« December 2006 | Main | February 2007 »
Neth Space reviews Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora (and the "hype" pertaining thereunto).
Book Fetish reviews Rebel Fay by Barb and J.C. Hendee.
John C. Wright looks at Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land to determine if it's great on a world-historical level.
Sci Fi Wire talks to Harry Turtledove about his new fantasy alternate history Beyond the Gap (coming soon to the SFBC).
Chris Dolley interviews Chris Roberson. [via SF Signal]
And last for this cycle is my “Editor’s Note” for The Jack Vance Treasury, a book I think every serious SF/Fantasy reader should own – and will love:
The line-up of stories in this book is simply amazing: there’s "The Dragon Masters" and "The Last Castle" and "The Moon Moth" and six Dying Earth stories and that's still only half of the Table of Contents. If you already own the Vance Integral Edition, you can smile and airily wave your hand in the air. Every other reader of taste and sophistication needs a copy.
Next is L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (one of the most dapper men in SF/Fantasy, by the way), who talks about his new novel The Elysium Commission:
When I started The Elysium Commission, I was thinking about internet-type communications and advanced medicine and what might come of that combination – particularly the impact on information and identity. In a market-driven, information/tech society, information is power. Why would those with information make it available, except to benefit themselves? Could government compel accurate disclosure? Would it? What happens when people adopt multiple electronic and physical identities? Is anyone whom he/she says she/he is? For how long? How reliable is the information by which you judge them or their business? Even if it’s accurate, what’s missing? Who really controls society?
Another month, another set of "Author's Notes": we ask most of the authors of new SF/Fantasy books in the club magazine if they'd like to write a short note to our members, and most of the ones we ask have something to say. This month is a bit thin, for various reason, but I do have a couple of notes for you folks. First is David Drake, talking about his first four "Hammer's Slammers" novels in this new omnibus edition:
You can call some of my stories either Space Opera or Military SF, but there's no question about the Hammer series. It (along with work by Joe Haldeman and Jerry Pournelle) has defined Military SF since I began it after returning from Viet Nam.
But war and good military fiction both involve more than people shooting at each other. These four short novels and the new novelet collected with them are about politics as well as combat.
And so is real war news. As you read an official's speech or see vehicles on TV burning after a firefight, think about what's behind the words and images--and what will follow.
If these stories help you find clues to today's truths, then I've succeeded.
Reuters has an article about the new family movie The Last Mimzy, which is based (pretty loosely, from all evidence) on the great "Lewis Padgett" story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves."
Padgett, for those who don't know, was a pseudonym for the married writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore; sometimes used by one, sometimes the other, and sometimes by both together. (Untangling what was written by Moore and what by Kuttner is exceptionally difficult; there's a famous story that one of them would get up from a typewriter to go do something else, and the other would sit down and continue the story from that point.)
If you want to read the original story, it's been anthologized many times -- here's a list of its appearances, from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database -- but your best choice would be to read it in a large collection of the best work of Kuttner and Moore. As it happens, the SFBC has just such a book on hand -- it's called Two-Handed Engine, and the only other edition of it in existence costs several hundred dollars.
The SFBC edition, on the other hand, is only $14.99 for members. If you're not a member, you could get it for a dollar when you join the club -- and get four other books, also for a dollar each.
The SFBC magazine for February started mailing (from chilly Pennsylvania) on Monday, and these are the new books you'll find within it...oh, and you'll also find them on our website right this second:
Selections:
Alternates:
Altiverse:
Elsewhere:
And that's it for this time.
The Centre Daily News profiles James Morrow, author of The Last Witchfinder.
Sci Fi Wire talks to Tad Williams about his Shadowmarch epic fantasy series.
Rick Kleiffel talks to several authors for a NPR piece about Dragons.
Stuff.co.nz talks to Elizabeth Knox about her novel Dreamhunter.
Vera Nazarian interviews Alma Alexander about her new "Worldweavers" YA series.
The current Bat Segundo Show podcast features Christopher Moore, author of You Suck.
Irene Gallo interviews new artist Tiffany Prothero, and provides a small gallery of her work.
There's a new issue of Farmerphile (the magazine of Philip Jose Farmer, if that wasn't immediately obvious) -- # 7. [via SF Signal]
Strange Horizons's Monday update is as inevitable as death and taxes, but much more pleasant -- this week, there's a story by Leah Bobet, and interview with Steve Berman, and more.
Issue #34 of Talebones is now in the mail. So subscribers should start haunting their mailboxes, and anyone else interested can click here.
There's a new issue of Green Man Review this week.
Infinity Plus has added a new novelette, "Going Harvey in the Big House" by Douglas Smith.
Electric Spec's new issue is supposed to appear tomorrow; I doubt I'll do another magazine update that quickly, so I'll link to it ahead of time.
Locus Online has posted the first "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column by Graham Sleight, reviewing classic SF works. This one covers Alfred Bester's classic novels The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man.
The Galveston County Daily News reviews the Eric Flint-edited anthology The Grantville Gazette III.
SFF World reviews Lou Anders's anthology Fast Forward 1.
SF Signal reviews John Birmingham's Final Impact.
New stuff at Fantasybookspot:
The New York Times Book Review had a horror column this past weekend, in which Terrence Rafferty reviewed a number of books, including In the Dark of the Night by John Saul and The Burning by Bentley Little.
The Guardian reviews Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek, Kevin Brockmeier's The Secret History of the Dead, and Michael Moorcock's The Vengeance of Rome. [via Locus Online]
Bookgasm looks at Jack Ketchum's collection Closing Time.
Critical Mass has been rounding up reviews for all of the nominees for the various National Book Critics Circle awards, and today they posted about Julie Phillips's James Tiptree, Jr. (And yesterday they had two posts to talk about Cormac McCarthy's sweet and uplifting The Road.)
Tim Pratt links to and reprints a Publishers Weekly review of his collection Hart & Boot & Other Stories.
The San Antonio Express-News reviews John Scalzi's The Android's Dream.
Roz Kaveney reviews a number of books, including the new Aurealis winner The Plio Family Circus by Will Elliott.
James A. Owen quotes from the Realms of Fantasy review of his novel Here, There Be Dragons.
Rich Horton posted a review to the Usenet group rec.arts.sf.written covering three recent Canadian hard SF novels: Peter Watts's Blindsight, and two Robert J. Sawyer novels: Mindscan and Rollback (coming soon as a SFBC Selection).
Velcro City Tourist Board looks at Interzone's issue #208.
Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing liked Justine Larbalestier's Magic's Child (soon to be available from the SFBC in a 3-in-1 of the entire trilogy entitled The Magic of Reason).
BestSF.net has new reviews of Analog's January/February issue and Asimov's February issue.
Green Man Review glances at a lot of things, including:
Sci Fi Weekly reviews John Birmingham's Final Impact.
Sci Fi Weekly also reviews Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko.
Tangent reviews the March issue of F&SF.
The Agony Column reviews Adam Roberts's Gradisil.
Kathryn Cramer -- anthologist, blogger, and all-around smart person -- has had it up to here with Wikipedia's odd take on the culture of amateurism, and is calling for the ISFDB Wiki to be the central home for biographies of SF authors. To put it bluntly, Wikipedia has snubbed her (among many others in the SF world), and she thinks we'd all be better off if we snubbed them.
Sounds plausible to me...
Update, 1/30: She's since posted twice more on related topics: How to Write an Author Bio and Has Wikipedia Declared the Death of Print? Meanwhile, Jed Hartman explains (better than the Wikipedia folks have, actually) what Wikipedia actually is and what it's not trying to be.
Dragon magazine's current issue -- # 352, and doesn't that make me feel old, since when I read it it was just hitting # 100 -- is devoted to China Mieville's world of Bas-Lag, and includes four new character races, eight monsters, and lots more. If I still played D&D, I would be rolling up a cactae paladin right this second, you bet...
[via Chris Roberson and Jeremy Lassen]
The winners of the 2007 Aurealis Awards (which I got from SF Signal) are:
Golden Aurealis:
Science Fiction:
Horror:
Fantasy:
Young Adult:
Children's:
There's not much new today, so it all comes in one not-all-that-big lump.
A review:
An Interview:
Some Magazine News:
SF Signal is trying to keep up with the flood of "best of the year" volumes, and has posted Tables of Contents (originally from the editors of those books) for:
For another look at the Year's Best picture for 2007, there's also Jed Hartman's useful table.
Once you get past the stupid headline, this is actually a decent, not-overly-biased look at the recent COsine convention in Colorado Springs.
