Greg Costikyan has found the most sacrilegious game ever.

There is a podcast feed containing all of the stories on Cory Doctorow's collection Overclocked.

John Scalzi responds to Mark Helprin's Copyright Uber Alles essay from the weekend.

Coleen Mondor wishes she knew how to hit. (And I wish fewer men learned that particular lesson...we don't seem to have any trouble with it, on my side of the gender divide.)

Many people have mentioned the "Harry Potter" stamps the the UK's Royal Mail will be issuing this summer, but the only place I've seen pictures of the stamps is at the blog of Forbidden Planet International.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America join the hordes of writers' organizations that are deploring the new proposed Simon & Schuster contract.

The fanfic fight continues -- Paul Raven responds to A.R. Yngve, and they then dialogue. (This is the twenty-first century; we use "dialogue" as a verb now.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A.R. Yngve does not like fanfic. And his question is a good one.

Niall Harrison thinks about shortlists, by way of starting to review a novel called Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk. (And, as someone who was recently a judge myself -- World Fantasy, class of '05 -- I can say that the idea of having "slots" on a shortlist is very alien to my experience as well.)

Miss Snark is retiring. All of you would-be writers will have to hit yourselves with the Clue Stick from now on. (Post-retirement FAQ.)

Mark Helprin believes copyright should be eternal...at least from this point forward. (Of course, he also believes that the rich should be able to pass down their immense fortunes completely untouched to their worthless progeny -- I went to college with private-school kids, I know whereof I speak -- and thus continue their dominion over the globe. To be fair, he also believes in writing great novels like Winter's Tale, so I have to give him so slack.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Robert Silverberg ruminates on Limbo in his "Reflections" column from the July Asimov's.

Cory Doctorow has posted the audio file of a panel discussion at the LA Times Festival of Books among himself, Kage Baker, John Scalzi, and Harry Turtledove about Science Fiction.

Escape Pod will be podcasting readings all of this year's Hugo-nominated stories; Tim Pratt's "Impossible Dreams" is first. [via Boing Boing]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Scalzi has declared himself the Dictator of Writing. All hail the dictator!

Jeff VanderMeer anatomizes space opera.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SF Scope extensively reports on the pending resignations of three members of the Board of Directors of the Science Fiction Writers of America:

• Secretary Catherine Mintz, just re-elected while running unopposed, will decline the new term when the Board takes office on July 1st
• Western Regional Director Sheila Finch, in the middle of a three-year term, will resign effective June 30th
• and Eastern Regional Director Diane Turnshek will also resign June 30th.

Turnshek's resignation is for personal reasons; it was long expected and anticipated. But the resignations of Mintz and Finch are apparently related to the recent disputed SFWA election, and in particular to some of the issues around Vice President-elect Andrew Burt.

SF Scope's report has quotes from incoming SFWA President Michael Capobianco and Finch, which express regret and unhappiness but do not exactly explain what the specific problem is.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cory Doctorow, at Locus Online, comes not to bury fanfic, but to praise it.

Russia is reportedly attacking Estonia via "massive cyber-attacks."

Jess Nevins provides a brief history of that most ancient and esteemed art-form, science fiction.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cory Doctorow on troll-fighting.

The Sarnia Observer reported on GenreCon. [via Robert J. Sawyer, who was Guest of Honor]

Ben Jeapes has some mildly contrary thoughts on Charles Stross’s recent death-of-privacy speech.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcasts the beginning of Paul Levinson's novel The Silk Code (all of which is available for free as a podact from Podiobooks.com).

Lucius Shepard has posted his story "After Ildiko."

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

J.K. Rowling is dangling the possibility of writing, for charity, an encyclopedia of Harry Potter's world.

Larry, of OF Blog of the Fallen, ponders elitism and the clanishness of specific-author fandom. (I have to admit, the behaviors he describes are very alien to me -- how could you possibly read only one fantasy series, and hate every other kind of novel? What on earth would you read the rest of the time? People are really weird sometimes.)

