This past Saturday was the Kentucky Derby. I’m not that interested in horse racing. As in, at all. It’s always struck me as slightly cruel. Riding horses for recreation is one thing, but whacking the horse with a crop and essentially whipping it repeatedly to make it run faster doesn’t seem especially kind.

But one aspect of horse racing that I’ve always found fascinating is the names these horses have. The winner of this year’s derby was I’ll Have Another. As in I’ll have another shot of whiskey. Or I’ll have another card in blackjack. Or I’ll have another punch to the face, please. It makes me wonder where these names come from. Are horse names derived from silly story of the horse’s infancy? Are they like the stereotypical Native American name? As in, the child cried a lot when it was born so they named it Howls at the Moon. Or Eagle Screamer. Or Please Make the Baby Stop Crying.

So where did I’ll Have Another get his/her name (I’m not sure the horse’s gender, and I’m too lazy to look it up). Did it love sugar cubes and kept begging its owner for another one whenever he/she (owner gender is also an unknown) broke out the sugar cubes. “Wow, this horse keeps coming back for sugars cubes. Eureka! Let’s call it I’ll Have Another.” Or does it really like getting whacked with a riding crop? Hmm.

Were I a racehorse owner, I’d name my horses names that force the crowd to question the winning horse. Such as I Was Robbed, or The Winner Cheated, or I Meant To Lose. I can heard the announcer now. “And coming in second place is I Meant To Lose.”

Other great racehorse names:

Oh No He Didn’t

I Swallowed A Bug

Stop Whipping Me

Also, one of my favorite radio campaigns was doen by an agency in New York known as DeVito Verdi for National Thoroughbred Racing and turns the idea of funny racehorse names into pure comic genius. Enjoy.

And here’s the actual derby race with the announcer.

Win a free copy of Earth Unaware, the new book coming out in July from me and Orson Scott Card. Tor is giving away ten advance reader copies. To be entered to win make a comment on the following site.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/earth-unaware-sweepstakes#comments

Repeat: Comment at THEIR site, not this one. In fact, I’ll turn off comments here to avoid any confusion. Good luck.

Today the last issue of the second arc of Formic Wars hits comic shops. I’m proud of this issue. The art by Giancarlo is incredible. This concludes the First Formic War. There is a still another war before Ender Wiggin is born. It’s called — can you guess? — the Second Formic War. Fans of Ender’s Game know that war well, or at least know some of what happens in the war. It’s at the end of the Second Formic War that  Mazer Rackham defies orders and fires upon the queen’s ship, killing her and ending the war. That’s not a spoiler, folks. We’ve known that all along. It’s in Ender’s Game.

In any event, Scott Card and I are excited about telling that story. As all Ender’s Game fans know, the asteroid Eros will play a critical role. That’s where the Formics set up a base from which to orchestrate their invasion of Earth. Should be fun.

Here’s a description of and credits for issue five.

Writer:  AARON WILLIAM JOHNSTON, Orson Scott Card

Artist: GIANCARLO CARACUZZO

Colorist: JIM CHARALAMPIDIS

• The Shocking Conclusion To The First Formic War, A Prequel To Orson Scott’s Card’s Science-Fiction Classic Ender’s Game.

• The Formics Fight To The Bitter End. But Is It The End?

• The Hegemon Of Earth Is Revealed!

My paternal grandfather, Stan Johnston, was a survivor of Pearl Harbor stationed aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. And yes the Navy had a ship named the Enterprise. It boldly went where no sailor had gone before.

Sadly I didn’t know my grandfather very well. He and my grandmother divorced when my dad was still in high school, and when I was a kid we didn’t visit him that often. My memories of him are few, and they mostly involve him taking me by the shoulders and looking down at me with deep regret in his eyes, as if he wanted to be closer to us grandkids but didn’t quite know how.

I also remember the smell of smoke. Grandpa Stan was a smoker, and whenever I enter a home where the scent of cigarettes has buried deep in the upholstery of the furniture, I think of him.

He wasn’t a perfect man. He married five times and made quite a few mistakes in his life. But at some point he made my grandmother (whom I love dearly) a very happy woman, and for that I owe him something. My dad also loved him deeply, despite my grandfather’s flaws, so I wish I knew him better than I did. He died while I was serving a mission for the LDS Church in Venezuela. By then I had matured quite a bit, and I’d like to think that I would have made more of an effort to know him had he survived a little longer.

He was very young on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pear Harbor. I know little about his experience, but this morning my dad sent me this account.

Seventy years ago your Grandfather Stan was being bombed and strafed at Bishop’s Point on the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii.  He gave an interview to a local paper about that morning.  He spoke on how he and others were on shore duty, responsible for opening the submarine gates each morning so that ships could enter and leave Pearl Harbor.  Around 7:30 that morning he and the others were in the mess hall having breakfast.  When they began hearing explosions they grabbed their rifles and ran to open the gate.  Bombs dropped all around them.  He said that Japanese fighters strafed then at “telephone pole” height.  I asked him later what they did.  He said that they fired their rifles at the planes when they could, but that they mostly threw themselves down on the pavement and tried to dig foxholes is asphalt with their fingers.  He also said that each time a bomb landed near them they were lifted of the ground and slammed back down.

I asked him how many times that happened.  His reply?  “Too many.”

