DEADLINE open thread. Have a party.

While reading the tweets of a knit blogger, I have run across a zombie question that I can't quite figure out. If a pregnant woman amplifies, what happens to her baby?

My educated guess, because I'm still in fangirl mode:

Mom amplifies.

Baby is born alive, presuming baby is far enough along to survive outside the womb, that is.

Baby gets sick from having been exposed to KA but too little to amplify. Baby gets better.

Baby, having been exposed to live state KA gets a reservoir condition.

Baby grows up and hits 40 pound threshold and either amplifies, or grows up with the reservoir condition.

That's based on what was described in Deadline. Kelly said they had no way of making it work out each time that a kid exposed would grow up safe once hitting the 40 pound threshold.

Oh wow, how I loved the book!!

Oh wow, how I hated that the beginning of Blackout was in there!

I've read almost all the comments, and I must've been the only person on earth to have the reaction I did at Georgia waking up... my head went "Clone!"... then went, waaait... ... and I re-read, and re-read the chapter... ...and thought, "Ohhhhh SHAUN... you are so very crazy and broken."*

I would've liked to have kept that feeling/arguement longer! .laughs.

Minor qualms, of course, but whatever...
--Rick is nowhere to be found? They can't get through? Call the first-lady, call Maggie's parents and have THEM call, I get not pulling anyone else in, but just making a true effort to get in touch other than the switchboard? (Also, Rick is a Newsie, he has to have SOME fail-safe email drop or some-such thing... surely surely he would!)

--Holy crap, there must be some anti-evil-CDC sector, or the President did it, or SOMETHING... because of all the people to clone Georgia Mason doesn't seem like it'd be a very good idea!?

As a side note... my friend also read the books and is TOTALLY (and I mean WHOLEHEARTED) convienced that the cure has nothing at all to do with Shaun's close contact with George, and isn't something just inherent to him own body... nope, it's some ingredient in Avon Skin-So-Soft, since you pointed out so much that they slathered it all over themselves everywhere. She also thinks you've gotten goodsized cash for product placement, which I am cracking up over even as I write this. (Though if you did, would, or could, AWESOME.)*

*hey it made kinda sense at the time, he went from hearing her in his head and talking to her, and then seeing her... and... being NOT turned into a zombie could've just pushed him really REALLY 'round the bend
*though now I'm cracking up over the idea of an Avon/Newsflesh/zombie promo... somehow I don't know if Avon would exactly hop on that train..?

What can I say that hasn't been said? Answer: Not much. I just wanted to add my congratulations on a damn fine book (another damn fine book, that is).

Actually, a couple of comments.

1. My wife and I, having just re-read Feed the week prior to the release of Deadline, had been going back and forth over the George/Shawn relationship. She and I had picked up on the hints the first time around, but decided that we'd find out soon enough whether or not they'd been more than just very close. While reading Deadline, there were enough clues that by the time Shawn and Becks hooked up, even before his slip of the tongue, I was pretty sure. Too many comments about how he'd never had to deal with women, how George had always driven them off... And then his internal monologue made it clear that he certainly wasn't a virgin. The Devil's Advocate portion of my brain kept arguing that it could have been coincidence, but it was only half-arguing by that point.

2. It was very interesting listening to both Feed and Deadline as audio books. I read Feed in dead-tree format, and then listened to it just before Deadline came out, then listened to Deadline. I liked both of them, though there were a number of instances where I would have had the reader emphasize different things in a given sentence or phrase. Much like the "What happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning?" line in the first X-Men movie, knowing how the author speaks makes a big difference in how you think a particular line would be delivered, as opposed to how the audio director might expect it to flow. I think the delivery in my head was better. :)

3. I've been ever so much more aware of mosquitoes the last few days... Thank you so VERY much.

4. I need the fast-forward button on my time machine fixed. It's not Blackout time yet.

AAAAH!

EMILY!

EMILY HAS A RESERVOIR CONDITION!

I hope Peter and the Secret Service are on the ball for her sake. I like Emily. I don't want the bad guys to get her.

Seanan, the book is still whispering to me. I haven't gone near it again since the first read and it's still TALKING to meeeeeee!


*whimper*

Oh, good point :(

Well, if it's any consolation, they get MORE people with reservoirs, but it doesn't sound like they get everybody with "accidental" deaths whatsoever...

I emailed you already, but HOLY FSCKING $HIT woman!

You are my storytelling hero.

As I said before, it took reading the comments here to find out that George/Shaun was a viable messy bits couple, rather than adoptive siblings who have learned not to make emotional connections to anyone other than each other. Someone (it was pages back) mentioned the "saying good night to George because she's who I always say good night to" idea, which is what I thought when I listened to the book for the first time. This may have something to do with my inability to read certain social cues and largely dating people just as geeky as I am.

