This blog is still fairly new, and I'm trying to figure out what works here and what doesn't. There are some things I can do that I haven't done yet, so I wanted to ask you readers what you're looking for.

Some of the things I could post here:

• excerpts from our exclusive interviews
• "Author's Notes" from writers about their new books in the SFBC
• lists of books (perhaps weekly) that the SFBC just acquired

Do any of those things sound interesting? Is there anything else you'd like to see in this blog? Post any thoughts in the comments, no matter how unlikely they might seem

You can also use the comments to ask any other questions you might have about this blog -- I'm hoping to fine-tune things, and I'd like your input on what you like and don't like, want and don't want.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Reviews:

• SF Crowsnest reviews issue 2 of the magazine FARthing.
• The Houston Chronicle covers David Marusek's Counting Heads.
• New York Times Book Review on Scott Smith's The Ruins.
• New York Times Book Review also covers Nick Sagan's Everfree and the end of this roundup.
• LA Times covers an interesting nonfiction book called Hollow Earth.
• The Agony Column on David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's mammoth The Space Opera Renaissance.
• SF Signal on George Alec Effinger's classic cyberpunk-noir The Exile Kiss.
• Entertainment Weekly has short reviews  -- of A Separate War and Other Stories by Joe Haldeman, Farthing by Jo Walton, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessell, and The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko -- in their current issue, and SF Signal has retyped the important stuff and put it online.
• The Little Professor compares and contrasts David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer's Year's Best SF 11 and Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Third Annual Collection.
• I don't think I've linked to Talebones's review page yet: they've got a long list of stuff reviewed there, including Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer, Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" books, and the new "Star Wars" book Legacy of the Force: Betrayal.
• Bookgasm on the seventh Fables collection, Arabian Nights (and Days), by Bill Willingham and various artists. (Yes, Fables is a comic-book series; it's still some of the best fantasy out there today.)
• Book Fetish on Ray Garton's horror novel Live Girls (which I can probably call a classic; I know I've heard many people praising it).

Interviews:

• The Australian ABC talked to Charles Stross, mostly about Halting State, the near-future thriller he's writing right now. 
• The second part of The Agony Column's talk with Vernor Vinge is now online.
• Black Gate has a conversation with Darrell Schweitzer.

Strange Horizons, as usual, has new stuff to brighten up a Monday morning: an article on Meredith Ann Pierce's The Darkangel, a new story by Kameron Hurley, plus poetry and reviews.

The Daily Iowan has an article on Mike Horvat's fanzine collection, which has just been acquired by the University of Iowa's Special Collections.

Brain Parade asks a bunch of people which should be the space-exploration priority: the Moon or Mars?

[several of these links via Locus Online]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first time someone asks me to do something complicated or difficult, I'll probably make excuses, or say that I'll look into it. But nothing will happen.

If a second person asks, I probably will look into it, but I'm not likely to do much about it.

But if people keep asking, and especially if it looks like a really useful change, I might actually do it.

All this is to explain why, finally, I've started making my links for books point to the non-member side of the SFBC site (and not to the same book on the members-only side) over the past few days. It's a bit more complicated on my end, but I think it will be more useful to everyone. (If there's someone out there who's a member, please let me know what happens when you click on one of those links. It might get you the member page, or it might not; I really don't know.) So click away; even if you're not a member, you should get a description of the book and a picture of the US cover. If that makes you want to join the club, so much the better for me...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Reviews:

• The Washington Post reviews Alastair Reynolds's Pushing Ice, The Baby Merchant by Kit Reed, Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, and Daughters of Earth edited by Justine Larbalestier.
  
• CA Reviews awards an "8" to Glasshouse by Charles Stross.
  

Interviews:

• I got nuthin. 

Sean Wallace thinks it's tacky for editors to include their own work in anthologies or magazines they edit, except in very specific cases. Most of the commentors agree, and so do I.

Worldcon has an "officially unofficial" cookbook this year, called The Official Manual for Spice Cadets.