So today I salute my grandfather, whom I didn’t know well but who, for at least a few terrifying moments in his life, fought to protect every freedom I enjoy seventy years after the fact. When I see him again, I’ll shake his hand for that. And then we’ll find a good place to sit down because we’ll have  a lot of catching up to do.

My dad wrote a poem yesterday and sent to me. I asked if I could post it, and he graciously agreed. If you don’t know my dad, you’re missing out. He’s an amazing guy. Extremely intelligent and very loving. A great grandfather to my kids. It was his love of books that motivated me to read a lot as a kid. Westerns, mysteries, thrillers, war histories. My dad reads it all. He’s also a walking encyclopedia when it comes to the Civil War or the Second World War. If there was a version of Jeopardy in which all of the categories were about the Civil War, my dad would have dominated, and I would have been raised as a child of privilege from all the winnings.

Dad also was in the military at the tail end of the Vietnam War. He thankfully was never thrown into action in Vietnam, but he saw plenty of action as a military police officer and criminal investigator after the war in Germany. If you ever want to hear a crazy story about soldiers doing stupid things and getting arrested for it, talk to my dad.

But enough gushing. You came for the poem. I happen to like it a lot, partly because Dad wrote it, but also because it moves me and prickles at the heart, which all good poetry should, I suppose. Enjoy.

Old Soldier’s Lament

The battlefields are still and green,
No longer torn asunder;
Where blood once flowed in rivulets,
And cannons boomed like thunder.

The earth fills our foxholes now,
The shrapnel rusts away;
Earth’s marks of war are fading,
But our scars are here to stay.

Our heads are gray or balding,
And our legs no longer run.
Our bodies stooped and aging,
And our turn has nearly come.

That time comes so swiftly now;
The veil grows thinner still,
The sounds of war will fade away,
When we rest upon the hill.

Our memories leave us laughing,
Weeping, waiting in kind,
For the time we step beyond the veil,
To see comrades left behind.

Each day we lose a brother,
To fill the ranks afar,
Beyond this earth and clouded sky;
Past a bright distant star.

They have waited very long for us,
To join their ranks once more,
To march together side by side,
But not this time to war.

By
David R. Johnston

The second arc of Formic Wars begins this month with issue one of Formic Wars: Silent Strike from Marvel. It hits comic book stores on 21tst, I think. The official solicit is below:

The all-new prequel to Orson Scott Card’s science-fiction classic Ender’s Game returns! With 44 million people killed by the toxic gas the alien formics unleashed in China, the only hope of a counter-agent lies with Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police safely retrieving a sample. Meanwhile, young asteroid miner Victor Delgado has snuck aboard the formic mothership in hopes of taking it down alone…and boy is he is for a big disappointment.

This is an action-packed issue with amazing art by Giancarlo Carracuzzo. Enjoy.

Marvel has compiled my five-issue adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s novel Speaker for the Dead into a beautifully bound hardcover. This project was a thrill to work on since Speaker is one of my all-time favorite novels. If you haven’t read it, I strongly advise you to do so. It won the Hugo and Nebula Awards the year it was published, and for good reason. Here’s a link to Orson Scott Card’s site where you can read more about the novel.

Credits for the adaptation:

Writer: Aaron Johnston

Penciller: Pop Mahn

Penciller (cover): Giuseppe Camuncoli

Editor: Jordan White

The covers for Formic Wars have been amazing. A lot of artists have contributed, most recently Billy Tan, who did the pencils for issues three through seven. They droop my jaw. I wish I could make huge framed posters of them and put them in my living room. But something tells me my wife wouldn’t go for that. They might scare off guests. There is a burning helicopter and melting human flesh, after all.

The hardcover is out, and it looks incredible. This includes all seven issues of the first run of Formic Wars. Giancarlo Caracuzzo has done amazing art for the series. And Jim Charalampidis is a wizard of color and light. Scott Card and I have had a lot of fun developing this. As a life-long fan of Ender’s Game, I’ve always wondered what happened during the first two wars. Formic Wars is the answer.

Also be on the lookout for the first Formic Wars novel, coming Spring 2012. I’m very excited about that one as well. TOR is publishing. Look for more information coming soon.

The never-before-told prequel to Ender’s Game continues! An unidentified ship is rocketing toward Earth with tech far beyond anything we’ve ever seen…and the only people who can give warning are a small band of asteroid miners millions of miles from home. The clock is ticking, and it doesn’t look good for the human race. From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card comes the tale of humanity’s first contact with the Formics…and the horrible toll it took on mankind.

Writer:Aaron Johnston

Penciller:POP MAHN

Other: Orson Scott Card

Artist: Giuseppe Camuncoli

Price: $3.99

The Story: The award-winning novel comes to life as the saga of Ender Wiggin continues! Ender is called to a distant planet to speak the death of a scientist brutally murdered by a mysterious alien species. But instead of uncovering the truth, Ender finds a web of lies and deceit that threatens to endanger the entire planet. Based on the novel by bestselling author Orson Scott Card.

I’ll be doing a signing at Chapel Hill Comics on February 16th from 5 PM to 7 PM with Orson Scott Card. If you’re in the area, come stop by and say hello. It’s the official release party for Formic Wars: Burning Earth #1. Should be fun. Mr. Card will also be signing some of his other works.

Incidentally, if you haven’t read Pathfinder, go buy it now. It’s awesome.