« October 2006 | Main | December 2006 »
Thursday is always a slow day for some reason, but I did manage to dig up a few things:
Minneapolis/St. Paul Citypages enjoyed Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu.
Alexander C. Irvine reprints two reviews (from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal) for his collection Pictures from an Expedition.
GalleyCat read all the way to the end of a long interview with Jonathan Lethem and found the kernel of news hidden there: Lethem is involved in an upcoming Library of America book which will collect four of Dick's novels from the '60s. Speculation immediately burst out as to exactly which novels those will be.
The Library of America has previously dipped its toes into our genre waters last year with H.P. Lovecraft: Tales (a welcome sign, but I personally think the book itself is fatally flawed), though they've done a number of mystery books, starting with Raymond Chandler about a decade ago.
This is great news for Dick, though the LoA still hasn't done anything with one of the 19th century's greatest writers, Ambrose Bierce (this is my personal LoA hobbyhorse). And in the history of SF, Dick is a bit of an odd choice (though he is one of the most academically respectable writers we have). The SFF writer I'd expect to see next in LoA is Ray Bradbury -- but what do the rest of you think? Who deserves canonization in exquisitely wonderful little (but fat) blue-bound hardcovers?
Update, Nov. 30 @ 8:24: The Lethem interview led to an article on the AP wire confirming the Philip K. Dick book from Library of America. The LoA page for the book is also up. (I note that this book is entitled "Four Novels of the '60s," which either means that they're still trying to distance the grubby genre stuff from "real" literature by placing it in a pop-culture context, or that there's a chance to get similar PKD books from the '50s and '70s. My money's on the first possibility, though.) The AP article also teases us with the possibility of Bradbury and Le Guin collections, and a "various SF" omnibus along the lines of Crime Novels: American Noir of the '30s and '40s
This short, zippy novel is the prose equivalent of a great Saturday-afternoon monster movie, so just sit back and munch some popcorn as the killer Prador launch their assault on mankind. Trust me: you won’t regret it.
And here’s Alan Dean Foster to tell us a little of the thinking behind the latest “Pip & Flinx” novel, Trouble Magnet:
In his old age (he's 26) Flinx is souring on sentience. In Trouble Magnet, he decides to spend some time on Visaria, a world with one of the worst reputations in the Commonwealth, to see if humankind is worth saving. Much of what he finds there is expected, but a lot is not...and will cause him to come to some final decisions.
I thought it would be interesting if, in looking for answers to everything else, Flinx encountered something that reminded him of...himself.
Our other Selection this month is an interesting and complicated one: Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde Investigates, a 3-in-1 of contemporary fantasy novels a lot like those written by Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, and similar writers…except that Lackey wrote these books over fifteen years ago. I’ll let her explain:
The Diana Tregarde books were all written quite some time ago, and actually predate Buffy, Charmed, and a fair number of other “witch-centered” movies and TV shows. While I would love to think that Diana had something to do with kicking off a trend, the truth is that it's probably just coincidence. Though in fairness I think that they're probably the most “cinematic” of the books I've ever written, and I would love to see them on the big or small screen. One of these days I might well revisit the characters.
One of the oddest of the coincidences around the books happened shortly after the publication of Burning Water, when several college students were murdered down on the border of Texas and Mexico around Brownsville, and early media reports were that the murders seemed to be related to a pagan cult of some sort. The initial and very sketchy information made it look almost as if it might have been a copycat working from my book. Now this is something that every author that describes violent acts in prose either should or does have to wrestle with — that someone might take what they had written and go out and actually do what was described. So do you self-censor? Or do you go ahead with what the story demands? As it happened in this case, there was no copy-catting involved, and the case was far more complicated than those early reports suggested but still...it gave me, at least, pause — and a great deal to think about.
Here is a link to what really happened:
http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/constanzo.htm
Which in itself is certainly fodder for someone's book.
I started reading SF in the classic vein — Burroughs, Kline, Brackett — and I’ve always loved their visions of Mars and Venus, and the planetary romances of slightly later writers like Heinlein. Unfortunately, the planets we actually got are barren and boring to anyone but a planetologist. Hence I've worked mostly on Earth, doing alternate history, or set my SF in other solar systems.
Alternate History lets us access fictional worlds otherwise lost to us; a very ancient divergence-point gives us a Venus (The Sky People) and Mars (In the Halls of the Crimson Kings, the sequel) that offer a broader canvas for adventure — and for the mystery of how they got that way. It was a bit of a struggle to find a home for the project; every writer I described it to loved it, but publishers seemed a bit more skeptical. However it turns out, I’ve had a whale of a time writing it, and I think — hope — that it will connect with readers who’ve wanted that headlong glamour.It also has the charm of happening to us, or to people roughly like us. It’s surprising how late definite knowledge of our closest planetary neighbors came in; hints in the thirties, but no definite knowledge until the fifties. From then, of course, things would get different, wild and wooly.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds at TCS Daily looks at Orson Scott Card's new novel Empire, which he claims isn't science fiction. Um, Glenn, I hate to break it to you, but a book about a near-future civil war is science fiction. And that means a bunch of other things you like are probably SF as well...ew! genre cooties!