Lou Anders is so interested about the state of science fiction, that it's taken up two long (and interesting) posts so far: one and two. (I have to admit to a certain deeply conflicted ambivalence on the subject: I wish SF was more popular, that there was more good "entry-level" stuff, and that the really dense, gnarly SF like River of Gods or Counting Heads could be accessible to general readers somehow.)

James Nicoll (Live Journal legend and crack SFBC book reviewer) is annoyed about some common ideas in fantasy. And several writers are responding by pledging to avoid some over-used ideas in response. (I will point out that Diana Wynne Jones's The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is the definitive guide to fantasy cliches -- either to avoid them or to cynically add them to one's work -- as well as being one of the funniest books ever written. Any writer thinking of commiting trilogy must own a copy.)

Meme Therapy asks whether SF gets respect or not.

Mundane SF has notes from a panel on "Mechanics of Writing" from somewhere (I think the Campbell Conference). By the way, is there an explanation anywhere why Mundane-SF is posting such odd, telegraphese accounts of random convention panels?

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BBC News is reporting that fantasy novelist David Gemmell has died, probably of complications due to his recent heart bypass surgery.

(My thanks to James Nicoll for passing on the news.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Reviews:

• Bookgasm didn't much like Horror: The Best of the Year: 2006 Edition edited by John Gregory Betancourt and Sean Wallace.
• CA Reviews did like Kevin J. Anderson's Of Fire and Night.

Interviews:

• Meme Therapy talks to the ubiquitous John Scalzi.
• Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld talk to Little Willow.

There's a new issue of Locus coming in the mail to some of you, and the Locus Online website has a sneak preview of it.

Sci Fi Wire has an article about Greg Bear winning the Heinlein Award.

Lou Anders thinks the general public is finally giving up on thinking of SF as "that Buck Rogers stuff," as evidenced by Hollywood. (And he's got a good case for it.)

Jonathan Strahan's Poode Street Podcast is back for a second edition, featuring Tim Pratt reading his story "The Third-Quarter King."

Kevin Murphy has a long Comic-Con report from a SFnal point of view at DeepGenre.

The latest installment of what I think of as "Jim Macdonald's Things That Can Kill You" series is up at Making Light, and it's about Heat Stress. It has nothing to do with SF, unless, perhaps, you're a writer and using it for research. But, as usual, Jim will entertain and frighten us all with all the things that can go wrong with a biological system.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some of these are things I think I lost in an editing kerfuffle last night, so there is a slim but non-zero chance that they actually were posted before. You have been notified.

Reviews:

• Sherwood Smith is reading Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword (and, someday in the future, I'll actually be able to link to the SFBC omnibus Swords of Riverside that includes both this and Swordspoint. Not today, though.)
• Bookgasm on David Zindell's The Lightstone.
• Book Fetish on Moon Called by Patricia Briggs.
• Book Fetish on Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn.
• CA Reviews covers two books by Julie Kenner: Carpe Demon and California Demon.
• CA Reviews also covers two books by Sarah Monette: Melusine and The Virtu.
• Scott Smith's The Ruins is reviewed by: CA Reviews, Esquire (via Powell's) and Powell's (all by itself).

Interviews:

• Greg Bear talks to SciFi UK.
• Lou Anders and Paolo Bacigalupi (who is a wonderful writer, but has the hardest name to spell in all SF) interview each other at Mundane SF.
• Also at Mundane SF, Robert Sawyer and George Zebrowski interview each other.
• Nalo Hopkinson is interviewed by The Internet Review of Science Fiction (but you need to register to read it).

There's a new issue of Some Fantastic: #9 (warning: that's a PDF file). It contains an interview with John Scalzi and a number of book and DVD reviews.

Infinity Plus features an extract from Gwyneth Jones's new novel Rainbow Bridge.

The original, acclaimed PBS movie version of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven is coming to DVD, as part of William Shatner's DVD of the Month Club.

Amazon.com (yes, the people I still think of as a bookstore) have just optioned the film rights to Keith Donohue's The Stolen Child (coming in softcover to the SFBC in a few months), reports Sci Fi Wire. Is there any business Jeff Bezos doesn't plan to get into?

At Deep Genre, David Louis Edelman goes through The Five Elements Common To All Stories.

Meme Therapy asks, more or less, if the concept of a future Utopia is plausible.

