Couple of quick questions for Brian to answer.
 

1. Do you get royalties per book sold, Brian? If so, how much? If you don't want to/can't answer for some reason, that's okay.

2. Doesn't the fact that time travel exists mean that pretty much anything that happened in the first book is fully capable of being negated and rewritten? Or not, as this leads into...

3. Do you follow the single-time-stream or the multiple-time-streams theory of time travel in NA and AA, Brian? For those who don't know...

Single-time-stream: Time traveling doesn't change anything. Whatever happens, will happen, or will have happened, or whatever. You can't go back and stop JFK's assassination because you'll get stuck in traffic or the machine will malfunction or SOMETHING will happen...you can't stop it because you didn't. Or won't. Or whatever. Time travel messes with grammar. Think the Harry Potter books.

Multiple-time-stream: Time-traveling is fully capable of changing the past or the future. Time can diverge from its set path. You CAN go back and stop JFK's assassination, but there's no real way to know the impact that will have on the future until you get there. Think the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (CAMTIM, anyone?)

4. Does Nuklear Man age like a human? Er, did he? In the years between his arrival on Earth and his departure after Nihel's destruction, did he age at all? If not, didn't anyone find this a little weird? If so, why? Wouldn't his energy-morph status preclude that?

5. Surely Dr. Genius with her, well, genius-level intellect knows about Norman's completely discombobulated state of mind. Why would she want to recreate him? Or does the phrase "Nothing will keep us apart" (or whatever you said) mean she's going to disperse him as an act of mercy and then join him in death?

6. Why would putting Yuriko's body in a suspended-animation chamber stop her mind from crawling into anyone else's? Why does Genius consider her "caged"?

7. Isn't John pretty much entirely responsible for Nihel's devastation of Earth? First, the kill-half-the-people is his fault, as Nihel wished to prove that it wasn't his fault that Rachel died. The rain-death-and-destruction part came as a result of the first part. Does he realize that all this is his fault? If not, why not? If so, how can any man shoulder the grief of pretty much having slain nine-tenths of the earth?

1. Yes I do, but it's no one's business how much that royalty is. It's not that much and I hope to change my contract with the second edition so that I get less per book in an attempt to bring the price down.

2. The answer to this question is more adequately explained in the next answer. Madness!

3. For the purposes of the Nuklearverse, I'm a single-time-stream kind of guy. I just find it a more satisfactory model for narratives. It's much more interesting to watch a character hoplessly battle inevitability -- perhaps with the added tragedy bonus of the ol' self-fulfilling prophecy action -- than to just hit a button, punch Hitler in the face, and solve everything. Especially since you didn't solve everything, you just created an alternate universe/timeline. It doesn't invalidate your own universe/timeline (or any of the, potentially, infinite others) so, in a sense, you've accomplished nothing.

That isn't to say that there aren't alternate realities in this setting, but time travel won't have anything to do with getting to them.

4. Nuke does not physically age. We get a hint of this when he grows his beard at the end only to will it away with a thought. His entire appearance is artificial. Why no one noticed it? Well, it's never said explicitly, but Captain Liberty was operating for decades and he didn't age very much either. People probably kinda assumed it was just a superhero thing. Also, Nuke appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties when he first arrived and he was only around for ten years. Yeah, people age in that kind of time, but if you take good care of yourself then you don't age all that much.

5. That's something you'll have to find out in Atomik Age. I will say that as Nuklear Age progress, Ima becomes more and more obsessive. Perhaps by the end, with her iron grip of the world, and her entire philosohpy of life, and her lover shattered, she's a bit overly stressed out and not thinking clearly? What happens when someone with her intelligence and resources starts to lose it...?

6. I get the impression that the body itself is being kept more as a trophy or a reminder than anything else. Nothing can stop Psiko from being in everyone's mind. In fact, she pretty much says she already is.

7. Well, this is a complex issue. I mean, who is really responsible for Nihel's actions? Is he truly limited by the edicts of Fate? Was his senseless slaughter of the Earth as inevitable as the words on the page? Is it John's fault for not "cooperating" with Nihel's lessons? Is Nihel just fuckin' out of his gourd?

I think John does blame himself on some level. His entire life has been about helping and saving people and there he was at ground zero of the single largest loss of life in all of human history. If he doesn't feel personally responsible for that, the best he can hope for is the world's biggest case of "Man, I really dropped the ball on that one.'

This is one of the many reasons why Atomik Age is set seven years from the last page of Nuklear Age. John needed time to work through his guilt. And, yeah, it's kind of a cop out to skip him dealing with it, but at the same time I don't want to write a book full of whiny, angsty bullshit and emotional masturbation. I could very easily see visiting differen't times in that 7 year period via short stories to get into John's head on these matters, but that's not something I'm interested in portraying over the course of hundreds of pages.

So how did he get through it? I'm sure Ima had a huge hand in it. She's the closest thing he has to a mother figure -- or any kind of family by the end of Nuklear Age. It's only logical that he'd go to her for some sort of support. And it's only logical of her to stress that it wasn't his fault, that Nihel was a raving lunatic, and that he'd have probably managed to do even worse had John not been there to distract him and -- let's not forget -- save Nuklear Man from the ultimate nullifier cannon Nihel built 'cause Nuke don't got no Atomik Field of pure Intrinsity to stop it.

So that, plus time, plus diving headfirst into a career of hero-ing probably helped John get to the point where he can live with himself again.

[mod edit]No need to quote the entire previous quote, also it broke the spoiler color thingie[/mod edit]

So does this mean that we will be seeing a lot of Flashbacks in Atomik Age?
Like in the middle of battles and stuff showing us stuff we missed out on like Lost kinda does?
And also will you define if Ima is a villan or a good guy or will you plan to expand on more of the "Grey Area" of socity?

Finally,
I hope you are getting SOMETHING from the books since I bought mine at the Borders (Or whatever it is now) in the Fashion Square Mall for 80% off....
(I belive you know where that is so you can go down and beat them for selling this work of art to me at such a extremely low price)

There's only been one flashback so far and that one pertains to a pre-Nuklear Age moment. Mostly you get information a bit more directly. Like a character will name drop someone and someone else will react to it and the reader can do the math.

As for Ima, you have to read to find out!

And I get the royalty when the bookstore buys a copy. I don't care if they sell it for $5 once its in their store. I'd, obviously, prefer it :) I wonder how you were able to find it so cheaply. I can't imagine they stocked very many and had to move them super fast or else.

That's Brian. Never thinking of himself, always thinking of his fans. Good on you, sir. Didn't mean to pry.

Oh, and as for Atomik Lad's attempted self-sacrifice to save Nuke, how did he survive that? I was under the impression that his Field was in fact pure Intrinsity. Which Nihel's cannon, I assume being a Nega Cannon, would have drilled through like a laser beam through a sheet of paper. Either that Field has got some MAJOR mojo that we don't know about (I mean, that cannon could have killed a god-powerful being, and it's stopped by a mortal's superpower?), or Nihel just built the damn thing wrong. And why would it have concussive force to it anyway? Especially concussive force enough to fling Sparky across the dang world.

I expect you'll explain it all in Atomik Age. At this point, that book is going to be nothing but an elaboration on plot points vaguely alluded to in NA.

Well, the beam does destroy KI directly. So with Sparky wrapped up in another KI shell, it was the one that got erased and he was knocked out of it before it got to work on him personally. It has a concussive force 'cause I figured something with that much oomf should be a tough li'l beam.

Ima mentions earlier that the Field and Sparky share one specific sequence. Maybe it's the sequence that let's the Field exist in the first place. If this is the case, though the Field was destroyed, Sparky can just bring up another one no different than usual. The interesting thing is that it acted on its own to save him from impact/the cold. So what is that shared sequence, anyway?

I'm sure this question has been asked before, but will Dr. Calculus and Dr. Grammar return in Atomik Age? I can't get enough of the Derivative Slam and Grammar's nitpicky powers!

That makes sense. After all, Atomik Lad's Field has been destroyed before - Superion tore it in half, then the halves fizzled into nothing. Perhaps he creates a new one every time he activates it? But there's just one last thing. The Nega Bomb sliced through reality like a stone through air. Why was the beam, which I assume was similar to the bomb, negated except for its incredible concussive force? Why wouldn't the near-instantaneous acceleration to speeds that would fling a human across thousands of miles not have crushed a now-unprotected Sparky like a bug under an anvil? Sure, his Field saved him in the landing and shielded him from the cold, but unless it instantly reappeared after it was blasted away but before Sparky took flight...the wind alone would have shredded him to pieces.

Sorry. It's the nitpicker in me. Eh, you write books for nerds, this sort of thing is gonna happen.

Viewtiful, I can only say there are many cameos.

Remember, the cannon and bomb where built by two different parties each with their own take on what they were trying to do. They're going to work differently because of that and because of their methods of delivery. It seems to me that if Sparky lived through the beam, then he was outside of it by the time he was unprotected. If that's the case, then he was already moving by the time he was unprotected. If that's the case, then his acceleration took place while he was protected. People without Atomik Fields soar/plummet through the air all the time. Also we don't know how long he was in freefall or when the Field gave out or when it turned itself back on.

