Cover reveal: 'Stone in the Sky' by Cecil Castellucci

Cecil Castellucci joins us to unveil the cover of Stone in the Sky, her February 2015 sequel to Tin Star. She also has some stuff to say about loving the beast.

Here's the blurb about Stone in the Sky:

Brother Blue.

His name, even the color, filled me with a furious fire of pure hatred.

Years ago, Tula Bane was beaten and left for dead on a remote space station far from Earth, her home planet. She started with nothing and had no one, but over time, she found a home, a family, and even love. When it's discovered that the abandoned planet beneath the station is abundant with a rare and valuable resource, aliens from across the galaxy race over to strike it rich. With them comes trouble, like the man who nearly killed Tula years ago—the man she has dreamed of destroying ever since.

In this sequel to Tin Star, Cecil Castellucci takes readers on an extraordinary adventure through space in a thrilling and thoughtful exploration of what it means to love, to hate, and to be human.

Cecil: There is one thing that every person has in common. To be loved for who we truly are regardless of what we look like. We long to be known in a deep and profound way that surpasses the superficial. In a way every new relationship — friend or lover — evokes a bit of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. That fairy tale perfectly describes the thing that we all hope for, that love as hard as it is, becomes possible as a rich, rewarding and true thing if we or the object of our love can look beyond what skin we wear, be it monstrous or beautiful, and see our true selves. It proves the idea that anyone can be loved, that we just have to be seen.

How does a person love a beast? Easy. We all believe that love is something that lives in our hearts and that the right person will see beyond everything else and accept us for who we are.

It is easy to see who is the Beauty and who is the Beast in that tale. But what happens when we add aliens into the mix? Those relationships have the potential to go to a whole other level. After all the beast is a cursed man, but he is a man. He's knowable in the end. But aliens are automatically very strange. Unrecognizable. And it is easy to forget in every human alien relationship, both parties are aliens. Who exactly is the beast in the relationship? The answer is, they both are.

One of the most common tropes of science-fiction is the idea of the alien. It's one of the things that make the idea of space exploration so fun. It captures our imagination to go to the stars, seek out new civilizations. We can imagine how they will have developed, for better or for worse.

To date, we have never met an alien. Therefore they, like other kinds of fantastical creatures, spring directly from our own human hopes and fears. They are all potential to be anything we desire. They are born from our imaginations and can be something so foreign to us that we often can't tell from looking at them if they are friend or foe. Are they here to kill us, like the monster that they look like? Or do they come in peace? And if we are the ones that head out to space, and set foot on other worlds, will we be perceived as the monster or the peace bringer? How do we see ourselves? These are complicated questions. And one of the fundamental basis of science-fiction is how do we explore the unknown keep our humanity when faced with the inhuman. Will we be able to reach through the differences and come to some kind of universal understanding of how to move through life? There seems to be one thing that we imagine all higher life-forms will have. Love.

What does it mean to have a friend? How do we truly love the unknown? And who wouldn't long for a relationship like one that crosses the stars?

Which brings me back to Beauty and the Beast. This is a tale that teaches us that if we can move past what we see as a Beast, and look to the core of the other, the reward is that we open up and expand our own idea of humanity. There are plenty of stories to support this idea. Think of the amount of love that infuses the relationships of Elliott and E.T. in E.T., Lilo and Stich in Lilo and Stitch, the human Davidge and the drac Jerry in Enemy Mine. Those relationships are powerful and press beyond the boundary of what we know. Those friends find strength in their differences and are lifted by crossing paths with each other.

And happily sometimes there are stories that move beyond friendship. Where that complete removal of boundaries and revelation of our dirty cores despite the very obvious differences leads to something more than friendship, and love blooms. Starman and Jenny Hayden in Starman, Superman and Lois Lane, B'Elanna and Tom Harris in Star Trek: Voyager, Sarek and Amanda in Star Trek, Spock and Uhura in Star Trek and Star-Lord and Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. Love is already difficult in the best of circumstances, but to truly love an alien is to truly embrace what it means to be human. These loves have to press beyond what we can comprehend. We must let go of what we know or expect of love and leap into the complete unknown.

In those kinds of stories, the characters are both Beauty and the Beast. And in a way, that mirrors what we are when love here on Earth. People willing to see the beauty in the beast, and the beast in the beauty.

Find out more about Cecil and her books at castellucci.wordpress.com.