novel, and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke awards; its sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, were also Hugo finalists. His middle grade space opera Dragon Pearl won the Mythopoeic Award for Children’s Literature and the Locus Award for best YA novel, and was a New York Times bestseller. Lee’s short fiction has appeared in publications such as Tor.com, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Audubon Magazine, as well as several year’s best anthologies.
Lee’s hobbies include composing music, art, and destroying the reader. He lives in Louisiana with his husband and an extremely lazy catten.
Here Lee dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, Moonstorm:
Moonstorm follows a teenage girl, Hwa Young, in her dream to become a mecha pilot, except she’s hiding the fact that she’s an orphan from the other side. Obviously, this is an excellent life choice and there’s no way it can blow up in her face.Visit Yoon Ha Lee's website.
My film agent has explained to me that for live-action, teen characters can get tricky simply because actors and their characters get out of sync in terms of age. (Less of an issue for animation and voice actors.) I would expect to have to age things up a bit for the screen. The most prominent mecha pilots in Moonstorm are in their teens and early twenties because, contrary to Imperial propaganda, the Empire of New Joseon is losing.
I’m very intrigued by actress Susan Elle, who I saw in Nimic. It’s a very short film (twelve minutes) but her performance is incredibly evocative in a very short space, and in a film that brief, there’s no room for wasted motion or expression.
If I may, the film composers I think of for this are Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica reboot, Agents of SHIELD), Pinar Toprak (Captain Marvel), and Ramin Djawadi (Pacific Rim, Game of Thrones). I’ve only listed a few of their better-known works, but they’re all fantastic!
The Page 69 Test: Revenant Gun.
My Book, The Movie: Ninefox Gambit.
Q&A with Yoon Ha Lee.
The Page 69 Test: Fox Snare.
--Marshal Zeringue