(And I do know that headlines are usually written by a newspaper's editors, not the reporter.)
But, damn, if that isn't one of the stupidest "ain't them sci-fi folks silly?" headlines I've ever seen. A barely intelligble reference to a show that went off the air a quarter-century ago? Surely the mundanes of Colorado can do better than that.
Let's face it, Locus Online sees a lot of books. Today they bring us a list of recently-published titles (most but not all in hardcover, despite my headline), including The Terror by Dan Simmons and Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber (coming soon from the SFBC).
Locus Online reports that the finalists for the 2007 Crawford Award, given to a fantasy writer whose first book was published in the previous year, have been announced by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. The winner will be announced during the IAFA's annual Conference, held March 14-18 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The finalists are:
Joe R. Lansdale will be the Grand Master for World Horror Convention 2007, the convention announced today. The honor was voted on by members of the convention, and the voting was heavier this year than ever before in the seventeen-year history of WHC.
Our congratulations to Mr. Lansdale.
Sci Fi Wire talks to Andrea Hairston about her Philip K. Dick-nominated novel Mindscape.
Pat's Fantasy Hotlist interviews Dan Simmons, author of The Terror.
Adventures in SciFi Publishing's Episode 008 features an interview with James Van Pelt.
Faren Miller's review (from Locus's January issue) of Joe Hill's debut novel Heart-Shaped Box is now featured on Locus Online. (And here's what I had to say about that book.)
SFF World reviews Event by David Lynn Golemon.
SF Signal reviews Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic (also available in the SFBC omnibus Rincewind the Wizzard).
SF Signal also reviews Neal Asher's Brass Man.
Cory Doctorow reviews Lou Anders's new anthology Fast Forward 1 at Boing Boing.
Book Fetish reviews the multi-author, no-editor-credited, paranormal-romance anthology Over the Moon.
Bookgasm reviews the Tom Piccirilli-edited horror anthology Midnight Premiere.
Talking Squid has posted a list of good speculative work by Aussies in 2006, neatly organized into categories for those who nominate and/or vote for the Ditmar awards.
Those of us on this side of the world, on the other hand, could just use it as a reading list, if we were so inclined.
Locus Online's most recent listing is of newly-published paperbacks, including Designated Targets by John Birmingham, Crown of Stars by Kate Elliott, Solstice Wood by Patricia A. McKillip, and Old Man's War by John Scalzi.
(Book links, as usual, go to the SFBC site, where you could get all four of those in hardcover, plus one more, for a dollar. Such a deal!)
SF Signal reviews Fugitives of Chaos by John C. Wright.
Green Man Review looks at Jim Butcher's Cursor's Fury.
Book Fetish reviews Eileen Wilks's Blood Lines.
Bookgasm reviews Greg Cox's novelization of Infinite Crisis.
CA Reviews covers Nora Roberts's Morrigan's Cross, and then looks at its sequel, Dance of the Gods.
Powell's Books Blog reviews Voices From the Street, yet another posthumously published mainstream novel from Philip K. Dick. (Doesn't it seem like there's a file cabinet, somewhere in California, that generates a new one of these every few years? Or am I just turning into a Dick story myself?)
Book Reporter reviews Alan Campbell's Scar Night.
Blogcritics reviews Ashok K. Banker's Demons of Chitrakut.
Information Week briefly chats with Charles Stross about his upcoming novel Halting State.
Sci Fi Wire talks to Jack Whyte about his Arthurian novel The Eagle.
Joe Haldeman speaks at MIT about The Craft of Science Fiction. [via SF Signal]
Forbidden Planet International talks to Charlie Huston.
Jeffrey Thomas interviews his muse at Storytellers Unplugged.
Peter S. Beagle has been embroiled in legal issues with the owners of The Last Unicorn movie for some time now -- due to those famous Hollywood accounting tricks, as far as I can tell -- and says that he's never made anything from the movie version of his most famous book.
That finally can change, with a new DVD release of The Last Unicorn. Conlan Press is offering the movie in a special arrangement with Beagle that will send more than half of the purchase price to support Beagle and his projects.
Buying this edition of the DVD from anyone else will not benefit Beagle, says Conlan Press; only buying it from them will send the money directly to the author of the original novel.
Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column interviews Charlie Huston, author of the Joe Pitt vampire detective novels.
Sci Fi Wire talked to Chris Moriarty about her new novel Spin Control.