Just stayed up late to finish Deadline, and wanted to say it was mind-blowingly brilliant. Your characters are so no-bullshit and real - in a totally wonderful way - and your writing is heartbreaking and hilarious and clever, and... Argh. I thought Georgia's death in Feed was a shock, but there were a few chapter endings in this book that were like sucker punches to the face (I mean that as a thoroughly good thing).

Also, I'm a journalist and I know this is super wrong and waaaaay missing the point, but I wish my life was more like that :-D (Yup, can't help being jealous of fictional characters' scoops, even when they are fictional/zombie-infested/dead. Good times.)

And thank you so, so much for the George/Shaun relationship reveal - not just the revelation itself, but the way in which you did it. It wasn't gratuitous at all, and it wasn't done for shock value; it was utterly organic and came out so naturally, but in a way that only added to the poignancy of the situation. Mostly I just loved that two main characters in a fantasy trilogy managed to conceal a sexual relationship for an entire book and I didn't have to hear about the throes of their passion every two pages :-D I got the feeling during Feed that Shaun and George were a couple, but I thought (a). That I was probably reading waaaaay too much into things, and (b). That surely if the two main characters were having it off, the author would be telling me about it aaaaaall the tiiiiiime. The fact that you didn't was so cool - it added so much more to the character of George when the eventual reveal came. And I didn't realise how much George and Shaun were definitely my couple of the series until I realised how very much I did not want Shaun to get with Becks (whom I love, by the way).

Erm, sorry for rambling - it's the middle of the night here and I just read a 600-page book in one sitting, ha - but this is all to say that these books are some of my favourite fantasy novels of... well, ever. So, thank you so much! And thank you for writing such amazing women characters. They are inspiring and badass, and I can't wait to get much, much more George in Blackout. :-)

I called mneme to tell him not to read this thread if he intends to skip the Blackout teaser.

mnemex: You mean the thread also has spoilers for the Blackout teaser? Well, that's silly of it. (pause) Maybe I'll read the teaser.

I don't exactly consider the end a cliffhanger. I don't consider anyone who does wrong. But, I was expecting a situation at the CDC with Wynne in control of the situation ending sort of thing. This is a more stable situation, which means I can stick to gnawing my nails and let the zombies gnaw my arms.

I'm wondering if the storm and mosquitoes were deliberately engineered. Science is not my strong suit, so I'm going, "Wait, we can make it rain in the real world, right? So, if the CDC can clone and someone can somehow install personalities / memories, engineering a storm like this is plausible, right?"

A friend of mine is convinced that the storm is coincidental, as letting the mosquitoes get out is an End of the World situation, but allows as how, if the virus is too complicated for them to carry, yes, a simpler strain was probably artificially created. She's thinking this means a contaminated food supply.

I'm still not quite getting the Evil Plan. I mean, I get Control, Culture of Fear, all that. I'm having trouble following Wynne's monologue. Can someone tell me where I'm losing the thread? He seems to be saying: We want a strain with no reservoir conditions so that we can cure KA properly.

By "properly", he seems to mean really and honestly cure, with the ability to shoot all amplification cases on sight simplifying keeping people under control so that there won't be cases of "MY loved one is special and will somehow recover" -- the whole complexity Kelly was talking about that I can't honestly say those in the know are wrong to pause at. (Pause at -- they don't get carte blanche to create evil conspiracies of evilness.)

But... given that the reservoir condition is effectively nature's way of providing a cure -- a highly complicated way with serious moral questions as noted above and in the book, and only a first step, and so on, all disclaimers made -- this seems to be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Is Wynne really that short sighted? If he took in Georgia, Shaun, and Rick to make sure that there were no leaks he had to block and released them all alive, when killing them legally would have been so much simpler, if he played that brilliant end game with Tate's cooperation in Feed, he can't be that stupid.

Unless he is, and his strings are being pulled by someone truly scary.
Unless he was caught off guard by having four people walking into his lab.
Unless I am misunderstanding something.

Any of these is possible.

The Tate endgame also answers a question I'd been wondering, how Tate could have fumbled the ball -- er, lost control of the hostage he had. That wasn't a mistake or a streak of decency. That was a fanatic dying for his cause, doing his best to protect those above him.

Oh... I am of course now wondering who else might be cloned. And how many times.

