your mind, how do you decide if it would work better as a written story, or as visual media?
The Emoticon Generation Blog Tour!
Posted on: April 1, 2013
The time has come everyone, and I am thrilled to announce the beginning of Guy Hasson’s THE EMOTICON GENERATION blog tour! During the month of April, you’ll see book reviews, interviews of and guest posts by Mr. Hasson, and yes, giveaways too! Our tour kicks off tomorrow, April 2nd, right here, with an excellent interview!
Here’s the schedule, go ahead and bookmark all these folks:
Little Red Reviewer – April 2nd
Over the Effing Rainbow – April 4th
Dab of Darkness – April 6th
Attack of the Books! – April 8th
Postcards from La La Land – April 10th
My Bookish Ways – April 12th
Lynn’s Book Blog – April 14th
Two Dudes in an Attic – April 16th
A Fantastical Librarian – April 18th
it’s gonna be awesome!
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A while ago I reviewed Guy Hasson’s latest short story collection, THE EMOTICON GENERATION. Everything from an even quicker than twitter language to seeing the last moments of a loved one’s life, to how to deal with immature artificial intelligences that become too smart for their own good, the technologies Hasson plays with in these stories are right around the corner, making some of them too close for comfort. Curious? go read my review.
And Mr. Hasson doesn’t just do science fiction. He’s also currently serializing his fairy tale novel, TICKLING BUTTERFLIES, with new entries posting three times a week on his blog. Every time I think I’m caught up, he goes and posts more. If you enjoyed Catherynne Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales, or enjoy fables and mythology of any kind, you will get a kick out of TICKLING BUTTERFLIES. Click the title to get to the index of entries.
Now that your appetite is whetted, I’m thrilled to announce the THE EMOTICON GENERATION blog tour, with stops all over the blogosphere! Kicking off right here, on April 2nd, there will be reviews, interviews, guest posts and giveaways. Here’s the current list of participating bloggers:
Over the Effing Rainbow
Dab of Darkness
Attack of the Books
Postcards from La La Land
My Bookish Ways
Lynn’s Book Blog
Two Dudes in an Attic
A Fantastical Librarian
and it’s not too late to get involved! If you would like to be part of this blog tour, comment below, and I’ll be in touch.
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The Emoticon Generation by Guy Hasson
published in 2012
where I got it: received review copy from the author (Thanks!!)
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Guy Hasson is an all around imaginative man. He lives and works in Israel, publishes short fiction in Hebrew, English (and ocassionally Spanish and German), writes plays and short films. This is the second collection of stories I’ve read by him. Many of his stories have a journalistic feel to them, where the characters attempt (sometimes successfully, but mostly not) to investigate something in a non-biased way. His collection Secret Thoughts was about how people deal with naturally ocurring telepathy, and his newest collection, The Emoticon Generation, is about the intersection of people and technology. I should have expected it would be weirder and more dangerous than the intersection of people and telepathy!
What makes this new collection so compelling is that with today’s technology we’re only a few years away from many of these stories becoming non-fiction. A new texting language for teens, hacking into CCTV systems, brain scans that offer secrets of how minds words, we’re on the cusp of much of this. These are character driven stories, and it’s nice to see characters who demand to know what’s happening and take steps to find out, instead of passively allowing things to happen to them. The truth might set us free, but sometimes it shatters us first.
Hasson has a nice handful of stories for free on his website, and I’ve linked below the ones in this collection that are available. His writing in subtly complex, where at first the story appears simple, but by the time you get to the end of it, you realize this is a tale that will stick with you for a long time. Two of the stories in The Emoticon Generation that hit me in that way were The Assassination and Hatchling. Here are my thoughts on those two stories and a few others:
The Assassination – Aryeh Shamgar is a national hero. Schoolchildren learn about him, documentaries have been made about him. Nearing the end of his life, Shamgar is sick of answering the same questions over and over and over again about his role in the war. He assassinated the right person and the right time and turned the tide of events, he was the perfect soldier. Why should the specific reasons behind his orders matter? A new technology allows scientists to record and listen to audio of events that occurred many decades ago. Shamgar is about to hear the real reason he’s a national hero. To tell you anymore would ruin the twist. You think this is a war story, but it’s not, not at all.
Hatchling – Glynis Hatch wants only one thing for her birthday – to know who her father is. Her mother refuses to answer her questions, her homeschooling tutor refuses to answer her questions. Was her father a criminal? Was he abusive? What could possibly be so bad that no one will tell her anything? Glynis will just have to find the answers herself, by eavesdropping, hacking into publicCams, and doing everything possible. As the secrets becoming larger and more complex, I began to really feel for Glynis, to fear for her. Something very dark is happening here, and it can’t end well. This was a very powerful story for me; I didn’t want Glynis to get hurt, she’s never done anything wrong, why can’t her happy life just continue? I had my guesses as to who and what she was, but Hasson takes the story in a refreshingly different direction, and gives it a terrifying shocker of an ending.
So, you’d like to be telepathic?
Posted on: March 16, 2011
Secret Thoughts, by Guy Hasson
Published: 2011 from Apex Books
Where I got it: received eARC for review
why I read it: cuz telepaths are cool!!
In Guy Hasson’s Secret Thoughts, he envisions a near future where telepathy is real. Where through touch, a telepath knows everything you’re thinking, from what you want for dinner to your deepest secrets. Fiction involving telepathy is nothing new, but rarely have I run into fiction that depicts the discovery and immediate reaction to telepaths from the telepath’s point of view. With two short stories and a novella, Secret Thoughts focuses on individuals who are dealing with their gifts, and dealing with how the public and the government perceives them.
The three stories should be read in order, as I get the impression they take place in chronological order. The characters are all regular (other than being telepathic) people, and it’s amazing to watch through their eyes how quickly the government goes from being fascinated by telepaths to being horrified by them. It put me in mind a little bit of the telepath characters from Babylon5 – once a child’s telepathic abilities show up, the government takes control of the child’s future, for better or for worse.
All three stories are incredibly unique and even a day or two after reading I’m still surprised at the deep levels of intimacy, and not just physical intimacy. But when dealing with deep, pure emotions, what else should I have expected? Read the rest of this entry »
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