Sci Fi Wire also talked to Elizabeth Ann Scarborough about her new novel Maelstrom, which she co-wrote with Anne McCaffrey.
Locus Online has posted excerpts from the three interviews from the January issue of the print magazine: Allen Steele (author of Coyote Rising), Naomi Novik (author of Temeraire), and Ginjer Buchanan (once upon a time one of the SFBC's freelance readers.).
The Eternal Night talked to Pyr editor Lou Anders.
Sci Fi Wire talked to Jim Butcher about his “Codex Alera” epic fantasy series.
The Biblio File will interview Peter S. Beagle on Wednesday (January 24th) at noon. [via Locus Online]
Lilja’s Library interviews Stephen King, in three parts.
Gordon Dahlquist talks about his novel The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters at Meet the Author USA. (Warning: direct link to an audio file.)
Vera Nazarian interviews P.R. Frost about her new novel Hounding the Moon.
Stainless Steel Droppings profiles SF artists John Berkey and John Harris. [via Irene Gallo]
Irene Gallo also quickly interviews new artist Jason Chan.
This Week in SCIENCE! (I know they don’t style it that way, but I do) podcast features a William Gibson interview. [via Boing Boing]
Monsters & Critics has some new articles of interest:
Paul Di Filippo at Sci Fi Weekly gave an A to Paul Park’s new novel, The White Tiger.
Also at Sci Fi Weekly, D. Douglas Fratz liked Mike Resnick’s Starship: Pirate.
Tangent has reviewed Helix’s third issue and issue 21 of Abyss & Apex.
SF Signal reviews Charlie Huston’s Already Dead.
SF Signal excerpts the SFnal reviews from the current issue of Entertainment Weekly.
Fantasybookspot brings us:
Locus Online has posted Gary K. Wolfe’s column from the January issue of the magazine, covering the new short story collections Resplendent by Stephen Baxter and Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds.
John Clute, at Sci Fi Weekly, reviews Guy Gavriel Kay’s Ysabel.
The Washington Post reviews Dan Simmons’s The Terror.
The San Francisco Chronicle reviews The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross — upcoming as the second half of the SFBC Selection On Her Majesty’s Occult Service — Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster, and Bruce Holland Rogers’s World Fantasy Award-winning collection The Keyhole Opera.
It's not quite a review, but Fantasybookspot has listed the books they’re eager to read in 2007.
Neth Space reviews Graham Joyce’s Smoking Poppy.
Neth Space also reviews Fast Forward 1, edited by Lou Anders.
Powell’s Books Blog reviews Robert Charles Wilson’s Hugo-winning novel Spin.
In Analog, Tom Easton reviews John Scalzi’s The Android’s Dream, Rudy Rucker’s Mathematicians in Love, L.E. Modesitt’s The Elysium Commission, and more.
Blogcritics reviews the novelization of the Ghost Rider movie, by Greg Cox.
Lois Tilton lists her Short Fiction Picks for 2006 at DeepGenre.
SFF World reviews Mike Resnick’s Starship: Pirate.
Michelle West’s “Musing on Books” column from F&SF (I’m going to guess the February issue, from the URL) is now online, featuring reviews of Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith, Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear, and Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword (also available in the SFBC omnibus Swords of Riverside).
Susan Palwick reprints the Publishers Weekly review of her collection The Fate of Mice.
Concatenation reviews Chris Roberson’s Paragaea.
Visions of Paradise reviews Peter Crowther’s new anthology Forbidden Planets.
Blogcritics reviews Ashok K. Banker’s Siege of Mithila.
Velcro City Tourist Board reviews Peter Watt’s Blindsight.
Marianne Plumridge reviews Michael Swanwick’s Field Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna (which, in a fit of synchronicity, I myself read yesterday.)
Crooked Timber features a discussion between China Miéville and Henry Farrell about Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road.
Strange Horizons has its usual Monday update, with a new story from Grace Dugan, a column about French cheese, and more.
Edward McFadden has resigned as editor of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, citing host company DNA Publications’ publishing schedule problems. [via Locus Online]
Space and Time magazine is not folding with issue #100, as previously announced, but has instead been sold by long-time owner Gordon Linzer to Hildy Silverman. [also via Locus Online]
The newest edition of The Time Traveler Show features del Rey’s story “Spawning Ground” read by Paul S. Jenkins.