Jonathan Strahan has posted the Table of Contents and the cover art for The Jack Vance Treasury, a gigantic collection of great short stories and novellas that he co-edited and which Subterranean Press will be publishing in a few months.

Via Bookslut, may I present A Muggle's Guide to the World of Harry Potter, wirtten by a guy who never read the books or watched the films, but is pretty good at figuring things out.

[several of these links via Locus Online]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The winners of this year's Southeastern Science Fiction Achievement Awards were announced over the weekend at Trinoc*coN in Raleigh, North Carolina. And they are:

• Jack McDevitt, for Lifetime Achievement
• Seeker by Jack McDevitt, as Best Novel of 2005
• "Bears Discover Smut" by Michael Bishop, as Best Short Fiction of 2005

Our congratulations to both of the winners.

[via Locus Online]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviews:

• Three short ones from the Miami Herald: Danse Macabre by Laurell K. Hamilton, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, and Spin Control by Chris Moriarty (SFBC link coming Real Soon Now).
• SF Signal generally liked Jonathan Strahan's Best Short Novels: 2006 (a SFBC Creation that you can get nowhere else).

Interview:

• Nick Gevers interviews Tim Powers at Sci Fi Weekly.

USA Today looks at the movies previewed to attendees at this weekend's Comic-Con in San Diego.

Sci Fi Wire has an article about Paolo Bacigalupi and his Sturgeon Award-winning story "The Calorie Man."

Sci Fi Wire also has two stories about Neil Gaiman today: one in which they talk to him to catch up on all of his movie work, and one specifically about the currently-shooting movie adaptation of his novel Stardust.

The magazine Space & Time will cease publication, reports Sci Fi Wire.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the tradition of TAFF, DUFF and other strange fan-fund acronyms, this year bring JETS, a one-off fan fund to send a European science fiction fan to the 2007 Worldcon in Yokohama, Japan.

JETS stands for Japan Expeditionary Travel Scholarship; full details for applying and voting are on the website.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Publishers Weekly reported yesterday that Sam Raimi, director of the Spider-Man movies, has optioned Terry Goodkind's entire eleven-book "Sword of Truth" saga -- including the final book, which Goodkind is now writing for 2008 publication -- as a TV miniseries. PW reports that production should begin in 2007, but that there is no date set for delivery yet.

PW's report also says that the series was sold as "a" miniseries, but that the 2007 production would be specifically Wizard's First Rule. So the deal may perhaps be for a series of miniseries -- or that the first miniseries, if successful, may lead to the rest being made.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviews: 

• Entertainment Weekly on Scott Smith's The Ruins.
• Usually, newspapers bring out the heavy literary guns to rain down scorn on poor genre books. So it's refreshing to see The Guardian do it the other way around and have Ursula K. Le Guin review the newest novel by Margaret Drabble.
• Tangent Online has recently posted losts of short fiction reviews, covering piles of magazines and several single-author collections.
• SFF World loves Greg Keyes's The Blood Knight -- See! I told you! It's not just me who loves this series. Now go start with The Briar King right now...
  

Interviews:

• Cat Rambo interviews Magazine of F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder at Suite 101.
• Rick Kleffel talks about interviewing Vernor Vinge for NPR, and links to parts of that interview that didn't make it onto the radio.
  
• John Joseph Adams presents outtakes from his previous Sci Fi Wire article about Sophie McDougal.
• Meme Therapy talked to Mark Budz.
  

There's a new issue of Emerald City, which includes an article on award proliferation, Cheryl Morgan's extended thoughts on the "bribing reviewers" controversy, and reviews of lots of things (including  Glasshouse, Elantris, and The Looking Glass Wars).

USA Today reports that scientists have now discovered over 200 extrasolar planets.

A group of British fantasy writers (including Stan Nicholls, Juliet E. McKenna and Sarah Ash) are blogging as writefantastic.

SF author (and former President of SFWA) Paul Levinson wrote an editorial for Newsday (a paper on Long Island, New York) about "TV's new golden age."