SF Scope reports that Baen Books has also hired a new editorial assistant (Kayt Hensley) and a freelance consulting editor (Gray Rinehart), in addition to adding Jim Minz as Senior Editor.

ABEbooks.com is running a contest in which they'll give away a bookshelf made from Harry Potter books to the best Harry Potter-themed poem.

I think that it would be a glitch

Finding a poem more lovely than a Snitch...

Jeff VanderMeer, writing in the Amazon Blog, lists the winners of Finland's Tahtivaelaja-award (for best SF book) for the last twenty years.

Want to know what Nebula Awards Weekend was like? Well, ask Jeffrey Carver or Tobias S. Buckell.

Charles Stross posts the text of a recent (very long) talk he gave on the side-effects of technology to TNG Technology Consulting of Munich.

Colleen Mondor went looking for mysteries in the YA world, didn't find all that many pure ones, and wandered over into thinking about fantasy YAs with mystery elements (including books by Mark Del Franco, Justine Larbalestier, and Kristopher Reisz).

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The results of the election of the Science Fiction Writers of America's 2007-2008 officers were announced at the Business Meeting during the Nebula Awards Weekend. The new officers are:

President: Michael Capobianco

Vice President: Andrew Burt

SW Regional Director: Paul Melko

Canadian Regtional Director: Chris Atack

Secretary: Catherine Mintz

Treasurer: Susan Linville

John Scalzi, who ran a late-starting (and eventually unsuccessful) write-in candidacy for President, has posted his thoughts about the campaign for SFWA president on his blog.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Justine Larbalestier's Top 10 Reasons Banning Books Is a Bad Idea.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The newest major SFF publishing line in the USA is Orbit Books, the re-launched SFF publishing imprint of Hachette's US arm. (A big chunk of Hachette US -- the former Warner Books -- is now called Grand Central Publishing, but Orbit is separate from that. Orbit is the sucessor, more or less, to the defunct Warner Aspect imprint, and, those of us with long memories may even remember that line's prececessor, Warner Questar). Orbit's first US list starts in September, and they've got a sizable program continuing on from there (including Iain M. Banks's new "Culture" novel, Matter, in February 2008).

To make it even more interesting, they've started a contest in which one lucky fan will receive one Orbit book a month free for an entire year -- the entry form and the complete rules are online.

Update, several hours later: Details of the intricasies of publishing have been tweaked; there are probably ten people in the whole world who will care. (Including me, though, since I'm compulsive about such things.) I also took the opportunity to fix a couple of typos.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomorrow, during normal business hours, anyone can walk into a participating comics shop, walk up to the counter, and say "My good man, I would like a free comic book" -- and he'll give you one!

What a great country! Be sure to celebrate Free Comic Book Day in your neighborhood.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matthew Cheney has posted his YA story "The Boyfriend from Another Planet."

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sandra McDonald posts a short story related to her novel The Outback Stars (coming soon as a SFBC Selection) -- she calls it a "fanfic," but my brain doesn't want to make that word work that way... 

This one you can't "read," per se, but you can "listen to:" the 17th installment of The Time Traveler Show features a reading of H.G. Wells's story "The New Accelerator."

Will Shetterly has been posting chapters from his 1985 novel Cats Have No Lord on his LiveJournal; the first one is here.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gwyneth Jones writes in The Guardian that "science fiction is finally, rapidly, becoming fact - just as the first pulp writers and movie-makers were convinced it would, back in the 1920s" (I guess she's ignoring all of the other times when SF writers and pundits were obsessed about SF "finally, rapidly, becoming fact" -- starting with the atomic bomb in 1945 and famously including Sputnik in 1957 and the moon landing in 1969 -- to keep her point clearer, but we have all heard this song many times before. Science fiction is nearly always rapidly becoming fact, or at least some bits of it are.)

