Forgive me, for I have sinned: it has been a long, long time since my last linkdump.
- I’m not even going to pretend to try to keep up with Racefail developments; the place for that is still rydra-wong’s roundups. That said, this morning I would pick out posts by Christopher Barzak, Susan Marie Groppi (also here), and Alastair Reynolds as worth reading. Separately but relatedly, I’d highlight the World SF news journal, intended to promote The Apex Book of World SF 1, due out later this year; and this call for papers on “postnational fantasy”; and the Verb Noire submission guidelines.
- Fun with authors responding to reviews: Greg Egan has some issues with reviews of Incandescence, including that by Paul Kincaid, but most especially Adam Roberts’ review; further discussion of this here, with Charles Stross and Egan wading into the fray. (Or per Martin Wisse: oh Greg Egan no!.)
- Self-promotion: I had a review of The Company by KJ Parker at Strange Horizons last week, in which I end up in a similar place to Paul Witcover, but more approving; I also have a contribution to this SF Signal Mind Meld on “non-genre books for genre readers”, though I interpreted the question as “non-sf books for genre readers”, and was thus slightly surprised to see people recommending Lanark, Jose Saramago, The Pesthouse and so forth. (Actually, I’m a little surprised to see anyone recommending The Pesthouse at all.) Still, plenty of good recommendations.
- Squeaky wheel gets grease! Following my post about the Locus blog, Mark Kelly has been doing some tweaking. And interesting posts there recently: Graham Sleight on adapting sf for screen (riffing off his interview of Nick Lowe), and on Lucy Clifford’s “The New Mother” and Coraline; also Gary Wolfe on the influence of Philip Jose Farmer
- Speaking of Graham, he was on the radio last week, discussing Philip K Dick on Night Waves with Nick Harkaway. You can listen to the relevant edition of the programme here (starts at 34 minutes; not sure if that’ll be accessible outside the UK), and Harkaway made a follow-up post about “Speculative, Science, Literary … and the next word is ‘Fiction’” here.
- Toby Litt on why he loves sf
- I found these three posts at the Black Gate blog, which develop a conversation about women warriors in fantasy, more intriguing than most such discussions; see also this conference
- Kristine Kathryn Rusch in IROSF on the economy and sf publishing, with lots of comments
- The SF Site editor’s choice 2008; compare the reader’s choice
- Diamonds in the Sky, an online anthology of astronomy-related hard sf, edited by Mike Brotherton
- Paul Kincaid is reading David Lodge’s modern criticism and theory
- Dan Hartland writes about allegory and SF, with reference to Sam Taylor’s The Island at the End of the World and Vandana Singh’s Distances.
- Rachel M Brown explains why she would not have greenlit Dollhouse
- Jonathan McCalmont’s latest Blasphemous Geometries column, on genre and storytelling in video games; I’m not sure I entirely agree, but that can wait until I post about Final Fantasy…
- Rich Horton’s 2008 short fiction summary
- A Norton judge, on putting together this year’s ballot
- Reviews and other book commentary:
- John Clute on The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 1; the comments are, er, interesting
- Patrick Ness reviews Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island
- Abigail Nussbaum on Iain M Banks’ Matter; also Watchmen; also Battlestar Galactica’s mutiny arc
- Matt Denault on Christopher Barzak’s The Love We Share Without Knowing
- Kelly Everding on Jeffrey Ford’s Well-Built City trilogy
- Jonathan McCalmont on the film of Blindness
- Karen Burnham on Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow
- Lisa Tuttle reviews Toby Litt’s Journey Into Space (falling more into the Lewis than Le Guin camp), Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia, Kit Whitfield’s In Great Waters, and Ellen Datlow’s anthology Poet
- Dan Hartland on Yellow Blue Tibia; and two more views of that book at Strange Horizons today, by Mike Froggatt and Abigail Nussbaum
- And James Lovegrove reviews Journey Into Space
- Sam Jordison on Simak’s Way Station
- James Enge re-reads Le Guin’s The Language of the Night
- Interviews:
- And finally: grown up Calvin and Hobbes. Just because. The motivational poster is best.
March 9, 2009 at 3:23 pm
the comments are, er, interesting
But not as bad as I’d feared.
Did you see that James Lovegrove reviewed Journey Into Space in the FT?
March 9, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I did not! Well spotted.
I still haven’t finished it.
March 9, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I’ve just read the comments to that KKR post. Oh dear. Rusch really shot herself in the foot and this strikes me as total bullshit:
When this column appeared, I e-mailed a bunch of industry pros who blog, asking them to link to it. Today, I received 6 e-mails about why they can’t link. All six cited your post as potentially harmful.
Thank God she bowed out of the conversation.