My computer won't play it, but some of you might be able to watch a video and thus meet Jonathan Stroud, author of the brilliant "Bartimaeus Trilogy." [via SF Signal]

Sci Fi Wire has an article about Tanith Lee's new novel Metallic Love (a sequel to her classic The Silver Metal Lover).

Meme Therapy asked a bunch of people about the (technological) future of democracy.

John Scalzi weighs in on the subject of publishing fiction for free online. 

[many of these via Locus Online]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In honor of the new Eos blog, here's a quick round-up of SFFnal publishing folks who are blogging. (Or at least the ones I know about and can remember right now.)

• The new Eos blog features editors Diana Gill and Jennifer Brehl and publicist/author Jack Womack.
• Lou Anders of Pyr
• John Joseph Adams, Slush God and F&SF assistant editor
• Douglas Cohen, another assistant editor (at Realms of Fantasy)
• Moshe Feder, one of the myriad Tor Consulting Editors
• Irene Gallo, Tor's art director
• Making Light features Tor editors Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden
• Anna Louise Genoese, another Tor editor
• Paul Stevens, who is an editor at a company that starts with "T" and ends with "or"
• Liz Gorinsky, yet another Tor editor (I believe there is a secret cave in the basement of the Flatiron Building where scarily-smart young editors hatch from giant pods)
• Sean P. Fodera, rights guru does not work for Tor, but he had an office in the Flatiron Building the last time I talked to him...
• Deanna Hoak, ace copyeditor whom I am sure has worked on Tor books
• Jennifer Jackson, agent extrordinare, whose office is just a few short blocks from Tor
• John Klima, editor of the 'zine Electric Velocipede and a Secret Master of the small press, and who used to work at Tor
• Jeremy Lassen, the wild man of Night Shade Books
• Deborah Layne, publisher of Wheatland Press
• Sharyn November, who not only has the coolest James-Bond-villain name in the world, but also edits the neat Firebird line over at Penguin
• Sean Wallace, editor of the Prime imprint of Wildside

I'm sure I'm missing some people -- so who did I forget? (Any British editors blogging out there, for example?)

(Oh, yeah, there's also me.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week, Strange Horizons features:

• an interview with Lydia Morehouse
• a new story by Michael Hulme
• a number of reviews
• and more

I missed noting last week's new stuff, which was:

• a new story by Leah Cypess
• the usual bunch of reviews
• and even more 

It's all free, and Strange Horizons is the major webzine, now that SciFiction is no more -- so check it out.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviews:

• Sherwood Smith reviews Crystal Dragon by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller at SF Site.
  
• Sean Wallace reprints reviews for two books (by Theodora Goss and A.A. Attanasio) from Library Journal.
  

An Interview:

• The second half of the Hal Duncan interview is now up at Writer Unboxed.
  

Vera Nazarian reports on the efforts of The Eye of Argon to thwart its own publication. [via Emerald City]

David Louis Edelman makes the case for Alien as a movie about the exploitation of a blue-collar workforce.

Paul McAuley has just posted the beginning of his introduction for Ian Watson's new short-story collection The Butterflies of Memory.

Robert Sawyer politely points out that the homepage for the Heinlein Centennial fails to mention those down-market words "science fiction" anywhere.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviews:

• SF Signal covers Star Wars on Trial edited by David Brin and Matthew Woodring Stover.
• Jonathan Strahan has posted a review of his Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005 (not the book he edited for the SFBC; his other SF Best of the Year this year) on his blog.
  
• The Magazine of F&SF LJ Community has short entries about the book-review columns by James Sallis and Charles de Lint in the July issue.
• Talking Squid has a scan of Terry Dowling's review column from The Weekend Australian.
  

Interviews:

• The Globe and Mail talked to Robert Sawyer, aparrently because Mindscan just won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
• Meme Therapy interviews Joel Shepard
  

SF Signal points at an interesting discussion about POD, "real" publishing and RSS syndication that started when a would-be author kept bugging Robert Sawyer about a book on submission to Robert J. Sawyer Books.

Irene Gallo (Tor art director) is blogging about the San Diego Comic-Con from a SFnal art point of view. (I think we're not supposed to call it "San Diego" any more, but I am a traditionalist.)

