I just discovered, quite by accident, that the awesome punk band Rise Against has a new album coming out, appropriately, on July 4. But to hear it you don’t have to wait until then–you can go listen to the whole thing on MySpace right now.
I’ll be attending Readercon this year, which is held July 7-9 at the Burlington Mariott, Burlington, Massachusetts.
The programming was announced today. I’m only scheduled for one panel, but I still get in for free, so I have no problem with that. Here’s my panel description:
Sat 12:00 F Everybody Dies
Adams, Disch, Hanger (+M), Lewitt, Meacham, Morrow
There’s a small body of fiction in which all of humanity (or at least every character in the story) dies or is fated to die (Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, James Morrow’s This Is the Way the World Ends), or will die without producing children (Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End). These stories are dramatically different from the much more common tales in which almost everybody dies. What kinds of things can be said in these stories that can’t be said in their less grim cousins?
What about all of you readers out there? Anyone else going? Readercon rules, so if it’s possible for you to make it, you should register now.
I was just attempting to fill out my World Fantasy Award nomination ballot (which must be postmarked by June 30) and I came across two categories that stumped me: anthology and special award non-professional.
There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of fantasy anthologies published last year to choose from, and for the non-professional category, I’m not sure who or what qualifies for that anymore. In the past, I would have nominated small presses like Night Shade Books, Prime, Subterranean, or PS Publishing, but they’ve all graduated to the professional category. I’m not sure who’s left.
So, any suggestions on who to nominate in those categories?
SCI FI Wire just published a piece I wrote about Paul Park’s recent Sidewise Award nomination for his novel, A Princess of Roumania.
Intergalactic Medicine Show just published the latest installment of my column, Camera Obscura, in which I review the pilot episode of Blade: The Series, which debuts on Spike TV on June 28.
[Excerpt:] Blade: The Series debuts with an entertaining, action-packed episode, one that will likely please fans of the movies and of ass-kicking vampires in general. All in all, it was fun if middling entertainment, but despite its flaws it did succeed in making me want to watch the next few episodes, which is the ultimate goal of any pilot. And it’s far-and-away better than Blade II, though, of course, that’s not saying much.
SCI FI Wire just published a piece I wrote about Joe Hill’s three International Horror Guild nominations.
New group-blog, DeepGenre, is offering a free critiquing service to authors:
Back in the days of the late, lamented GEnie online service, Damon Knight opened a topic in which people could post the first thirteen lines of a story they had written, and he would critique it. When we were planning this blog site, I thought it would be a nice tribute to his memory to do the same in this new site. We will be polite about your work here, but we are not cheerleaders. Speaking just for myself, Katharine Kerr, I can be quite fierce about bad prose.
I take it at least one of the DeepGenre contributors will comment on the piece, though more than one may do so. Also, the crits are open to reader comments, so you can receive commentary there as well.
Meme Therapy is a fairly new blog which I’ve been quite impressed with; they’ve been interviewing a slew of SF writers and other smart people. What they do is, they do a regular, personal-type interview with the subject, but then also ask a series of questions which are published together with the responses from other subjects, in a feature they call “Brain Parade,” which is basically smart people giving their opinions on a particular subject.
Despite the fact that heretofore all their subjects had been talented and intelligent people, Meme Therapy interviewed me recently to get my views on some topics as well. The first of my contributions is available in the “Technological Alienation” Brain Parade (scroll down a little more than halfway down the page). I answered a few other Brain Parade questions, which will be published in short order, I imagine, and the Q&A interview with me should be up within a week or so, or so I’m told.
KGB was a blast this month. Theodora Goss and Tobias S. Buckell read. Dora read two stories, one about an author of fairy tales (and her daughter), the other about a woman who marries a bear (which was quite amusing). There she is in the photo, proudly displaying her short story collection, In the Forest of Forgetting.
Toby read his short-short, “Toy Planes,” which appeared in the science journal Nature and was reprinted in Year’s Best SF 11. Since that was quite short, the audience demanded more, and so Toby read an extract from chapter 12 of his most excellent novel Crystal Rain, which if you haven’t read already, you should go to the bookstore immediately and pick up a copy.
It’s always great to see Toby, so that was cool, and this time at KGB it seems like I got to chat with lots of different people, or more than usual at any rate. I met a few new writers, saw Balticon companions Devin Poore and Mercurio Rivera, chatted with Tempest about the F&SF gender-bias kerfluffle. After the readings were over, I spent some time chatting with Liz Gorinsky, and she introduced me to her editorial compatriot Anna-Louise Genoese whose blog I’d read but hadn’t met. So absorbed were we in our conversation that we were among the last to leave KGB as we all departed en masse for the Chinese food after-dinner. En route, we discussed, among other things, heavy metal, and Anna-Louise admitted to a deep and abiding love for the band Bon Jovi (it remains unknown whether her love extends to the man himself). Liz mentioned a rather cool-sounding documentary called Paradise Lost, which is about some metalhead kids who were arrested for murder (but it sounds like they were persecuted–or prosecuted, as it were–for their love of metal, not because of evidence).
At dinner, Doug Cohen and I did some editorial brainstorming, with interesting results. My posse and I also presented Chris Cevasco with a going-away-to-Clarion gift. What it is shall remain a secret until he unveils it at Clarion, at which point all will be revealed (and I think most of my readers will appreciate it). Also, we ate, and it was good.
After dinner, we all wandered outside and chatted for a while, before several of us began peeling away from the group to head for home. But a few remaining stalwarts, me included, adjourned to a bar across the street for more socialization. This group included me, Liz, Tempest, Helen Pilinovsky, Eugene Myers, James Trimarco, and another young lady whose name I don’t remember (whose age I guessed to be 25, after being instructed to always guess 25 when guessing a woman’s age). Not a lot of drinking went on, but scholarly debate ensued as we debated, among other things, racism in Stargate and other shows on the SCI FI Channel.
Around midnight we called it a night, and wandered off together toward our trains. Along the way, the ladies started listing hot geeks, starting with names such as Cory Doctorow and China Mieville. I commented on this to Eugene, who mollified my crushed ego by assuring me that they’d get to me eventually. It took some time, but as our paths diverged (me toward the PATH, they toward the subway), I received my hot geek props, and hugs all around to boot. Not a bad way to end an evening.
