Mind-Rain Other Titles in the Smart Pop Series Taking the Red Pill Seven Seasons of Buffy Five Seasons of Angel What Would Sipowicz Do? Stepping through the Stargate The Anthology at the End of the Universe Finding Serenity The War of the Worlds Alias Assumed Navigating the Golden Compass Farscape Forever! Flirting with Pride and Prejudice Revisiting Narnia Totally Charmed King Kong Is Back! Mapping the World of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice The Unauthorized X-Men The Man from Krypton Welcome to Wisteria Lane Star Wars on Trial The Battle for Azeroth Boarding the Enterprise Getting Lost James Bond in the 21st Century So Say We All Investigating CSI Webslinger Halo Effect Neptune Noir Coffee at Luke’s Perfectly Plum Grey’s Anatomy 101 Serenity Found House Unauthorized Batman Unauthorized In the Hunt Flirtin’ with the Monster Mind-Rain Your Favorite authors on scott WesterFeld’s uglies series Edited and Original Introduction by Scott Westerfeld With Leah Wilson BENBELLA BOOKS, INC. Dallas, TX “All That Glitters Is Not Hovery” © 2009 by Lili Wilkinson “Best Friends for Never” © 2009 by Robin Wasserman “Team Shay” © 2009 by Diana Peterfreund “Two Princes” © 2009 by Sarah Beth Durst “Why the Prince Bites It” © 2009 by Gail Sidonie Sobat “A Special Hero” © 2009 by J. FitzGerald McCurdy “Challenging the Gods” © 2009 by Rosemary Clement-Moore “Beauty Smackdown” © 2009 by Janette Rallison “Conformity by Design” © 2009 by Linda Gerber “The Beautiful People” © 1952 by Quinn Publishing Company, renewed 1980 by Christopher Beaumont (Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.) “Liking What You See: A Documentary” © 2002 by Ted Chiang “Naturally Unnatural” © 2009 by Will Shetterly “The S-Word” © 2009 by Jennifer Lynn Barnes “Lies and Consequences” © 2009 by Delia Sherman Introduction and Additional Materials © 2009 by Scott Westerfeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embod- ied in critical articles or reviews. BenBella Books, Inc. 6440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 503 Dallas, TX 75206 www.benbellabooks.com Send feedback to [email protected] Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title. ISBN 978-1933771-34-2 Proofreading by Stacia Seaman Cover illustration by Mondolithic Studios, Inc. Cover design by Laura Watkins Text design and composition by PerfecType, Nashville, TN Printed by Bang Printing Distributed by Perseus Distribution perseusdistribution.com To place orders through Perseus Distribution: Tel: (800) 343-4499 Fax: (800) 351-5073 E-mail: [email protected] Significant discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at [email protected] or (214) 750-3628. Contents Introduction / 1 Scott Westerfeld All That Glitters Is Not Hovery / 5 Lili Wilkinson Best Friends for Never / 19 Robin Wasserman Team Shay / 41 Diana Peterfreund Two Princes / 55 Sarah Beth Durst Why the Prince Bites It / 69 Gail Sidonie Sobat A Special Hero / 83 J. FitzGerald McCurdy v vi Mind-Rain Challenging the Gods / 93 Rosemary Clement-Moore Beauty Smackdown / 109 Janette Rallison Conformity by Design / 123 Linda Gerber The Beautiful People / 133 Charles Beaumont Liking What You See: A Documentary / 155 Ted Chiang Naturally Unnatural / 197 Will Shetterly The S-Word / 209 Jennifer Lynn Barnes Lies and Consequences / 223 Delia Sherman intRoduCtion scott Westerfeld THERE’S AN OLD SAYING that goes like this: “It takes a village to raise a child.” This saying doesn’t suggest that parents are unimportant, only that children are hungry little sponges who are shaped by every- thing around them. They need a lot more than the input of a nuclear family to reach their full potential—they need a community. The larger the world that a child experiences, the more they can become themselves. Having spent the last five years emailing with, talking to, and lurking on the blogs of Uglies fans, I would humbly submit that it also takes a village to read a book. Again, this doesn’t mean we authors aren’t important. We still want the last word in certain kinds of arguments. (That’s why it’s called authority, people!) And we still crave all those fan mails and delicious royalty checks. But books, like children, are hungry things. They want more than just one spindly author. They want fanfic and fan art and dis- cussion boards and LJ icons cribbed from their covers. In a word, books want conversations. 1 2 Mind-Rain Of course, you guys know this already. You write me all the time to tell in mind-bending detail how you gave the Uglies books to your best friends, who passed it on to their friends, until you had whole cafeteria tables wa-ing and la-ing and generally confusing everyone around them with bubbletalk. So clearly you know the secret of get- ting the whole village reading. Because when more people read a book, the book gets better. But why is that, anyway? Well, part of it is the simple truth of humanity: we’re social crea- tures. We need to talk about our lives, including our friends and families. So why wouldn’t we want to talk about the characters and events we know from fiction? Just because they aren’t real doesn’t mean we can’t gossip about them. But a weird kind of magic happens thanks to all this conversa- tion—it makes a book more real. It rewires your brain a little, nudg- ing you over into a world where bubbletalk and hoverboards are commonplace, and where Tally Youngblood is flesh and blood. So this book, the one you’re holding in your hands, is a continua- tion of that process. It’s more of that conversation. Maybe the gossip here has been refined a little (with quotes and references and foot- notes!) but its main purpose is the same: to make the Uglies books a little better, and the village a little bigger. In these pages, our contributors examine the language and slang of Tally’s city; plumb the secret life of Shay; compare David with Zane as boyfriend material; look at some Tally-like heroes from myth, litera- ture, and history; ask whether Tally is a hero at all; explore deep ques- tions of beauty; contrast the Prettytime to Japanese culture; review the history of brain and body modification; scrutinize the science of the series; and invite you to join a history class in Aya’s world. In short, all the things you’ve already been doing around the caf- eteria table, just more of it. Because like those little sponge-children, books always want more. intRoduCtion 3 As an added bonus, we’ve included Ted Chiang’s short story “Liking What You See” and Charles Beaumont’s classic “The Beauti- ful People,” both of which inspired me to invent Tally’s world. So thanks to all my brave contributors, who took some time off from writing their own wonderful YA to talk about mine. That’s a great compliment, always. But mostly thanks to you Uglies readers out there who talk the bubbletalk, make the fan art, clog the com- ment threads, and generally spread the word. Without you guys in the conversation, my job would be about one percent as fun.