Her article is mostly about robots, as it happens.

(And is there some robot uprising in the UK that we're not hearing about on this side of the pond? There's also an article in the Belfast Telegraph today titled "Should the human race be worried by the rise of robots?")

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

The respected SF/Fantasy small press Meisha Merlin is shutting its doors; they recently posted the following announcement on their home page:

Dear Fans,

I am sorry to say that due to major distribution problems Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc. will be closing their doors in May 2007. Both Kevin and I along with the entire staff here at Meisha Merlin want to thank all our fans, customers, authors, & artists for your support over the past eleven years. We are sorry to have to do this, but events beyond our control have forced us to make this decision.

ATTN: For those of you who have purchased The Virginia Edition. The Robert A. & Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust has worked out an agreement to continue publishing The Virginia Edition. You can expect a letter from them within the very near future & volume seven will be arriving to you in late May or early June.

[SF Scope had the official announcement first, though the news has been circulating secretly for some time]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't blogged about this before because 1) it has nothing to do with SFF, and 2) I couldn't believe it's actually true. But I've seen enough links now to finally convince me; if this is a hoax, it's too big and all-encompassing for me to fight it anymore.

A Charles Dickens theme park, Dickens World, is set to open in Kent at the end of May. The big ride is a log flume based on Great Expectations. The whole thing cost about 62 million UK pounds, and the park was designed and built by the company behind Sweden's Santa World. Oh, and there's room for expansion -- no attractions based on Barnaby Rudge or Bleak House are included.

If this succeeds, it's only a matter of time before we see Austenland or Tolkien-a-rama, right?

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week I wrote, and tried to post, a long entry about the genre books on the April 22nd New York Times Book Review bestseller lists. But, looking through my archives, I think now that Movable Type ate it, as it's eating so much lately. (And let me say again that I loathe Movable Type, which causes me nothing but pain.)

Well, I'll try again. In the publishing biz, we often see bestseller lists, and consequently I hold in my hands right now the April 29th New York Times lists.

Last week I congratulated Jim Butcher, whose new "Dresden Files" novel White Night was #5 on the hardcover list, which was his first-ever appearance on the Times list. This week, White Night slips only slightly, to #7, but the Times gets the title wrong, adding a "K" to the second word. (Obligatory plug: you can get White Night as one-half of the SFBC's fourth "Dresden Files" omnibus, Wizard Under Fire.)

White Night is the only SFF book on the main hardcover list, but, on the expanded list, we find Boomsday by Christopher Buckley (#18), For a Few Demons More by Kim Harrison (#22), Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (#26), and Into a Dark Realm by Raymond E. Feist (#28).

On the paperback list, Oprah pick and Pulitzer Prize winner The Road by Cormac McCarthy is at #2, and, on the expanded list, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is at #16 and Karen Chance's Claimed by Shadow at #31.

On the various Children's lists, there's New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (#1), City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (#7), and Specials by Scott Westerfeld (#8) on the "chapter books" list. The paperback children's list has a lot of genre books: Eldest by Christopher Paolini is #1, and also on the list are Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson (32), Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (#6), Eragon by Paolini (#7), The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan (#9), and no less than three novelizations of movies with fantasy elements. Lastly, the series children's list has "Harry Potter" in #1, "Magic Tree House" at #3, "Septimus Heap" #4, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" #9, and "Warriors: The New Prophecy" closing it up at #10.

I'm pretty sure there were more last week, and I also think I had many brilliant and witty comments, but all that was as chaff beneath the heel of Movable Type.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Truesdale's latest "Off on a Tangent" column (posted at SFSite/F&SF) is mostly a response to Adrienne Martini's very grumpy attack on this year's Hugo nominees at Bookslut. Martini later amplified her comments, which did not make those opposing her views change their minds.

(And I had my own jaundiced take on the situation.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

SF Signal has a secret plan to entice the legions of Harry Potter fans to the dark side into reading more the SF and Fantasy...and they're looking for people to help make their scheme a reality on P-Day, July 21st of this year.

