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SF Signal on Wastelands: "More entertaining than the average ‘Best of’ annual anthology."

John over at the great SF Signal blog posted a glowing (four-out-of-five stars) review of Wastelands. Here’s a snippet:

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse offers a great selection of end-of-the-world stories proving that stories in a single setting (or a single subgenre of science fiction) need not be similar. While the prevailing theme, as would be expected, is one of hope, the stories are presented with unique focus and voice. But the mood is as dark as it should be with such serious subject matter. With rare exception (Neal Barrett, Jr.’s comical "Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus") these stories are gloomy indeed. But isn’t that the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction after all?

John Joseph Adams has culled a great selection of stories here dating back to 1973, with more than half of those written in the last seven years. […] In then end, Wastelands proved to be more entertaining than the average yearly "Best of".

One of the thing I like so much about SF Signal’s reviews is the fact that when they cover an anthology, they review each and every story. That’s the case here as well–John provides mini-reviews of each tale, along with a star-rating for each. So go check out the full review, and add SF Signal to your RSS feed-reader.

SCI FI Wire | Bear And Monette Birthed Wolves

(tags: SCIFI)

Viable Scalzi

Over at The Whatever, John Scalzi points out that he’s teaching Viable Paradise this year. Apply now!

The Real Dr. Strangelove

The other day, I came across a link to a review in the New York Times in Google Reader, with the title "Sci-Fi Dream Turns World’s Worst Nightmare," and I initially thought it might be a review of Wastelands, so I hurried over to look. It was not, alas. Instead, it was a review of Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith, an historical account of "the gripping, untold story of the doomsday bomb—the ultimate weapon of mass destruction." The review is kind of down on the book, but it sounds interesting to me. Anyone read it yet?

Wastelands!

Wastelands has arrived! Isn’t it beautiful? Here it is in the box it arrived in.

And here’s a shot of the back cover, which until now I hadn’t seen. It is just me, or does the back cover image look like the cover image turned upside down? Think that’s supposed to suggest the "world being turned upside down" sort of effect of an apocalypse?

If any contributors are reading this, that means you’ll have yours soon too. Yay!

Fire Aftermath

Here’s a shot of the aftermath of that fire I posted about yesterday. Here’s a news article about it, along with another photo.

Apparently, a faulty furnace may have been the cause of the blaze. Which is kind of scary–I just had a similar incident with the furnace for the upstairs apartment of my house (it’s a two family house, divided into upstairs and downstairs apartments). The other day, something in the furnace blew, and it was overheating, and smoke was billowing out of the attic. I’m not sure what the actual cause of the smoke was, but it went up through the walls until it reached the attic, then came down into the house from there. The fire department came to inspect the problem; at the time when the smoke was first detected, I didn’t know what the cause of it was, so it could have been an actual fire for all I knew.

Luckily for me, it turned out to be not that big a deal (though it’ll be pricey to replace the furnace). Actually, it’s damn lucky. Obviously, losing your home to a fire is a big deal no matte what, but this happened a few days before my grandfather passed away. Well, if the house had burned down while he was still living, I might have lost everything. Why? The veteran’s home where he was staying had some claim on the house, but if I lived here and didn’t sell the house, it would remain in my possession–it’s some kind of caregiver provision (because I’d taken care of him for several years before he had to go to the home). So I’m not sure if I would have been screwed out of everything had the house burned down. There would be insurance money, but the vet’s home might have claimed it. I’m glad I don’t have to find out.

What you can’t tell from the photo below is that there were three whole businesses there. There was the pizza place, a Chinese restaurant, and a bodega (with an apartment upstairs). Truth be told, I don’t think the pizza place is any great loss (though I feel for the owners and employees), but I was rather fond of the Chinese place, even if they did frequently get my order wrong. (Schezuan Chicken not sweet & sour chicken!) I have no real opinion about the bodega, though the place seemed to be cursed even before this–it’s been a revolving door of owners for the past couple years, and I’d never even made it into this latest incarnation. (Last time I went in there, no one working there spoke English.)

You know what I find amazing, though? Look at that building on the left side of the photo. That house appears to be completely unscathed! Nice work, PAFD! The gas station, which I mentioned the other day, is further to the left of the house, so it looks like it was never in any real danger.

Test Your Flash Gordon Knowledge

I was just updating my articles page to add a link to the "Speculative Fiction: The Next Generation" piece, and I decided to dig up the links to the Flash Gordon quizzes of mine SCIFI.com published. They’re about the historical iterations of Flash Gordon, not the craptastic new version that’s running on SCI FI. (Actually, all of the iterations were pretty craptastic.) If you want to check them out, here are the links:

Article: Speculative Fiction: The Next Generation

The golden age of science fiction is said to be thirteen–that magical age at which readers discover and fall in love with the genre. But while some of those thirteen year olds become life-long readers, others don’t just want to read it–they want to write it too.

So what drives people to create rather than just consume? And why is it that so many young people with said creative impulse wind up becoming fans of—and, subsequently, creators of—science fiction, fantasy, and horror instead of other genres?

(more…)

Still Life with Writer Post-Deadline

That whooshing sound you just heard might have been the huge sigh of relief I just let out after finishing the last of my three articles for the 2009 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market. I had like six months to write these things; why did I have to wait until the last two weeks of December to even start trying to work on them? Note I say trying; work in earnest didn’t really begin until three days ago. And here I am finishing up right at the deadline.

If you’re interested, the three articles are:

21 Blogs Writers Should Be Reading
Beyond the Guidelines: 25 Ways You Might Be Annoying Editors and Not Even Know It
SF/Fantasy Editorial Roundtable with Gordon Van Gelder, Sheila Williams, & Susan Marie Groppi

The titles are subject to change, but the ones I have there pretty much let you know what the articles are about, so no further description is necessary, I reckon. You’ll have to wait at least until August to read them in print. And I’ll attempt to sell them elsewhere as reprints, but if no one wants to reprint them, I’m sure they’ll end up here on my blog. Meanwhile, enjoy my article "Speculative Fiction: The Next Generation," which I wrote for the Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2008.

SCI FI Wire Roundup

SCI FI Wire print news thru December 31, 2007:

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