(courtesy of Thalys wifi link)
Graph of SF themes in TV, over time. Fascinating stuff.
Via Karen Meisner: Fantastical Wildife, the Child Empress of Mars. Amazingly detailed figure, which will be donated to the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s upcoming auction.
How not to hijack a ship: Somalian pirates mistake French flagship for cargo vessel. Uh-uh, not a good idea…
12 stories do not a collection make: Marty Halpern reflects on putting together an Alastair Reynolds collection.
Time for Villa Diodati again: starting from tomorrow, I will be sharing a house with Sara Genge, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Stephen Gaskell, Ruth Nestvold, Jeff Spock, and Deanna Carlyle
(and Floris Kleijne, albeit briefly, as Floris is currently awaiting the birth of his first child and can’t make the whole weekend). As usual, we will eat like princes, share gossip and learn from each other.
However, the house does not come with an internet connection, so expect to see very little of me on the web until Monday (there might be a brief interval of connectivity while I’m in the Thalys, as they have wifi). Blog’s going dark again.
Meanwhile, if you happen to be anywhere near London on Saturday, my publisher Angry Robot is having their UK launch party at Forbidden Planet from 12:30 onwards. Authors like Colin Harvey, Dan Abnett and Andy Remic will be there to sign books and answer questions (the AR crew will be there too, as well).
(I only found out about this after VD was already booked, otherwise I would have had to think long and hard which of the two events I was going to…)
We’ve had this brewing for a while, and now it’s gone live: Dario Cirielllo (who, in addition to being a good friend, is also the founder of my writing group Written in Blood and the editor and owner of Panverse Publishing) has interviewed me at IROSF. Check it out:
Hum, it would seem to be plug day…
Check out the trailer of Stephanie Burgis‘s upcoming A Most Improper Magic:
Stephanie is holding a competition with a Regency pack as the main prize (and “Everything’s better with highwaymen!” buttons). Check the rules here!
You know that feeling you have when you’ve finally figured out what the %% was wrong with your reasoning and things seem to come together, all of a sudden?
That’s when I remember why I like being an engineer. Today I finally figured our why something wasn’t working in my algorithms, and finally got to see results, and they were shiiinnyyyy…
(of course, it’s only a matter of time until some other problem comes along, but the rush of adrenaline when you solve stuff is kind of addictive)
Big congratulations to Written in Blood crit buddy Janice Hardy, whose middle-grade novel The Shifter has been released today!
Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. She is also a Taker—with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healers’ League apprentices, Nya’s skill is flawed: She can’t push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she’d be used as a human weapon against her own people.
Rumors of another war make Nya’s life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she’s faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price; but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?
The book is also featured over at John Scalzi’s blog at The Big Idea, where she talks about the genesis of the novel and of how to salvage bad ideas. Go check it out (and buy your copy if you’re lucky enough to be in the US. Me, I’ll have to wait until amazon ships mine…)
You can go over to Janice’s series blog if you want more information; or to her writing blog, where she has regular posts about writing, rewriting, editing and the publishing process.
The fried spring rolls I made Saturday afternoon are still sitting in the fridge (I always forget that the recipe I have makes for 30-35 pieces, ie enough for at least 3 meals…). ’tis a good thing, for I’m feeling pretty lazy tonight.
Well, “lazy” is relative, of course. I have something to prepare for:
It’s a little blurry, but this farmhouse in Putten is where we’re going to be spending the Fifth Villa Diodati workshop this weekend (see a larger version here). As usual, much writing, discussing and cooking will be done.
Now I’m off to read stories for the workshop 🙂
In the tradition of SF Signal‘s Mind Melds, the World SF blog is hosting a series of round tables by authors. The first topic, “On environment and background”, just went up, with answers from fellow AR author Kaaron Warren, fellow Shimmer author Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Vandana Singh and me. Thank to Lavie Tidhar and Charles Tan for starting this!
It would seem my short story “The Dancer’s Gift”, my story published in the Spring 2008 issue of Fictitious Force and repackaged as part of my short fiction sampler for the Campbell, has garnered an Honorable Mention on the long-list Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year from Nightshade (there’s a shorter list of 50 HM that’s in the book and that I didn’t make).
Er. Wow. The full list can be found here. It includes Patrick Samphire, Angela Slatter (who’s got a whole host), Sarah L. Edwards, Colin Harvey, J. Kathleen Cheney, Gord Sellar, Lavie Tidhar, Cat Rambo, John Brown, Mary Robinette Kowal, Lon Prater, James Maxey, Maura McHugh and Elizabeth Bear. (hopefully I didn’t miss anybody)
Today is Support Our Zines Day. In the words of its founder, Damien G Walter:
Our ‘zines need support. Professional ‘zines rely on subscriptions to pay their staff and the writers who make the stories. Smaller ‘zines often rely on donations just to cover their costs. But with the speed of life in the 21st Century it can be difficult to remember to renew subsciptions or make donations to the ‘zines who’s work we enjoy.
So. We need to do something to remind ourselves how much we love our ‘zines of all kinds and want to support them. We need a ‘Support our ‘Zines Day’. (SOZD) A day when everyone who has enjoyed reading and listening all year subscribes / donates to their favourite publications. We need to promote it as far and wide as we can and let all readers of ‘zines join in.
I was going to make a list of ‘zines, but I realised this would be, er, long and that I was bound to forget someone. Instead, here’s a couple of stories I enjoyed recently:
