- Excerpts from Samuel Delany’s interview of Joanna Russ at last year’s Wiscon:
SD: [Asks about the "double bind situation" — the economic realities of a writer trying to make a living writing.]
JR: Yes, that’s awful. It’s not the writers’ fault. It’s the economics of publishing now. What I’ve seen again and again is that a writer will do very fine early stuff — really good stuff — and say, “Okay, I can make a living writing.” But they then find themselves having to work too fast. Words should not only be thought, they should be felt through, and there just isn’t enough time. People in that bind never do great stuff again. And if you don’t do that, if you say, “Okay, I will keep my day job (as they used to say in the theater), and I will just write what I damn well please,” you end up working too hard.
- Vote for the genre cover of the month
- In the Guardian, Audrey Niffenegger reviews Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners (in some ways I can’t help wishing they’d got someone British to write that review), and Gwyneth Jones reviews Hal Duncan’s Ink
- Fiction: 23 small disasters by Benjamin Rosenbaum, Christopher Barzak, Greg van Eekhout, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Meghan McCarron, Tim Pratt, and Elad Haber
- Audio fiction: a new Susanna Clarke short story, “The Dweller in High Places”
- Ain’t It Cool News has an sf book reviewer
- Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Philip K. Dick
- Maureen Kincaid Speller on Ian McDonald
- Abigail Nussbaum is reviewing the Nebula-nominated short fiction again: she’s started with the novelettes
- Kit Whitfield on inventing slang
- Escapism and the end of Pan’s Labyrinth. Posts I will write when I have time: a comparison of the endings of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Science of Sleep.
March 4, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Posts I will write when I have time: a comparison of the endings of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Science of Sleep.
I wanted to address this in my Pan’s review, but it seemed to fall a bit outside the scope. There’s a lot there, though.
March 5, 2007 at 12:00 am
I thought that Audrey Niffenger review was rather good, especially “Now, you may be thinking, I don’t like science fiction. … Get over it. This isn’t exactly science fiction (it’s not exactly not science fiction either).” I think that places Niffenger amongst those who aren’t ashamed of being seen as sf writers (though reading it again, perhaps I’m being too generous).
I suspect that Susanna Clarke link may expire in the next few hours.
March 5, 2007 at 12:50 am
It’s a perfectly decent review, although I don’t think Niffenegger’s statements re: sf are part of why, per se. I don’t know, I just have this nebulous sense that it might have been interesting to see a review by someone who wasn’t quite so obviously sympatico with Link’s concerns, and an even more nebulous sense that a British reviewer might have fit the bill. (Imagine if they’d given Gwyneth Jones Magic for Beginners and Audrey Niffenegger Ink, for instance.)
March 6, 2007 at 6:24 pm
(Imagine if they’d given Gwyneth Jones Magic for Beginners and Audrey Niffenegger Ink, for instance.)
Or Dan Hartland all the sf Years’ Bests!
March 6, 2007 at 6:28 pm
That’s it. Next thing I’m giving you is a Battlestar Galactica tie-in novel.
March 6, 2007 at 6:58 pm
You really want to call my bluff? :)