Michael J. Martinez joins us today to talk about his novel MJ-12: Inception. Here’s the publisher’s description:
It is a new world, stunned by the horrors that linger in the aftermath of total war. The United States and Soviet Union are squaring off in a different kind of conflict, one that’s fought in the shadows, where there are whispers of strange and mysterious developments. . .
Normal people across the United States have inexplicably gained paranormal abilities. A factory worker can heal the sick and injured. A schoolteacher bends emotions to her will. A car salesman alters matter with a simple touch. A former soldier speaks to the dying and gains their memories as they pass on.
They are the Variants, controlled by a secret government program called MAJESTIC-12 to open a new front in the Cold War.
From the deserts of Nevada to the palaces of Istanbul, the halls of power in Washington to the dark, oppressive streets of Prague, the Variants are thrown into a deadly game of shifting alliances. Amidst the seedy underbelly of nations, these once-ordinary Americans dropped in extraordinary circumstances will struggle to come to terms with their abilities as they fight to carve out a place for themselves in a world that may ultimately turn against them.
And as the MAJESTIC-12 program will soon discover, there are others out there like them, some with far more malevolent goals. . .
What’s Mike’s favorite bit?
MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ
This may be terribly un-American of me to say, but one of my least favorite comic-book characters is Superman. The vast majority of the problems Superman faced in the comics – especially as I was growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s – could be boiled down to two things: a moral dilemma and Kryptonite. Pretty much everything else could be handled neatly because, well, his superpowers are pretty super.
I still think Superman is pretty boring, sad to say. His superpowers are immense, and they don’t actually cost him anything. Most of the time, he doesn’t even break a sweat.
So when I came up with the central idea behind the MAJESTIC-12 series – superpowered spies battling in the shadows of the Cold War on behalf of a shadowy government conspiracy – I knew I wanted characters to pay a price. I wanted there to be consequences to having these strange abilities. I wanted superpowers to be difficult.
An African-American factory worker gains the ability to heal – but at the cost of his own health. A car salesman in the South can alter matter, but can’t always control his manifestations. A former soldier can read minds, but only at the moment of the other person’s death – and he ends up carrying around far more of their memories than he’d like.
One of my very favorite bits in MJ-12: Inception is when Maggie is introduced. She’s a schoolteacher out in California who gains the ability to manipulate emotions – but at the cost of her own emotional stability and wellbeing. Not only is the ability rather difficult to control, but it’s also changing her in very scary ways.
Think about it: If you can manipulate emotion with a thought, how real is emotion to you? How can you trust your own emotions, or those of the people close to you?
We all think having superpowers would be awesome, but we never consider the downside. Yes, there are moral quandaries as well – it wouldn’t be a good superhero story, or a good spy thriller for that matter, without those. There are limits to those superpowers, and ways to counteract them.
But in MJ-12: Inception, powers come with risks. They aren’t easy to use, and it doesn’t always go well. That’s the kind of superhero story I wanted to see.
LINKS:
BIO:
Michael J. Martinez is a husband, father and writer living the dream in the Garden State. He’s been a professional writer and journalist for more than 20 years, including stints at The Associated Press and ABCNEWS.com, and recently got it in his head that he could write fiction, too. He’s the author of the Daedalus trilogy of Napoleonic Era space opera novels, as well as the new MAJESTIC-12 series of paranormal Cold War spy thrillers. Mike is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and International Thriller Writers.
And you should all read it. I was very lucky to be allowed a relatively early look at the book, and enjoyed it tremendously.