Archive for June, 2006

STRONG MEDICINE: June 2006

The latest installment of my book review column, STRONG MEDICINE: Books That Cures What Ails You, has just been published at Intergalactic Medicine Show.

In this column, I review Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, and Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies, and Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan (on audio).

[Excerpt:] Before listening to Altered Carbon on audio, I’d never been much impressed with Tantor’s audio efforts. I’d listened to a few of their other titles and was consistently disappointed. When I initially heard that Tantor had acquired the audio rights to Morgan’s books, I inwardly groaned, but I looked forward to re-reading them, so I anticipated to the audio release nonetheless, albeit with a sizeable dollop of trepidation. So when I first listened to Altered Carbon, I was surprised and delighted, and thought that I could now expect a higher level of quality out of Tantor’s future titles. But if the first three Richard K. Morgan audiobooks were five steps forward for Tantor, Woken Furies seems like six steps back.

Go read the review and then come back and tell me how awesome it is.

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Giving Up

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend in cover letters. A lot of writers seem to be growing discouraged after a few rejections and think that they should give up submitting stories to F&SF, or they think that they’re wasting our time.

And now in the gender debate over on Charlie Finlay’s blog, I see people saying that a lot of the women writers they know have given up sending stories to F&SF completely, because of a perceived gender bias.

The question I’d ask to both of these groups is: how are you ever going to crack a market if you quit submitting stories to it?

I can understand becoming frustrated after being continually rejected, but keep in mind too that F&SF’s response times allow us to evaluate more submissions during any given time frame than most other magazines. So, for example, say you submit a story to F&SF every time you finish one (provided there’s not already one there). You could send us four stories, and theoretically all four could be bounced back in the span of a single month. Whereas if you’d submitted those same four stories to say, Asimov’s, you probably wouldn’t get all four back for four months or more. So I wonder if people perceive F&SF as being harsher than other magazines, or that we inspire this “give up” impulse primarily because we stay on top of our slush.

To the women who say we don’t publish enough women writers, I say that the way to change that certainly isn’t by refusing to send us your stories. How is that going to help? Is it not worth a week of your story’s time to take the chance?

And to the other writers who have become discouraged: sending us stories does not annoy us. Just because what you’ve written thus far hasn’t clicked, the next thing you send in might.

If you don’t even send us your stories, then the only person you can blame for your story not being published in F&SF is yourself.

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Publishers Weekly Looking for Reviewers

Publishers Weekly, the international news magazine of book publishing and bookselling, seeks book reviewers
with expertise in the following categories of fiction:

Historical Romance
Romantic Suspense
African-American Commercial Fiction
Street Lit
Chick Lit
Family sagas

Please send a short e-mail query that states qualifications and any relevant publications. Please paste your resume
at the bottom of the message.

The e-mail address is: pwreviewers@reedbusiness.com

Do not attach anything. Messages with attachments will be deleted.

Via craigslist

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Comments Now Moderated

By the way, I’ve taken to moderating the comments because I’m being deluged with spam. So don’t panic if your comment doesn’t appear immediately; I’ll see it right away, then approve it when I get a chance. Eventually, I’ll make a note in the comment area, but it’ll have to wait until I’m feeling more industrious.

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Interview: James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel

Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, which is focused on the release of their new slipstream anthology, Feeling Very Strange. This one’s a full-length Q&A, not one of the short pieces I do for SCI FI Wire.

Here’s an excerpt:

Kessel: I’ve been interested in fiction that bends the genres for a long time, and have tried some of it myself. Ever since Bruce Sterling’s essay of 1989 gave a new name to such fiction, I’ve wondered if it might become a recognizable form. One thing that I wanted to do in the anthology was show some of the writers not normally associated with SF or fantasy who are writing this kind of work. By putting some of their stories next to ones from writers normally associated with genre fiction, like Howard Waldrop and Ted Chiang, I hope that we can see more clearly what slipstream fiction might be. Although part of me objects to trying to take the magic these writers practice and turn it into a mundane genre, another part of me would not mind seeing a “Slipstream” shelf in every bookstore. We could debate which books belong on it and which should absolutely not be allowed to sully it.

Go read it, then come back and tell me how awesome it is.

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Camera Obscura: Do Koreans Dream of Electric Sheep?

Intergalactic Medicine Show just published the latest installment of my TV/DVD review column, Camera Obscura. This time around, I review the DVD of Natural City, a Korean SF film in the vein of Blade Runner.

[Excerpt:] Director Byung-chun Min says that Natural City was his attempt to make the first great Korean SF film. He didn’t quite succeed in that lofty ambition, but he did come damn close; the film does have great directing, acting, cinematography, and special effects. Alas, the only thing it’s lacking is a great, or even totally coherent, plot.

 

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