Will you accept the challenge?

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following the UK's example, the Australian bookselling chain Angus & Robertson polled their countrymen to find out what their favorite books were. Number one was the "Harry Potter" series by J.K. Rowling, with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code at #2 and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien at #3.

The British, when polled, had Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as their top book, but it only came in at #4 with the apparently less-romantic Aussies.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tor has posted excerpts from two John Scalzi novels: the first chapter of The Ghost Brigades and half of the first chapter of The Last Colony. (Book-title links lead to the SFBC website, were you could get those books for a dollar each with membership.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chapter Feeds presents the beginning of L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s new novel, Soarer's Choice.

Heather Lindsley's "Just Do It" is featured on the Escape Pod podcast. [via BoingBoing]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The US Postal Service unveiled the upcoming Star Wars stamps yesterday; there will be a set of fifteen Star Wars stamps on a poster-like sheet released in May. Also, stamp fans can vote on their favorite stamp at that site. The winning stamp will them be reissued later in the year as "a single stamp."

I haven't been able to find any credit for the stamp art -- I suspect it's Drew Struzan, from his long association with Star Wars and because it looks like his style, but that's only a guess. Hey, Lucasfilm and USPS! Please credit the people who do the work!

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, it's not officially a SF novel. But the new Selection of Oprah's book club is Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a novel set in the near-future after an unspecified apocalypse, and it's hard to see that as anything but science fiction.

Welcome to the dark side, Oprah; we hope you like it here. If you're looking for more things to read over in our neck of the woods, may I recommend Ray Bradbury, Octavia E. Butler, James Tiptree, Jr., and Patricia A. McKillip?

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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On the AP wire today (seen here in its USA Today incarnation) is yet another story about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; this time, the news is that the book's US publisher (Scholastic) is joining the Canadian and UK publishers (Raincoast and Bloomsbury, respectively) in accepting tightened environmental standards, including a minimum of 30% post-consumer waste, in their edition.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Scalzi has put the first chapter of his novel The Android's Dream (the infamous "chapter-long fart joke") up on his blog in honor of the anniversary of the day Coca-Cola was first sold in bottles.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had an article yesterday about the recent boom in book-buying by teens -- up 25% from 1999 to 2005, by one measure. What's selling? "Fantasy and graphic novels are especially hot" -- and, of course, most of those graphic novels have fantasy elements.

So are these kids going to pour into the adult SFF world over the next few years? (Or are they already here?) And is there any chance for a similar boom in science fiction for teenagers? (Yes, I know Scott Westerfeld's very popular -- and doing great stuff -- but he can't carry the field all by himself...)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The BBC reports that South Korea is working on a Robot Ethics Charter, with standards for users and manufacturers, which should be released later this year. South Korea, says the BBC, is one of the world's most high-tech societies, and their Ministry of Infomation and Communication predicts that every South Korean household will have at least one robot by 2020.

[via SF Scope]

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Neil Gaiman's blog mentioned that the famed Minneapolis bookstore Dream Haven Books recently had a nasty break-in, which led not only to theft, but quite a bit of destruction.

Gaiman is asking people to help Dream Haven out by buying something from them, which is certainly a nice idea. (I'd personally prefer if it were something that you couldn't get from the SFBC, but, either way, it's good. We're all buying books anyway, right? So buy one from them instead of from that big Internet retailer that sounds like a river...I name no names...)

Update, five minutes later: I should also mention the problems of Pandemonium Books (of Boston), which is selling T-shirts to try to stay in business, and Clarkesworld Books (a virtual store in my own amazing home state of New Jersey), which is shutting down, since the proprietor needs the space for a new baby. They're also worthy of your book dollar. (I'll probably buy something from Pandemonium myself while I'm at Boskone this weekend.)

