Tin Star Blog Tour Stop and Guest Post

Today I have an extra Special treat on the blog! Cecil Castellucci will be joining us as part of the Tin Star Blog Tour. Tin Star is about a girl abandoned on space station and her struggle to survive. In Tin Star there are so many different types of aliens so I asked Cecil to tell me about her Top Ten Favorites across literature and film.

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station.
When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind. 

Interested yet? You can Pre-Order your copy of Tin Star at Barnes & Noble, Amazon or your local Indie. (Or really anywhere else you want) Tin Star hits Shelves on February 25!

Top 10 Aliens in Books and Movies

Of course I’ve left out a bunch. And you’ll notice in the movie section I left out Star Wars or Star Trek and anything Superman, but duh. You should totally see/read those! But here are some books and movies that I highly recommend that I don’t get to talk about all that often!

Books:

Alien: Estraven
Book: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Leguin

When a Terran has to go do some stuff on a cold planet called Winter, he ends up taking a 80 mile trek across a glacier with a native of the planet named Estraven. On this planet there is no gender except for once a month when they get ready to reproduce. It’s a wonderful meditation on gender roles because you have this manly Earth man whose notion of what is feminine and what is masculine totally overturned. Remember, this was published in 1969.

Alien : Elana Book: Enchantress from the Stars
Here, Elana is the alien. She is space scientist on a mission to visit young civilizations, but she cannot be revealed. When she learns of a coming invasion to a medieval like planet, she uses her science and masks it as magic, which is the only thing the natives can understand. The book is retelling of the Fairy Queen. It’s got the best of both worlds, science fiction and fairy magic.

Alien: The Masters/ Tripods by John Christopher
Book: The Tripod Trilogy

This book series was my favorite series when I was a kid. It’s about Earth many years after aliens have taken over the Earth. There are Tripods watching over towns and at 13 children are capped with metal caps that basically control them. All adults are tamed in this way. This is the story of Will Parker who escapes capping and takes down the tripods.

Alien: NewtonBook: The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis
Newton is an alien trying to figure out a way to get his people to Earth to escape a drought on his planet. He lands in Kentucky. And eventually gets revealed. It’s a sublime and beautiful story. 
Bonus. There is a movie and in it Newton is played by David Bowie.

Alien: The ocean on the planet
Book: Solaris by Stanislew Lem

When humans go to a planet, they don’t realize that the ocean is actually one large alien organism. It tries to communicate with them, but alien / human communication is difficult when the two species are so incredibly different. This is also a beautiful film by Andrei Tarkovsky.and a less beautiful film starring George Clooney.

Bonus Book:

Alien (?): Hooper 

First Day on Earth by me! (Cecil Castellucci) 
The story is about a boy named Mal who believes he’s been abducted by aliens and starts going to an alien abduction support group. There he meets Hooper who says he’s an alien from outer space who wants to go home. Depending on how you read this novel, Hooper is or isn’t an alien. And I love him.

Movies

Alien: E.T. 
Movie: E.T. directed by Steven Spielberg.

This film about the unlikely friendship between a boy and an alien who was left behind always brings me to tears. E.T. is a charming alien. He looks alien and barely can communicate with Eliot until of course they figure it out. This first contact story has the sweetness of trying to help a friend and also the horror of what would likely happen if an alien landed on earth.

Alien: The dude played by Jeff Bridges
Movie: Starman directed by John Carpenter

When an alien comes to Earth after having found the golden record on the Voyager capsule, he discovers that Earth is hostile. His ship damaged, he takes the form of a widowed woman’s husband to try to blend in and get to a landing site to meet a rescue ship. Adventure and romance follow. Also, those evil government types who keep trying to dissect aliens. Why are we so mean?



Alien: Alien
Movie: Alien by Ridley Scott

When the awakened from cryosleep crew from a towing ship that works for a corporation investigates a transmission they find an alien ship and an alien that attaches to one of the guys faces. They break quarantine and go back on the ship. Then all hell breaks loose and Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver kicks some mighty alien ass.

Alien: Sam FranciscoMovie: Alien Nation directed by Graham Baker
In this film, aliens called Newcomers who were slaved and lost are immigrants to Earth and are integrating because they are here to stay. A murder happens and an alien cop and a human cop are partnered up to solve the case. What I like about this movie is that it is a cop movie with an alien and human thrown together. I always love a cop movie where the two cops who don’t get along have to solve a case and of course, learn to love each other.

Alien: Invaders
Movie: Attack the Block directed by Joe Cornish

This movie about a night where aliens invade London and a small band of headed-for-lives-
of -trouble youths take them on is great. The aliens are totally scary. The kids are completely loveable for being the heroes here when they are so much the underdogs in their regular life. It’s really funny, too.


About Cecil:

Cecil Castellucci is an author of young adult novels and comic books, most notably Boy Proof and The PLAIN Janes. Upcoming in 2014 is book one of her new sci duology TIN STAR.

She is also the author of The Year of the Beasts, First Day on Earth, Rose Sees Red, Beige, The Queen of Cool and Janes in Love. Her short stories can be found in various anthologies such as After, Teeth, Truth & Dare, The Eternal Kiss, Sideshow and Interfictions 2 and the anthology, which she co-edited, Geektastic.

She is the recipient of the California Book Award Gold Medal for her picture book Grandma's Gloves, illustrated by Julia Denos and the Shuster Award for Best Canadian Comic Book Writer for The Plain Janes. The Year of the Beasts was a finalist for the PEN USA literary award.

She splits her time between the heart and the head and lives north and south of everything. Her hands are small. And she likes you very much.

You can find Cecil on the following Social Media Sites:

Twitter :: Cecil’s Blog :: Facebook