It might seem rather odd to choose, as your specialist subject on Mastermind, that which is unthinkable, unknowable, unnameable and unspeakable. Congratulations, therefore, to Laura Campbell for doing quite well on The Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. Sadly the question setters did not require John Humprys to pronounce Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep.
Science Fiction
Picacio does Elric
Still in catch-up mode from the weekend, some fascinating news via Chris Roberson. Del Rey is producing a new series of Elric trade paperbacks that will be illustrated by John Picacio. I want.
Bay Area Events
In the “I’m almost back” category, here are a few up-coming events.
– Lisa Goldstein is one of the guests at Writers with Drinks this coming Saturday (21st)
– The next SF in SF reading will feature Richard Kadrey and Adam Cornford: 7:00pm at New College Valencia Theater, 777 Valencia St., Thursday, October 26. Given that I’ll only have been back a day, I might not make this one.
– And Jed Hartman has a useful list of up-coming events at Borderlands.
Pining for the Golden Age
It has been one of those weeks for furious discussion on the Internet. Lou Anders’ post, which I linked to a couple of days ago, prompted a lot of response including a long piece from Ian McDonald, more commentary from Fiona Avery, and a new post by Lou.
This being the Internet, discussion has quickly moved on from the original topic of movie reviews onto much more “religious†topics (“tie-in novels, threat or menaceâ€, and so on). But the core of the discussion is Ian’s assault on an article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch in Asimov’s
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Well Said Sir!
Lou Anders manages to stand up for the right to write intelligent reviews and the right for science fiction to be subversive in the same post. (And yes, of course the two are connected, because the people who attack you for writing intelligent reviews are often the same people who want to pretend that the work you are reviewing is “just entertainment” and has no political subtext.)
Get Ye Writing, Arrrr!
Captain Jeffrey “Blackheart” VanderMeer and his villainous cohorts have released the terms under which authors may in future be allowed to sail the seven genres without risk of being raped, pillaged, boarded, plundered, keelhauled, hung from the yard arm and fed to Great Freshwater Squid by the aforementioned piratical hordes. To ensure your literary safety you need only submit stories in the range of 3,000 to 10,000 words to Captain VanderMeer’s forthcoming parrotical, er, piratical anthology. Backsliders and lilly-livered land-lubbers, not to mention anyone guilty of commiting formula fantasy featuring cute dragons and cats with wings, will become squid food in short order.
Me, I’m waiting on a Naomi Novik “Temeraire and the Pirates” story.
Moorcock Peakes
Today’s Independent has a long piece by Michael Moorcock on Mervyn Peake. If it reads oddly it is because (as they tell you at the end) it is an abridged version of Moorcock’s introduction to a new book, Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art compiled by Sebastian Peake and Alison Eldred, edited by Peter Winnington. Once you know that the article makes a lot more sense, and it may well leave you wanting more. Which makes it a shame that the book is so expensive. Possible Winington’s own book, The Voice of the Heart: The Working of Mervyn Peake’s Imagination, which Liverpool University Press has available in paperback, would be a better bet.
Clute on Ford
I try not to do obituaries. I’m hopeless at them. John Clute, on the other hand, is very good. Here he is in The Independent talking about the late and much missed John M. Ford.
Waterstones Launches New Web Site
Slowly but surely the UK’s retail sector is catching on to the Internet. Instead of whining about losing sales to Amazon, Waterstones have finally launched their own web site. (Yes, they did have one before, it was outsourced to Amazon, to whom they claimed to be losing sales hand over, oh never mind.) The new site looks quite good. SF/F/H has its own section, but then so do Crime and Romance so we are not being picked on. There’s not a lot in the way of non-sales content, but they do have a “best SF” page with a fascinatingly ecclectic collection of books on it. Talking of odd mixes, there’s a an “Award winners” page, that includes the Clarke and the Hugo but not the BSFA or World Fantasy, includes the Stoker but not the IHG.
Still, the important point is that they will ship overseas, so US readers who currently buy from Amazon UK might want to do some comparison shopping. Ditto those of us who live in Darkest Somerset and need to visit other towns to find a Waterstones.
By the way, those of you with an interest in online retailing might like to check out this Guardian article which has a brief section describing how various major UK retailers are doing.
Sunburst Award
Some excellent news from Peter Halasz: this year’s Sunburst Award has been won by In the Palace of Repose by Holly Phillips. Am I happy or what?
Continued Goodies
I’m still getting the odd few books through from publishers who either haven’t got the message about Emerald City folding or whose mail room isn’t on the ball. I’m not complaining, because I now have a review copy of Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu. I will add that to the list of books to cover in the post-ultimate issue.
(And no, this does not mean that if people keep sending me books I’ll keep putting out issues.)
British Fantasy Awards
So, we have winners. Someone else has probably posted these already, but they are not yet up on the BFS site and Ariel doesn’t have them either, so here goes…
(Almost) Over
The official final issue of Emerald City is now online, although as I’ve been pointing out I will need a special undead issue to fulfill a few final obligations.
Footsore
I spent much of the day out shopping in London. There has, after all, been fabulous weather all day. Most un-London-like. I spent far too much money on music, but as I averaged less than $8 per CD I’m not feeling too guilty. It is all the fault of Fopp, the world’s most dangerous record store.
More about all of that lot later. For now I’ll just note that i did manage to find a copy of Michel Houellebecq’s H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Having had no luck in the Lit Crit section of Borders, I finally found it in Horror, shelved under L for Lovecraft rather than H for Houellebecq. I guess that’s where the Lovecraft fans will be most likely to find it. But don’t go looking because I bought the last copy.
UK TV Alert
Just in case there’s anyone in the UK reading this, tonight’s Mastermind (8:00pm, BBC2) features a contestant whose specialist subject is “the Sandman Graphic Novels of Neil Gaiman.”
Update: I was hopeless. Sorry Neil.
The chap did quite well though. 28 points overall is often enough to win, but he was up against someone really good.
It all went by in a bit of a blur, but I seem to remember a question to which the answer was, “Emperor of the United States” (and presumably Protector of Mexico as well, but you can’t expect John Humphrys to know everything).
Bay Area Readings
I’m not going to make a habit of putting up notices about readings here. However, as a large proportion of my readership is in the San Francisco Bay Area it seemed useful to let them know of stuff that is close to home. I’ll probably do this about once a month.
Yay Chris!
Always nice to see one’s friends to well. Today I got a press release from Solaris saying that they have bought two Chris Roberson novels. One is a Hieronymous Bonaventure story, the other is set in the Chinese-dominated future of the story “O One”.
So, well done Chris, but please don’t get so successful as a writer that you don’t have time to publish those fabulous MonkeyBrain books.
Little Big 25 is Go
Excellent news from John Crowley. The 25th Anniversary edition of Little Big has attracted sufficient advance orders to make the project viable. This sort of collectable book is way out of my price range, but those who do buy the book will not only get Crowley’s wonderful words, but some fabulous artwork by Peter Milton too.
Ler Omnibus Released
Penguin are still sending me books. Their PR people say it takes a while for the message to percolate through the system. Yesterday, Kevin says, we got a copy of an omnibus edition of M.A. Foster’s Ler trilogy. That’s the set that includes The Gameplayers of Zan. As I recall (and it was a long time ago I read them) those were rather good books. Anyone else remember them?
Chinese SF
Via Jay Lake I discover that Seed Magazine has an interesting article on Chinese science fiction. It mentions the Chengdu conference as well.