Update, 3/5: Pandemonium's problems (and its T-shirt solution) were the subject of a Boston Globe article over the weekend.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a switch-about from the last time the question was asked (the BBC's "Big Read" competition a few years back), Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice had edged out J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as the favorite book of the British. As The Telegraph reports, the new survey asked UK readers to list ten books they "couldn't live without."

Also on the list: the Harry Potter books at #4, Nineteen Eighty-Four at #8, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy also at #8 (that's an interesting tie), and The Hobbit at #16.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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SF Signal points me to a website called Free Speculative Fiction Online, which offers...surely you folks can work that out for yourselves? FSFO has stories from writers as diverse as Ted Chiang, Murray Leinster, Stephen R. Donaldson, and H. Beam Piper. Plus, y'know, it's free.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Infinity Plus has posted an excerpt of Martin Sketchley's novel The Liberty Gun and an excerpt of Gail Z. Martin's novel The Summoner.

Shaun Farrell (of Adventures in SciFi Publishing) is podcasting Paul Levinson's novel The Silk Code, in several installments, for free. (OK, so this is actually something to listen to for free, but it's close.)

Small Beer Press has put up an excerpt of Elizabeth Hand's upcoming novel Generation Loss on their website.

John Joseph Adams provides links to the F&SF stories on this year's Preliminary Nebula Ballot, all of which are free for the reading.

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

There's an article in People's Daily Online which I think essentially means that the Chinese government is trying to encourage the writing and reading of SF as a way to increase scientific literacy and continue the country's development.

I know Chinese publications sometimes translate Western SF, since John Scalzi recently posted his Chinese Old Man's War cover. So this may be good news to anyone with an agent with contacts in China...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The website for Tor & Forge Books (the former of which is by far the biggest publisher of SF and Fantasy in the USA) has gotten a long-needed overhaul. (In certain corners of the Internet, complaining about Tor's website was a beloved fireside tradition.)

Marvel at the new design here.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Independent newspaper (in the UK), having aparrently nothing better to do, has declared that "horror is set to be one of the coolest literary trends of 2007."

(I'm not entirely sure that would be a good thing, even if it does happen.)

Anyway, in the article, Danuta Kean singles out a few books for praise, such as Joe Hill's debut novel Heart-Shaped Box and Dan Simmons's historical chiller The Terror. There is some solid reporting in there, after you wade through the breathless hype and trend-spotting. And maybe horror will be The Next Big Thing -- who knows? (But never forget: if you're fashonable this year, there's only one thing you can be next year, and that's out of fashion.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Locus magazine's February issue, with its impressively thorough look at the previous year in SFF publishing, is in the mail now. And up on the Locus Online website, taken from that issue, is their fabled (and absolutely enormous) 2006 Recommended Reading List.

They list:

• 21 SF novels (including Jo Walton's Farthing, Peter Watts's Blindsight, and Charles Stross's Glasshouse),
• 20 Fantasy novels (including Robin Hobb's Forest Mage, Greg Keyes's The Blood Knight, and Tim Powers's Three Days To Never),
• 12 first novels (including several favorites of mine: Naomi Novik's Temeraire, Alan Campbell's Scar Night, and, above all, Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora),
• 11 YA books (including Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith),
• 30 collections (including Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things twice, and Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu only once),
• 25 anthologies (including the SFBC originals Escape From Earth, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, and One Million A.D., edited by Dozois solo),
• 13 non-fiction books (including, of course, Julie Phillips's amazing biography James Tiptree, Jr.)
• and 14 art books (including The Fabulous Women of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell and Edward Gorey's Amphigorey Again).

For those of you who ran out of fingers a while ago, that's one hundred and forty-six books (let's leave aside the short fiction for now). Even if you read a book every day (like I just finished doing), and started today, you would be finish up on June 27th. And most of us (even me, honestly: I cheated quite a bit) , don't read that quickly.

So I don't want to hear anyone say that there's nothing good to read...

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