Deborah Layne has just posted the Table of Contents for Polyphony 6, latest in the acclaimed anthology series from Wheatland Press.

Sherwood Smith follows up her own post from yesterday on DeepGenre by looking more closely at the dreaded Mary Sue.

Matthew Cheney has a long post about Philip K. Dick and literary style.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, that was a stupid headline. But I do one of these link roundups a day, and I've long since run out of interesting ways to say that. So let's just move on, shall we?

Review: 

• Technology Review features Stewart Brand writing about Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge.
  

Interview:

• James Gunn and Bradley Denton interview each other at Mundane SF.
  

There's an official website for the new book James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon by Julie Phillips.

The Concord (NH) Monitor has an article about Jeanne Cavellos's Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop.

IGN has the first 24 minutes of A Scanner Darkly available online, for those of you who'd like to watch part of a movie in a little screen without leaving the house. [via Clark Perry's blog]

Sherwood Smith explains the dread lure of the Mary Sue over at Deep Genre.

An entity calling itself "Armchair Anarchist" tells us mere meat-humans that we have nothing to fear from the Singularity on Velcro City Tourist Board. Right. That's what they want us to think!

[many of these links via Locus Online]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've officially been on vacation this week (just try and e-mail me at work and see what response you get!), but I still have some time to bang out a few links for you good people. That's because we believe in Customer Service at the SFBC Blog -- we also believe in the divine right of kings and that the spaces between the stars are filled with chocolate pudding, but let's leave those aside for now -- and we will always go that extra mile to be sure that you have a big pile of links to click instead of doing any real work. (Although, if you're still in the office at this point, I think you've proven your point to your personal PHB, and you can slack off now.)

I spent the day with the family at the lovely but waterlogged Land of Make Believe (the second-best waterpark in rural northwestern New Jersey!), but I'm back on the blog beat now, so let me serve up some moderately amusing and/or informative collections of electrons:

Reviews:

• SF Signal on DC Universe: Inheritance by Devin Grayson.
• Visions of Paradise on Poul Anderson's classic The Earth Book of Stormgate.
• Ellen Kushner has posted the starred Library Journal review of her novel The Privilege of the Sword on her LiveJournal. (Plugplugplug: that novel is currently available in handy standalone form, in your favorite online or physical bookstore, but it will also soon be available, in a spiffy hardcover edition, combined with Kusher's earlier novel Swordspoint and three short stories, from the SFBC as Swords of Riverside. Such a deal!)
  

Interviews:

• Mundane SF features Kij Johnson interviewing Pamela Sargent (or possibly vice versa).
• There's an interview with Robert Sawyer somewhere in the middle of this CBC Radio One Definitely Not the Opera podcast. (He says that he comes on about the twelve minute mark.)
  

The new issue of Green Man Review is devoted entirely to the works of Peter S. Beagle. [via Emerald City]

SF writer and gadfly Cory Doctorow has a new article on CBC.ca titled  "Truth and the Net." [via Locus Online]

Australian SF Carnival July collects links to anything and everything in the recent Australian SF world, as compiled by Russell B. Farr. [via Locus Online]

There's a profile of Laurell K. Hamilton (focusing on her new novel Danse Macabre) up at Pages Online. [via Locus Online]

Pyr editor Lous Anders has posted a report on the 2006 Campbell Conference on his blog. (And, as I link to this, I see I've missed mentioning Robert Sawyer's earlier report on the same conference.)

Meme Therapy asks an assorted bunch of people to weigh in on the future of business.

Torque Control takes on the dreaded practice of infodumping.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm running a week late here -- the August magazine started mailing 7/11, so most of you probably have it by now. (Assuming that you are all members of the club, which of course I do.) But you might not all have looked at it carefully, so here's a quick checklist of the new stuff this month, for your perusing pleasure.

Selections:

• Dragon’s Fire, the new Pern novel by Anne McCaffrey & Todd  McCaffrey
• The Blood Knight, third in the excellent epic fantasy series "The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone" by Greg Keyes (Seriously, if you like George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books, you should check out this series, starting with The Briar King.)
  

