New York Instances bestselling writer Cecil Castellucci, artist Flavia Biondi, colorist Fabiana Mascolo, and letterer Steve Wands deliver a gripping, scientific fantasy to life in Shifting Earth, an unique graphic novel from Berger Books/Darkish Horse Comics.
In a not-so-distant future, a freak particle storm has landed botanist Dr. Maeve Lindholm on an idyllic but unusual parallel Earth, with no approach again residence. However identical to her personal climate-ravaged planet, this verdant Earth has a sinister facet, which astronomer Zuzi battles day-after-day. Each girls are fighters, and each face a selection: forge new paths, or save the worlds they’ve all the time identified?
Shifting Earth is out there now from comedian outlets and bookstores. The beneath playlist is out there on Spotify, and was featured on Giant Hearted Boy as properly!
Playlist Introduction from Cecil Castellucci:
I’m sitting in my workplace in Los Angeles throughout a horrible and relentless heatwave that has lasted over per week. The solar was blood purple when it set yesterday, signaling that there is a fireplace someplace protecting the sky with smoke. We’re in a horrible endless drought in California and the farms and their crops are struggling and we’ll all really feel the implications of that. That is simply the fact for us on this Thursday, but it surely’s been that approach for a very long time now, and this march in direction of increasingly more excessive climate as a result of local weather disaster is what motivated me to put in writing this e book.
However I did not need to write one thing hopeless, the place there have been no options and there was solely dystopia. I needed to put in writing one thing that was hopeful, that had at its coronary heart acknowledged that at present is all the time an excellent day to start out doing one thing to assist this planet that we love and stay on. I needed to put in writing a e book the place we might see that there are different paths that we might have taken and that although we’re human and that we could fumble, we will nonetheless course right if we’ve got the need to take daring actions transferring ahead. Shifting Earth is an try at having a personality, botanist Maeve Lindholm, seeing and touchdown in a spot the place the grass is actually greener, however that does not imply that there’s nonetheless not loads of work to be performed.
When one does comics, it is a collaboration, and so I need to give a shout out to Flavia Biondi for her lovely artwork that actually reveals the 2 paths the 2 Earths in our e book take. I would additionally like to offer an amazing huge nod to our colorist Fabiana Mascolo, whose colours within the e book actually drive residence the variations within the two worlds.
This playlist is a pay attention alongside temper board for the entire e book, transferring by the story from starting to finish.
I hope you benefit from the music and the e book!
Human Historical past by Explosions within the Sky
I’m all the time so moved by the dreamy trueness of life that Explosions within the Sky weave into their music. Right here I really feel that they actually seize the bittersweet folly of being human and the lengthy historical past that we’ve got in making errors and having a lack of expertise of the implications. In Shifting Earth, Maeve is coping with the fallout from the missteps that these earlier than her have wrought. She’s residing in a close to future Earth the place biodiversity is missing and he or she’s desperately trying to find seeds of hope. I considered how at first of the e book there may be this melancholy she has of harboring hope when it appears as if all is misplaced and this monitor form of displays to me how painful that feels.
A Day within the Lifetime of a Tree by Seaside Boys
This track is only a lovely summation of the harm that we’ve got been doing and been conscious of for a very long time. That is the entire tragic factor with the place we’re at now in our local weather journey is that we knew that we had been mishandling our planet for many years. In the event you take a look at music and movies from the 70s, it is there thrumming within the background. So, this track simply units the tone for the place our Earth is my close to future setting. The bushes are singing this to us proper now. We should always do one thing about it.
Feels Like Summer season by Infantile Gambino
It all the time appears like summer season now with climate snaps and extremes. And the seasons have moved from the quaint spring, summer season, fall, winter to fireside, hurricane, heatwave, and deep freeze. This track is shouting that and to me it feels just like the dialog that Evan and Maeve have of their push-and-pull relationship. They agree however they’ve other ways of claiming the identical factor.
Breath of Life by Florence and the Machine
This track feels just like the second that she runs out of the seed financial institution and runs straight into the factor that pulls her away from our Earth and onto the following. She is conflicted inside herself however then she is touched by one thing that whisks her away.