Locus Online pointed me to some review of Michael Crichton's Next (another book that couldn't possibly be SF, uh-uh, no way):
SciFi Chick had some problems with Linnea Sinclair's Finders Keepers.
Book Fetish on Stephanie Rowe's Must Love Dragons.
CA Reviews on Lilith Saintcrow's Dead Man Rising.
Sci Fi Wire talked to Kate Elliott about her new novel Spirit Gate.
WOTMania interviews Tobias Buckell, author of Crystal Rain.
Look at that cover! How can you not buy a book with a cover that cool? I still love it six months later...
John Joseph Adams posts excerpts from his recent interview with Terry Brooks for Sci Fi Wire.
Charles Shields, author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, is starting work on his next project: the first full-scale biography of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. He's looking for people to tell him "about their experiences with Vonnegut, either personally or with his novels," and he's posted his e-mail address (cjs1994 at earthlink dot com) to facilitate communication.
I don't know if his request has made it into the SF world yet, so I'm hoping some readers of this blog can help pass the word out to anyone who might have known Vonnegut when he still thought of himself as a SF writer, early in his career.
[seen at The Millions]
The UK SF Book Network has what looks like a long press release from Gollancz about their new "Gollancz Romancz" imprint, which will be be devoted to "sexy supernatural stories." Since they're trying to keep a higher tone, the common UK term "vampire shagging" does not appear once in the story.
There have been dedicated imprints for paranormal or supernatural romances on this side of the pond -- I think Harlequin's Luna was first, though there are several romance houses in that area now -- but this looks to be the first in the UK, and the first to be tied to a SFF publisher rather than a romance line.
I wonder if all of those literary SF writers who want SFF to merge with the "mainstream" will be happy with the prospect of SFF merging with the biggest fiction category in publishing, the romance novel? Somehow I doubt it...
The weekly Strange Horizons update brings us a story by Cat Rambo, poetry, a column about fantasy, and the usual reviews.
Green Man Review also had an update this week.
Update, Nov 29: Locus also has just mailed a new issue (December), and Locus Online has a page with all the details.
Sci Fi Wire talked with Lois McMaster Bujold about her new novel, The Sharing Knife: Beguilement.
Steven Brust talked to Writing Forums, mostly about writing (surprise!).
BestSF.net reviews Peter Crowther's new anthology Forbidden Planets.
Green Man Review really liked Jess Nevin's The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana.
Other things Green Man Review looked at:
From Monsters & Critics:
Sci Fi Weekly chimes in:
SF Signal reviews Vernor Vinge's The Witling.
SF Signal also reviews the YA novel Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen.
John Clute claims that Thomas's Pynchon's new 1120-page novel Against the Day is "pure science fiction." I'm not planning to read it just to try to contradict him...
Gregory Feeley reviews Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Sidon in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Bookgasm reviews James M. Ward's Dragonfrigate Wizard Halcyon Blithe.
Jeremy Lassen reprints the Publishers Weekly review of Matthew Hughes's Majestrum.
Roz Kaveney reviews M. John Harrison's Nova Swing.
John Scalzi announced on his blog last night that he and his publisher, Tor Books, will be giving away electronic copies of Scalzi's novel The Ghost Brigades to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Full details are at the link. (If you're not a soldier serving in a war zone, you could buy the book through any number of outlets...including the SFBC, of course.)
Locus Online has posted their quarterly look at upcoming books, which includes books from December 2006 (like Brother Odd by Dean Koontz) through September 2007 (such as the intruigingly-titled Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe).
I'm supposedly on vacation today, and Movable Type (we hates it! we hates it!) has already eaten a version of this post once, so I'm going to try to be terse and just throw out some links.
Reviews from Fantasybookspot:
Fantasybookspot also interviewed Patrick O'Leary.
SF Signal discovered upperbacks, and was puzzled.
Sci Fi Wire had articles about two upcoming movies made from SFnal books: this one on Eragon and this one o n The Children of Men.
John Joseph Adams of Sci Fi Wire talked to Charles Stross about his new novel The Jennifer Morgue.
Adventures in Scifi Publishing has posted its fifth podcast, featuring an interview with Lou Anders.
Locus Online has a list of books newly available in paperback.