Other New Books in the Magazine:

• The Space Opera Renaissance edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, an absolutely immense anthology that traces space opera's development from "that hacky crap" through "that great old stuff no one writes any more" to "that neat new space adventure stuff."
  
• Farthing by Jo Walton; an alternate history murder mystery that's one of the very best books I've read in years
• Settling Accounts: The Grapple by Harry Turtledove; third in an engrossing alternate history about WWII between the USA and the CSA.
• Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson; first in an epic fantasy series by the author of the acclaimed Elantris
• Changeling by Delia Sherman; a YA novel about Faerie in New York City
  
• A Bite to Remember by Lynsay Sands; one of those paranormal romances with vampires in it
• Angel With Attitude by Michelle Rowen; one of those rare paranormal romances without vampires in it
• Dead Witches Tell No Tales by Kim Harrison; our second omnibus of the Rachel Morgan series, including Every Which Way But Dead and A Fistfull of Charms

New Books in the Altiverse Catalog:

• A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick; screenplay by Richard Linklater; a graphic novel version of the movie
  
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Go Ask Malice by Robert J. Levy; a new novel about which I know essentially nothing
• Mystica: The Art of Monte Moore by Monte Moore; a book of paintings featuring women who are not wearing much at all -- for purely artistic reasons, of course.
• The Contract with God Trilogy by Will Eisner; three modern classics in one volume by one of the towering figures of comics -- though I have to admit, there's really no SFF content here.
  

Books In Other Odd Places in the Package:

• The Moebius Strip by Clifford A. Pickover; a science book
• How Everything Works by Louis A. Bloomfield; another science book
  

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviews: 

• SF Signal on Hal Duncan's Vellum.
• SF Signal looks at the classic parody Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers by Harry Harrison.
• SFF World likes Throne of Jade, the second of Naomi Novik's Temeraire books (in a review by my fellow New Jerseyan Rob B., of Rob's Blog O' Stuff.)
  

Interviews:

• Noted SF writer James Patrick Kelly talks to Locus Online webmaster Mark R. Kelly over at Asimov's.
• Meme Therapy interrogates UK SF writer Keith Brooke.
  

Jeff VanderMeer has created an entire website (and an upcoming short movie) to promote his new novel, Shriek: An Afterword.

Locus Online has two lists of recently published books -- including lots of good books, such as Charles Stross's Glasshouse, Spin Control by Chris Moriarty (SFBC link coming soon), The Mirror Prince by Violette Malan, Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twenty-Third Annual Collection, The Space Opera Renaissance edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, Anne & Todd McCaffrey's Dragon's Fire, the third book in Alan Dean Foster's The Taken Trilogy, and the deeply cool The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.

Speaking of Peter and the Shadow Thieves, Sci Fi Wire has an article about that book today.

Something called the Velcro City Tourist Board asks "Does Science Fiction Have a Social Function?" Since a raspberry can't be expressed in words, I'll have to leave that question unanswered here. [via SF Signal]

At the Mundane SF blog, a semi-transcript of a panel somwehere, at some time (I'm going to guess Readercon) about the State of the Novel. (Presumably the SF novel.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviews:

• Adam Hill in the LA Times Book Review on the new translation of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. [via Locus Online] 
• Midori Snyder covers Stormwitch by Susan Vaught (winner of the 2006 Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award) at Edicott Redux.
  

Interviews:

• SF Signal talks to Alan Beatts, owner of San Francisco's famous specialty store Borderlands Books.
• Tor associate editor Paul Stevens is interviewed by Media Bistro (but you have to be a member to see the whole thing).
  

Sci Fi Wire quotes the producers of the upcoming Dresden Files TV show (based on the series of novels) as saying Jim Butcher is very happy with the way the show is coming out. This is very encouraging, if true, but I have to remember that the producers of the Earthsea miniseries made similar promises until Ursula K. Le Guin laid a smackdown on them.

Sci Fi Wire has an article on the novel Romanitas by Sophia McDougall.

Meme Therapy asks if it's time to start building new nuclear plants.

Meme Therapy talks to several folks about which failed SF prediction they would most have wanted to see happen.

The website for Matrix (the news magazine of the British Science Fiction Association) has been updated, with many new things to read.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviews:

• SF/Fantasy author John C. Wright reviews Robert A. Heinlein's classic Have Space Suit--Will Travel (which he actually read in the spiffy SFBC omnibus Outward Bound), A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, and one of my favorite novels, Moby Dick. [via SF Signal]
• Torque Control on China Mieville's short story collection Looking for Jake.
• Bookgasm on The Ruins by Scott Smith.
• Bookgasm also reviews The Baby Merchant by Kit Reed.
• CA Reviews covers Melusine by Sarah Monette.
• World Fantasy Award winner Graham Joyce reviewed The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue (coming in paperback from the SFBC in a few months) in The Washington Post Book World.
  

Meme Therapy talks with technology writer Paul Glister about the future of spaceflight.

Mundane SF presents the bare-bones outline of a John Ordover-George Zebrowski debate on how "accessible" science fiction should be, and presents a similar look at how to survive at writing.

There's a website called Meet the Author, with video clips of various writers talking about their books -- including Neil Gaiman (on Anansi Boys) and Brian Aldiss on The Helliconia Trilogy. [via Grumpy Old Bookman]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jonathan Strahan (reviews editor for Locus magazine, and editor of the SFBC's Best Short Novels series, among much else) has just announced that he will be editing a new Year's Best book, covering both Science Fiction and Fantasy, for Night Shade Books starting next year.

For those keeping track at home, that means four confirmed Year's Best SF books (Dozois for St. Martin's, Hartwell/Cramer for Eos, Horton for Prime, and now half of the new Strahan book) and an equal number of fantasy (the Kelly Link/Gavin Grant half of Year's Best Fantasy and Horror for St. Martin's, Hartwell/Cramer for Tachyon, Horton for Prime, and Strahan). I can't keep track of the Horror Year's Bests, but there are probably an equal number.

Perhaps the world envisioned in this joke news report from Locus last year is not so far away after all...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jeff VanderMeer announces a thrilling new literary award, to be given out by a star-studded judging panel including himself, on his blog.

The first winner will be announced by the end of this month; this award is to be given to a writer whose work best exemplifies the spirit of Jack Trevor Story (a late newspaperman and novelist). Additionally, the winner will be under an obligation to completely spend the prize money within a week to a fortnight, with nothing left to show for it.

At last -- an award that reflects the truth of the writing life!

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interviews:

• Suite 101 talks to David Louis Edelman [via SF Signal]
• Justine Musk is interviewed by blogger Jennifer Prado.
  
• Hal Duncan spake in archaic runes to Writer Unboxed.
• Hal Duncan spake in tongues of fire to Meme Therapy.
  
• Jeff VanderMeer makes Gwyneth Jones walk the plank. (This reference will make no sense to those of you who haven't read Jeff's bog. I know that. And I pity you.)
• Nick DiChario talked to Meme Therapy.
  

Reviews:

• SF Signal on Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan.
• Finn Dempster (at the Mumpsimus) on Stephen Baxter's Transcendent.
  

Poppy Z. Brite (an ex-horror writer, so I'm allowed to mention her) calls out John Updike for a piece of horrrible poetry, including a reference to his "stiffened nether member."

Paizo Publishing explains why Amazing Stories died this time -- of course, Amazing has been dead more times than an extra in a George Romero movie, but it's still interesting to find out the details this time around.

Meme Therapy asked various people about their thoughts on the resurgence of magical thinking in the world -- in two parts.

Meme Therapy then asked a bunch of SF writers if there was a character that they wished had not survived to the end of a book they read.

Meme Therapy, source of most of my content today, also asked several SFnal folks about the prospects of the 21st century being defined by biotech.

Meme Therapy's next question concerned possible replacements for the world's commercial airplane fleet.

Meme Therapy asked the V For Vendetta-ish question of whether governments would ever have reason to be frightened of their people (because those people can cheaply and easily surveil those governments).

And, finally running out of gas, Meme Therapy asked the usual suspects if there was any future biotech concept that they thought should be immediately outlawed.

I'll leave you with one last link: the results of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, for the opening sentences of the world's worst possible novels.  

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)