If the Field turned itself back on while he was flying through the air, he wouldn't have fallen, being that it counteracts gravity. He would have hovered, or worse, traveled at a tangent to the Earth until he left the atmosphere. Not sure whether that Field is airtight. Unless it steered itself, which is highly improbable - if it's trying to protect him, why dump him in the most barren wasteland this planet has to offer? Assuming he was free-falling until roughly when he landed, now we must calculate the speed a human-sized projectile must move through the air in order to travel - with no acceleration beyond the initial shove - from about New York to the middle of Antarctica. My guess, at LEAST several hundred miles an hour, if not several thousand. The wind would tear him to pieces if he was at any point unprotected by the field, and I can't see the field instantaneously re-forming after it took that incredible hit from Nihel's cannon.

The Field dos not automatically counteract gravity. John can fly if he thinks about it while it's on, but if he's knocked out, he ain't thinkin'. If the Field was acting to protect John, then it being "on" is certainly better than it being "off" regardless of where he ends up.

One Question :Will John love again?

Just want to know...

You sure about that, Brian? Old edition, page 439, the battle against Superion: "Atomik Lad's Field burst forth and the ex-sidekick rocketed straight up. Even with his Field naturally counter acting the G-forces, it felt like he'd left his organs behind." Naturally counteracting them. I always thought it was a conscious effort just to stay on the ground. Speaking of which, why doesn't the ground beneath his feet disintegrate when he's using his Field?

But back to the subject at hand. Unless his Field never evaporated after the blast, the wind would destroy Atomik Lad's fragile human body, at the speeds he was going. It leaves him unprotected for a second, he's done. Not to mention probably plummeting through the ceiling...he WAS in the Food Court Junction, indoors, after all.

Or am I just nitpicking too much?

Yup. He turned the Field on and immediately took off. No contradiction there.

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why doesn't the ground beneath his feet disintegrate when he's using his Field?

As I've said before, John has more control over his Field than he is perhaps aware. Subconsciously he doesn't want to rip up the ground, so most of the time he doesn't.

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Unless his Field never evaporated after the blast, the wind would destroy Atomik Atomik Lad's fragile human body, at the speeds he was going. It leaves him unprotected for a second, he's done.

People have been exposed to winds in excess of several hundred miles an hour in real life, sometimes for an hour or more, and lived through it with just a few bruises. And, again, we don't know at what point in flight the Field kicked back on or what effects, if any, that had on his trajectory -- one would assume it would not produce drag, but then one would also assume John was dead at this point, so who knows what's what.

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Not to mention probably plummeting through the ceiling...he WAS in the Food Court Junction, indoors, after all.

Then obviously the Field didn't disperse until some point after he was already outside of the building.

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Or am I just nitpicking too much?

Yup.

I'll spoiler it all just in case.

As we know, John shares a KI sequence with his field. My question: is this sequence - and, by extension, the field - directly related to Nuklear Man? It could explain how Nuke "sensed" John when he was in the Antarctic. (of course, this could also be attributed to Nuke's enormous power, combined with his strong emotional attachment to John. Yay for empaths.)
If the shared sequence is indeed related to Nuke, this could also explain the great power of the field. (Although, thinking back, I believe Dr. Genius offered an explanation of that at some point.) Anything with that kind of relationship with a suber-being like Arel is bound to be powerful.
Also, throughout NA it seems that John has more control over Nuke than anyone else. This could probably be explained away rather easily, but I can't think of exactly how at the moment. I bring this up because, if my goofy theory is correct, John's influence over Nuke's behavior could result from his admittedly limited control of his field. Well, not really, but in a symbolic way. Symbolism's all the rage among the hip young authors, you know.

I think I had more to add to that at one point, but Futurama was on. Damned TV.

Oh, and a(nother) question. Will we find out exactly what John's field is in AA? If not, may I puncture you with knives?

The Field has nothing to do with Nuke. The Golden Guardian was able to sense Atomik because he finally became aware of the full range of his abilities/senses and, from space I believe, he detected a tiny packet of heat energy that stood out for two reasons.

1) because it was in the middle of the arctic where even the polar bears are chilly,

2) because it was Atomik Lad's body heat which Nuke had sort of subconsciously been aware of for years since he "had" those senses all along, he just didn't consciously use them.

If it can be said that Atomik Lad has any control over Nuke, it's only due to living with him for ten years. He'd figured out all the right ways to manipulate the lug.

And, yes, I can definitively say that we will find out exactly what the Field is in Atomik Age.

I wonder what Nuklear Man would have done if he had never gotten together with Sparky. Think the people of Earth really WOULD be living under his tyrannical rule? Or would he make some feeble attempts at conquering, get bored or exhausted, and watch cartoons for the remainder of the day? Would he do any Heroing at all?

I actually wrote a 40 - 50 page short "alternate history" story based on a premise not too far removed from that. Maybe I'll release it for free online one of these days.