Locus Online has also posted excerpts from their interview with China Mieville.
The Age (some manner of Australian periodical) has an interview with Stephen King with the aparrently meant-to-be-taken-seriously headline "a sad face behind the scary mask." Words fail me.
Eos's blog recently hosted a round-table discussion among James Morrow, Tim Powers, Jeffrey Ford and John Crowley. All three parts are now posted: one two three.
Blogcritics reviews Holly Black's Valiant.
All of the Nebula-winning novels in haiku form.
Abigail Nussbaum explains Kelly Link's "Magic for Beginners."
Velcro City Tourist Board reviews Ursula K. Le Guin's classic The Dispossessed.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced that the next Grand Master will be James Gunn. (The official title of the award since 2002 has been "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master," for nitpickers.) The award will be officially presented at the Nebula Award banquet in New York City in May.
Nothing against Mr. Gunn, who has contributed quite a bit to the world of SF (more as an academic than as a writer, as far as I can see), but...we live in a world with Gene Wolfe in it, and he definitely deserves to be a Grand Master. I'd also like to see SFWA reach out to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -- one of the great SF writers of the twentieth century -- though it's quite possible that he'd refuse (and so it's also possible that he was asked, quietly, sometime). Larry Niven and Samuel R. Delany are also not yet Grand Masters.
It's certainly an interesting choice. Congratulations to Mr. Gunn.
Fantasybookspot reviews John Scalzi's The Android's Dream.
Bookgasm reviews Cherie Priest's Wings to the Kingdom.
The Agony Column reviews Mark Finn's Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard.
The Agony Column also reviews Scalzi's The Android's Dream (see above for snazzy cover) and You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop Into a Coffee Shop.
Visions of Paradise reviews Jack McDevitt's Seeker.
Am I the only person who realizes it's still November? The year is not over, people! So far we've had lists from Publishers Weekly, Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle and Waterstone's, and there are still six weeks to go. If you folks want to present these lists as "great Christmas gifts," that's one thing, but there's still time for books to surprise us...
The peer pressure has built to such a level that even the august New York Times Book Review has given in and posted their list of 100 Notable Books of the Year. (Not in ranked order, sadly -- I'd love to see the arguments if they had.)
I saw the Times list from a Locus Online link, and Mark Kelly noted there that the Times has apparently not broken out a SF/Fantasy list this year, as they had in years past. (Yet another way Gerald Jonas was superior to Dave Itzkoff, I'm afraid -- it looks like "Dave" doesn't read enough to put together a decent end-of-year list.)
On the long Times list (divided into precisely fifty fiction books and fifty non-fiction) are such books of interest to us as Julie Phillips's James Tiptree, Jr. biography, Lisey's Story by Stephen King, The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. But nothing published as SFF made it onto their list -- not Blindsight or Farthing or Glasshouse or Wintersmith or Three Days to Never.
The Times does note that a "Top 10" list (presumably drawn from the books on this long list) will be posted on November 29th.
Sci Fi Wire recently talked to Laurell K. Hamilton, mostly about the publication of her first short-story collection, Strange Candy.
The December SFBC magazine dropped into the mail yesterday, so it'll be landing in members' mailboxes in about a week. (And, if you're not yet a member, why don't you head over to our website and pick your five books for a dollar right now?)
Selections:
Alternates:
Other Places in the Package:
Audiobooks:
The first two episodes of a new SF web serial, The Dark, are now available for free. But the really interesting thing is the people behind this: it's written by Steven Erikson (the man behind the great Malazan Empire fantasy series), David Keck (author of In the Eye of Heaven, a very promising first novel) and Mark Paxton-MacRae (whom I know nothing about).
[via Pat's Fantasy Hotlist]
Scott Lynch talked to Sci Fi Wire's John Joseph Adams about his great first novel The Lies of Locke Lamora.
Vera Nazarian interviews Jim C. Hines about his novel Goblin Quest.
SF Reviews.net has a few new reviews up:
Bookgasm's regular "Bullets, Broads, Blackmail, & Bombs" feature looks at SF this time, in an entry called "Tardis Fiction." Bruce Grossman reviews the classics A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, Frankenstein Unbound by Brian W. Aldiss, and A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Neth Space reviews Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson.
Blogcritics reviews Nora Roberts's Valley of Silence.
Locus Online also has reported on the Ignotus Awards (presented by the members of the Spanish society of science fiction and fantasy -- says Locus, and I have no reason to doubt their translation skills).
Among the winners are what appear to be a Fredric Brown collection, a George R.R. Martin novel, and something-or-other by Mike Resnick. Congratulations to all of the winners.
Locus Online reports that the 2006 Endeavour Award (named after HMS Endeavor, James Cook's ship, and given annually to "a distinguished Science Fiction or Fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author or authors and published in the previous year") has gone to...