Disintegration Nervousness by Explosions within the Sky
As soon as once more, Explosions actually captures the temper of terror and marvel that Maeve feels as she’s pulled aside and shot throughout to a parallel world. This appears like varied particles spinning round and reconstructing themselves within the material of space-time. They’re an amazing band to put in writing to.
Moon over Marin by Useless Kennedys
The brand new world that Maeve lands on has two moons. It is idyllic however there may be additionally one thing sinister about it. This track additionally talks about water and seashores and what’s beneath your toes and this new world that Maeve finds herself on is filled with islands as a result of it is principally coated with water and battered with storms. It additionally has this horror aspect to it that I feel form of ties into what is going on on on this new place. However I do not need to spoil something! And for my part, punk rock has all the time been involved with calling consideration to the ills of the world.
(Nothing however) Flowers by Speaking Heads
To me this track kind evokes a bit of little bit of the love story that’s central to the e book, but additionally intersects with the best way that Maeve is seeing double. On this Earth there are flowers all over the place, however she’s nonetheless seeing all of the issues from her personal world that are not there. She’s form of standing in each worlds when she first arrives, noticing the variations. And that final line “Do not go away me stranded right here, I am unable to get used to this life-style.” Form of sums up the shock that she feels from seeing all of the abundance that her personal world lacks but additionally seeing all of the advances (or are they?) that we’ve got that this world does not have.
Atlantic by The Climate Station
This track is for Zuzi, the parallel character of the e book who form of mirrors Maeve. Zuzi is used to the storms, however there are forces at work which are conspiring towards her due to what she is starting to know about her personal world and so she is shipped to the center of the ocean and has her complete life upended by that. The occasions within the e book that she witnesses, and experiences are an actual awakening for her, and he or she is aware of, simply as Maeve does, that she will’t flip away from what she’s discovering concerning the nature of her residence and of the universe. It is unsustainable. She will’t cowl her eyes. And neither ought to we.
From a Shell by Lisa Germano
For me this track cuts to the guts of the love tales that happen within the e book. Not solely the romantic love, however the love of the bigger world that each Maeve and Zuzi care about to the people who they’re near that imply all the things to them. There’s additionally a scene the place you see a form of theatrical presentation of one in every of Earth Two’s myths and I feel that this track slides in there.
The solar and the moon have loads of that means on this e book, they each incite. I really like this lyric: From a bit of shell on the backside of the ocean, With the Earth and the Moon and the Solar round me.
Feed the Tree by Stomach
This track is so joyful and is asking us all to be current for the circle of the place we’re all going, however on this occasion, for this a part of the e book, I feel the title says all of it and has a distinct implication. I’ll go away it at that.
We took the Fallacious Step Years In the past by Hawkwind
In battle with Ben, Maeve actually sees this new world she’s on as being on the cusp of nice change. This track speaks to that part of the e book and echoes the start of the e book (and the Seaside Boys track) when you have got us all coping with the implications of lack of motion. What are you going to do at present to take the proper step?
Finish by Alex Somers & Sigur Ros
Alex Somers, Sigur Ros and music prefer it (see Explosions within the Sky) are in fixed rotation after I’m writing. This one was closely performed after I was writing Shifting Earth and I like that it’s known as Finish and that it has that feeling of being the tip of one thing however that ending can imply opening up and giving into your future and residing your story along with your coronary heart ahead, which is what I feel Maeve and Zuzi do on the finish of their story right here. It has a hopeful high quality to it as properly, and I feel an ending ought to have a hopeful observe even whether it is actually the tip of issues. In fact, there aren’t any endings, there are solely and all the time beginnings of the following chapter.
Cecil Castellucci is the award-winning and New York Instances bestselling writer of books and graphic novels for younger adults together with Shade, The Altering Lady, Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, Soupy Leaves House, The Yr of the Beasts, Tin Star, Feminine Furies and Odd Duck. In 2015 she co-authored Star Wars Transferring Goal: A Princess Leia Journey. She is presently writing Batgirl for DC Comics. Her brief tales and brief comics have been printed in Unusual Horizons, Tor.com, and plenty of different anthologies.