As for Kelly, the one we see in the book, whether she's the original, the clone, or what, I don't have a full sense of who she is. It's hard for me to figure out what she believes and what she's holding back at any given point and why, and part of this is seeing her through Shaun's eyes and questioning his judgement (the whole slightly insane thing). It's hard for me to figure out just what she knows and what she guesses about what's going on at any point.

And, as with Feed, I got confused about the timeline. At first it was clear enough. Dave was alive on April 12, and Alaric clearly lived until at least the 15th, and Maggie till the 16th, and they got to Maggie's on the 13th, right? But, I'm not sure I am right. After a while, I stopped worrying about it.

I caught the typo about Georgia's year of death. Once I figured out it was a typo, all was cool

I have decided that "Oh fuck" is a phrase coined for reading this book.

And, I'm glad I didn't push to finish it last night. At about 2/3 or so of the way in, I paused for Symphony Space's Bloomsday. It has not yet mingled with Deadline sufficiently as to cause a mash up that goes anywhere interesting.

(Have now learned maximum comment length is 4300.)

Okay, I have now finished Deadline. Amazon delivered a bit later than the release date, but at least before the September estimate they'd given previously.

I was about three-quarters of the way through, and I got to the curried cauliflower bit and that left me thinking "Wow, Seanan is brilliant."

Because you know, that was the bit where it clicked for me how well realized a character Shaun was, and that he wasn't unique in that.

The coke/coffee thing was also well done.

And, I am also in the 'feeling clueless' crowd, since I missed the pseudo-incest. I had a moment of "You know, you could interpret that as a suggestion that George and Shaun had a sexual relationship. Odd," and then I continued reading.

I read both books in the last couple of days. I finished Feed and thought of it as a good book, and that it would have been a great book if not for a few things that didn't really sit right with me. By the time I finished Deadline, I'd realized that both were absolutely excellent books.

I seem to have gone into Feed with the low-expectation mindset "I'm going to read this book by a blogger I follow", rather than "This is a book by a talented author who happens to have a blog I read". When bits made me raise an eyebrow (dramatic Tate death scene, aspects of Shaun and George's relationship, etc), I simply forgave it as inexpert writing. Which is absurd, because everything I've read on this blog has been very well-written. When I got through Deadline, I realized every one of those bits made me raise an eyebrow for a damn good reason. They were just as carefully orchestrated as every other bit of setup in the books.

The books are outstanding. It's been a long time since a passage in a book gutted me the way "she would have gotten better" did.

I'm dying to read Blackout, but at least I'll have time to reread Feed and Deadline with a whole new appreciation. And I have no doubt I'll love them even more after Blackout pulls even more threads through the trilogy.

I finally got hold of this book (for some reason, no bookstore I could find in my city had it and a friend got it through Amazon for me) and then promptly read it in five hours.

Well, except for the brief break after 'she would have gotten better' when I stomped around the house, cried, swore at the ceiling, verbally keysmashed, and had to go buy Coke and chips to calm down. I'm usually more of a Dr Pepper girl, but Coke felt more appropriate.

I was so MAD at that, but I wasn't mad at you. I was mad at the universe (and the Newsflesh universe feels so real) that let that happen. It's not fair, goddammit. Even if there's a clone!George, it won't be the same.

George and Shaun made me happy since I've been arguing with my brother about the nature of their relationship since Feed. I win! Hah! I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for Shaun and also a lot of time wishing he wouldn't be so threatening to his employees. :( The poor guy. And the poor people who have to put up with him.

The storm really freaked me out, I thought at first it was a water-based transmission. I may have played too much Pandemic II.

It's funny how nervous I was about this series because I don't really like zombies. But Feed is one of my favourite books and while I'll have to reread Deadline to solidify my opinions on it (maybe... a little slower this time...) I expect it will be up there too.

I'm really looking forward to Blackout!

Great, great book. I hoped the second book would really bring the journalistic zombie action, and it delivers (in that the characters spend most of their time trying to time the release of the leaked secrets they've obtained and interviewing people who might (spoiler: do in fact) want to have them killed).

Only a few things broke the flow of the reading: A few mis-edited jokes, which is a huge nitpick (only sticks in my mind because the rest flows so well). And after the scene where Shawn sleeps with Becks, it wasn't clear when, exactly, he realizes he called her by the wrong name (at least, wasn't clear to me; that was the only point where I turned back a few pages and reread some, and I still wasn't exactly sure).

I wasn't disturbed by the reveal of the exact nature of George and Shaun's relationship. I actually found that less disturbing than I did in Feed.

Speaking of George, best use of a character who's dead before the beginning of the book. Will Shaun get to interact with ghost-George and clone-George at the same time? (Oh please oh please.)