(drumroll, please)
Anywhere But Here by Jerry Oltion!
Our congratulations to Mr. Oltion. (Interestingly, the judges for this year's award were James D. Macdonald -- of New Hampshire -- Elizabeth Moon -- a well-known Texan -- and Lawrence Watt-Evans, who I think lives in Maryland or thereabouts. I gather from this that the judges don't need to be from the Pacific Northwest, just the winners.)
Last for Thanksgiving, Jean Rabe explained how she worked with Andre Norton on A Taste of Magic:
Such an immense honor I was given—to complete Andre Norton’s final manuscript, A Taste of Magic. She’d gotten several chapters into the novel before a variety of circumstances did not allow her to finish it on her own.
It was the first long fiction piece I’d written in first-person, quite the challenge for me, and I strove to match her style. In the weeks before her death, Andre and I worked out the end to A Taste of Magic.
Andre was magic herself, a gifted writer who taught me more than a few things about the craft. I treasured her friendship through the years, and our writing and editing collaborations. A Taste of Magic is a project I will always remember with love and pride.
I finished the Fortress set, and the youngsters just wouldn't let me rest. I had to tell the story of the brothers, Cefwyn's two sons. I knew they wouldn't be any ordinary sorts.
Joel Shepard is a new writer here in the US, though he’s had a couple of books published in his native Australia already. Here he explains a bit for us how his first novel Crossover came about:
One day, a long time ago, I was reading the manga of Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow. His cyborgs with human brains had “souls,” or “ghosts.” His robots, without human brains, did not. It seemed to me a peculiar prejudice.What if you were completely artificial, yet entirely certain you had a soul? How could anyone else tell? What if they assumed you were soulless, simply on prejudice? Worse yet, what if you were dangerous? Constructed from the first for the sole purpose of killing? What if you did that terrifyingly well? How could you claim free will, when you never volunteered, but were made a soldier from scratch? And a thousand more questions besides...
Thus, Cassandra Kresnov was born. Crossover is her first adventure. Enjoy...
John Scalzi’s fourth novel, The Android’s Dream, is a bit of a departure for him, as he explains:
When my editor bought my first novel, Old Man's War, from me, he asked me, "So, do you have another novel you'd like to sell to us?" Well, I didn't, so I said, "I sure do," and made the following book pitch:
"Man saves humanity through the use of action scenes and snappy
dialogue." "Great," he said. "We'll take it."This is that book. It's pretty much like I described it to my editor, and this makes me deliriously happy. I like deep and thoughtful as much as the next guy, but sometimes I just want to have explosions and bad guys and chase scenes and fast-talking sentient computers and the fate of the world depending on finding a sheep.
Because sometimes it does. Or should, anyway.
I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing this book. I hope you'll have fun with it too.
And here’s David Farland, writing about our other Selection this month, Sons of the Oak:
A young mother once asked Ernest Hemingway how she could help her son become a great writer. Hemingway answered dryly, “Give him an unhappy childhood.” He was right.
Tough times force a writer to exercise his imagination while deepening the writer’s innate need to raise his voice with clarity and beauty.
Over the past four years I’ve had my own challenges. Allergies left me sick and almost house-bound. A business failure brought our family near bankruptcy, and the stress threw me into such depression that I was unable to write.
It’s all good now: the allergies have faded, the bank-book is balanced, and depression is gone. I’m writing faster than before, and I feel that my tales are taking exciting new directions. I hope Hemingway was right.
I'm running very late this month, but I'll try to post all of the Thanksgiving Author's Notes before I run off to the big SFWA party tonight. To start off with, here's Jack McDevitt on his new novel Odyssey, one of our Main Selections:
Boobus Americanus.
I first ran across this phrase — I think — in one of the news stories recounting the cerebral thrombosis that had disabled one of the literary giants of the first half of the twentieth century. It was 1948, and H. L. Mencken's career was effectively over. He would die eight years later.
Reading about Mencken, I saw that some had asked him why, if the U.S. was such a ridiculous place, he chose to live here? Why, he answered, did men go to zoos?
He didn't like anybody very much. To him, the world was full of conmen and idiots. Leading the pack were politicians, college professors, bishops, lawyers, uplifters, do-gooders, true believers, and almost anyone in authority. It was too much for a 13-year-old, and I loved him from the first minute.It was presumptuous of me to try to reproduce him in a science fiction novel, but I couldn't resist, and he showed up as Gregory MacAllister in Deepsix. Writing the character was pure joy. So it was inevitable that he'd be back, especially in a novel that combines Hutch's Academy with a 23rd century hellfire preacher and a few UFO's.
