New York Occasions 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 means again house. However identical to her personal climate-ravaged planet, this verdant Earth has a sinister facet, which astronomer Zuzi battles daily. Each ladies are fighters, and each face a selection: forge new paths, or save the worlds they’ve all the time recognized?
Shifting Earth is on the market now from comedian retailers and bookstores. The under playlist is on the market on Spotify, and was featured on Giant Hearted Boy as effectively!
Playlist Introduction from Cecil Castellucci:
I’m sitting in my workplace in Los Angeles throughout a horrible and relentless heatwave that has lasted over every 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 unending 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, however it’s been that means 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 jot down 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 jot down one thing that was hopeful, that had at its coronary heart said that at present is all the time a superb day to begin doing one thing to assist this planet that we love and reside on. I needed to jot down 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 might fumble, we will nonetheless course appropriate if we’ve the desire 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 a number of work to be executed.
When one does comics, it is a collaboration, and so I need to give a shout out to Flavia Biondi for her stunning artwork that actually exhibits the 2 paths the 2 Earths in our e book take. I might additionally like to provide an incredible massive nod to our colorist Fabiana Mascolo, whose colours within the e book actually drive house 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 in making errors and having a lack of information 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 she or he’s desperately looking for seeds of hope. I considered how initially of the e book there’s this melancholy she has of harboring hope when it appears as if all is misplaced and this observe type of displays to me how painful that feels.
A Day within the Lifetime of a Tree by Seaside Boys
This music is only a stunning summation of the harm that we’ve 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 have been mishandling our planet for many years. In case you have a look at music and movies from the 70s, it is there thrumming within the background. So, this music simply units the tone for the place our Earth is my close to future setting. The timber are singing this to us proper now. We must always do one thing about it.
Feels Like Summer time by Infantile Gambino
It all the time appears like summer time now with climate snaps and extremes. And the seasons have moved from the quaint spring, summer time, fall, winter to fireside, hurricane, heatwave, and deep freeze. This music 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 music 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 subsequent. She is conflicted inside herself however then she is touched by one thing that whisks her away.
Disintegration Anxiousness 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 incredible band to jot down to.
Moon over Marin by Lifeless Kennedys
The brand new world that Maeve lands on has two moons. It is idyllic however there’s additionally one thing sinister about it. This music additionally talks about water and seashores and what’s beneath your ft and this new world that Maeve finds herself on is stuffed with islands as a result of it is largely coated with water and battered with storms. It additionally has this horror factor to it that I believe sort 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 music type evokes a bit of little bit of the love story that’s central to the e book, but in addition intersects with the way in which that Maeve is seeing double. On this Earth there are flowers in all places, however she’s nonetheless seeing all of the issues from her personal world that are not there. She’s type of standing in each worlds when she first arrives, noticing the variations. And that final line “Do not depart me stranded right here, I can not get used to this life-style.” Kind of sums up the shock that she feels from seeing all of the abundance that her personal world lacks but in addition seeing all of the advances (or are they?) that we’ve that this world does not have.
Atlantic by The Climate Station
This music is for Zuzi, the parallel character of the e book who type of mirrors Maeve. Zuzi is used to the storms, however there are forces at work which might be 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 she or he is aware of, simply as Maeve does, that she will’t flip away from what she’s discovering in regards to the nature of her house and of the universe. It is unsustainable. She will be able to’t cowl her eyes. And neither ought to we.
From a Shell by Lisa Germano
For me this music cuts to the center 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 those that they’re near that imply all the things to them. There’s additionally a scene the place you see a type of theatrical presentation of one in every of Earth Two’s myths and I believe that this music slides in there.
The solar and the moon have a number 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 music 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 believe the title says all of it and has a special implication. I’ll depart it at that.
We took the Flawed 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 music speaks to that part of the e book and echoes the start of the e book (and the Seaside Boys music) when you’ve got us all coping with the implications of lack of motion. What are you going to do at present to take the best 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 together with your coronary heart ahead, which is what I believe Maeve and Zuzi do on the finish of their story right here. It has a hopeful high quality to it as effectively, and I believe an ending ought to have a hopeful observe even whether it is actually the tip of issues. In fact, there are not any endings, there are solely and all the time beginnings of the subsequent chapter.
Cecil Castellucci is the award-winning and New York Occasions bestselling writer of books and graphic novels for younger adults together with Shade, The Altering Woman, Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, Soupy Leaves Residence, The Yr of the Beasts, Tin Star, Feminine Furies and Odd Duck. In 2015 she co-authored Star Wars Shifting Goal: A Princess Leia Journey. She is presently writing Batgirl for DC Comics. Her quick tales and quick comics have been revealed in Unusual Horizons, Tor.com, and lots of different anthologies.