I do hope the CDC has some reasons for tampering with the virus more smart than "try to find something where reservoir conditions stop happening". Taking an incredibly dangerous airborne virus (that fortunately isn't airborne in it's super-deadly form) and mucking about with it at random seems uncharacteristically stupid for someone who knows as much about virology as the CDC. Of course, that makes more sense if they were intending to make the zombie plague worse...

Which reminds me, I was impressed at just how surprising you manage to make a zombie apocalypse in a book about the zombie apocalypse. It's just so well framed (in the minds of the characters, too) that the zombie apocalypse is something that happened in the past.

ok. So, I finally read Deadline. Mostly, I was waiting 'cause I was hoping to put it off until Blackout was out. Silly me, right? Especially with it just sitting there, glaring at me and telling me to stop goofing around and READ it.

I was glad to oblige. As I'm reading the comments here.. which I definitely didn't get all the way through as my computer would "glitch" every time I hit expand (gets old fast) I realized that I'm very naive.

I guessed that there was more to George and Shaun's relationship in Feed but like some of the comments I read, I chose to ignore it as it wasn't explicitly stated. In Deadline I still didn't get that it was that sort of relationship, even after he said Georgia's name with Becks (poor Becks!)

Though, I'm okay with that, as it gives a bit different explanation than I was going for. What was I thinking? Well, I read the first chapter from Blackout at the end, and the fact that Shaun is referred to as subject 139b makes me think that George and him were always a pair. That the CDC or whoever "made" them and then adopted them to the Masons. Or maybe independent scientists. Either way, it gave me a lot to think about.

I also wondered if the Masons didn't try to infect their new babies to get more publicity. Yes, I think that poorly of them.

As for the incest thing... well, is it really incest if they aren't genetically related? Really, I didn't have a problem with it. *was a biochem major. Genetics tell us that incest (maybe inbreeding is a better word) occurs and causes genetic problems (mutations) with offspring. non-genetic relations producing offspring does not seem to be a problem with my view on how things work. *nods* Not that I'm teaching you science, just explaining my view of the world as I see it.

^_^ I'm glad George was brought back. When cloning was first mentioned, I squinted at the page and went, George isn't dead anymore. and I just KNEW. Then when Shaun saw her the first time in that van after he found that that she could have gotten better (I was crying for Shaun) I was wondering how the heck she actually knew where he was to find him.... yes. I was that convinced she was now cloned and alive and there. And every time he saw her after that, the conviction got stronger and I was sure she had hunted him down. It literally took for her to say she was part of his delusions to convince me otherwise both times. Or her disappearing, but same difference right?

Though, I also found it interesting that Shaun saw George w/o the KA eyes.. (left book in other room as I thought about it, don't have exact words for it) especially when her eyes were revealed to be normal after the clone woke up.

Also, the memory sync.

Really, I'm excited to see how you handle cloning, the memory, and just well the rest of the science. Up until now, beyond a few, "huh, I wonder how that works as it doesn't seem to make complete sense" (Zombie-pack increased intelligence) I've been pretty impressed by the science and I've accepted the things not making complete sense as a fluke of science that's not understood yet. especially since not everything now is understood in science and that would just make sense that not everything would be understood about zombies. More so if it wasn't really studied... I mean.. if I was living in a post-apocalyptic society where people were afraid to leave their houses due to zombies, I think the last thing I'd be studying would be their behavior as a group and more how to kill them and how to cure them/rest of humanity.

The only one other thing I have to say about all your books I've read so far. They keep me up until my eyes start hurting from exhaustion just to fall asleep and wake up to start reading them again. Good job. ^_^

Having read Deadline, I just want to say that I forgive you, and I love you extra-forever!

I still choke up hard at the phrase "Shaun, shoot me", but my 'ship is canon and did I mention you're forgiven and that I love you?


Also, when the storm started, I fired up rainymood.com, turned on my speakers, and it was PERFECT.

Alllll right, chiming in. (Better late than ever, right?) (Possibly a bit of a smile before you go off, too.)

I read the two books in less than four days, WITH work going nuts on me. And other things going nuts. And I cried at the PoV switch in Feed enough to give myself a headache. (Yeah, I empathize with characters ALL the time. George was amazing to do that with. Is. One or the other.)

Deadline... ohhh Deadline. Shaun love. I found myself several times over it going, yes, practically missing George. Even with the voice. I totally flailed at the relationship reveal (although it was more of a squick flail than surprise flail, by that point it was either that or they were both asexual) and and and the ending made me bounce up and down. And develop wild theories about voice!George being Georgia's soul temporarily stowed away in the only safe place until her body was ready to take it back in...

ahem. ROCK ON!