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Showing posts with the label Announcements

Help Writers Decorate Their Hovels! Buy E-Books!

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The only e-book device I have other than my laptop is an iPod Touch, and neither the laptop nor the iPod is anything I want to read an entire book on (reading on the iPod is only slightly more comfortable than reading the The Compact OED through a magnifying glass), but I very much like the idea of e-books, even if I don't read them, and one of these days perhaps I'll break down and get one of them there gadgets that's designed for the durn things.

Anyway, as a public service announcement, here are some recent e-book announcements that piqued my interest:

Minister Faust's new novel, The Alchemists of Kush, is now available for $2.99, and it broke the Amazon Top 1,000 on its first day, which moves it closer to reaching the goal of breaking the Top 100, at which time Minister Faust will donate $500 to send textbooks to university students in South Sudan. For more info, check out this interview of Mr. Faust by Jeff VanderMeer.

Speaking of Jeff VanderMeer, he and his wife…
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Paris Review 197

The latest issue of The Paris Review includes not only fiction by Jonathan Lethem, Roberto Bolaño, David Gates, and Amie Barrodale along with poetry by, among others, Frederick Seidel and Cathy Park Hong, but it also includes interviews with Samuel R. Delany and William Gibson.

An excerpt to whet your appetite:

DELANY Gide says somewhere that art and crime both require leisure time to flourish. I spend a lot of time thinking, if not daydreaming. People think of me as a genre writer, and a genre writer is supposed to be prolific. Since that's how people perceive me, they have to say I'm prolific. But I don't find that either complimentary or accurate.
INTERVIEWER Do you think of yourself as a genre writer?
DELANY I think of myself as someone who thinks largely through writing. Thus I write more than most people, and I write in many different forms. I think of myself as the kind of person who writes, rather than as one kind of writer or another. That's about the cloest I…
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Readercon Schedule

I just got my schedule for Readercon events, so for folks attending, here's a preview of some of the fun (updated July 6):

Friday July 15 
11:00 AM   The Readercon Classic Nonfiction Book Club: The Jewel-Hinged Jaw.
Matthew Cheney, Elizabeth Hand (leader), David G. Hartwell, Barry N. Malzberg, Chris Moriarty.
Matthew Cheney's introduction to the most recent edition of Samuel R. Delany's The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (Wesleyan University Press, 2009) makes the case for the importance of this critical work: "Since 1977, when The Jewel-Hinged Jaw appeared, it has been impossible for anyone writing seriously about the nature and purpose of science fiction to ignore the ideas of Samuel Delany. Disagree with them, yes. Take a different approach, certainly. But the ideas first expressed in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and then refined and reiterated and revised in numerous other books [including his novels] are ideas that have so powerfully affected how science fiction has been discussed sinc…
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Elsewhere

I've got a couple of new pieces elsewhere:

At Tor.com, "Mr. Modesitt & Me", a personal essay in honor of the 20th anniversary of L.E. Modesitt'sThe Magic of Recluce. An interview I did with Lee for the anniversary will be posted later this week.

And after a week's break, I'm back with a new Sandman Meditations column (the 41st!), this one on "Parliament of Rooks".

Also, I'm not the only one writing an issue-by-issue chronicle of The Sandman -- fellow Caine Prize blogger The Oncoming Hope is doing so as well. Check it out!
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Readercon is Just Around the Corner, And...

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I was honored to be asked to join the programming committee for Readercon this year. Over the past 6 months or so, the committee, led brilliantly by Rose Fox, has come up with what will be, I think, a really interesting and diverse set of panels, discussions, talks, and readings. I just took a look at the items that will be heading out soon to participants for sign-up, and it's really satisfying to see where all of our discussions, brainstorming, and crazy ideas have led. Since Readercon is the only convention I attend regularly, it's fun to have the opportunity to help shape it a little bit. I just threw some ideas out there and wrote some descriptions of panels; the real work is being done by others, who are astoundingly dedicated and smart.

I'm noting Readercon here first to remind you (yes, you!) that it would be nice to see you there (July 14-17, Burlington, Massachusetts), and also to note that Readercon now supports Con or Bust, a project of the Carl Brandon Societ…
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And We're Back

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Blogger, the service I use for this here blog, had a 20+ hour outage, and posts from May 12 disappeared for a while, which meant that shortly after I posted it, my interview with Maria Headley went away. (We could, I suppose, blame the outage on Egyptian gods angry with Maria for revealing their secrets...)

It took a while for everything to get back to normal, and I had to republish the post a couple of times to get the labels and date right again (apologies to anybody reading via RSS who felt like the post was stalking them). But all seems well now.

I've been using Blogger since 2003, and this is the biggest glitch I've encountered with it. There are certainly things I would change were I a programming genius who worked for the company, but as free services go, it's pretty great. I've used a few other blogging platforms for other projects, but among the free options, I've never found anything with the same kind of flexibility I'm looking for. And heck, anybody…
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In Which I am Melded

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I participated in the latest SF Signal Mind Meld, answering (at length! egads!) the question, "Which challenging SF/F stories are worth the effort to read?"

The other participants are Jeff VanderMeer, Farah Mendlesohn, Mike Brotherton, Alan Beatts, and John C. Wright. We'll be touring as The Melded, tickets soon available via Ticketmaster.
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The Carol Emshwiller Project

Blogging here has been light-to-nonexistent recently because I've been swamped with work, much of it delightful, including creating a very special blog: The Carol Emshwiller Project.

Carol Emshwiller turns 90 on April 12, and there are lots of celebrations going on. We'll be posting all sorts of things to the blog, especially on the 12th itself, and anyone is welcome to contribute, either by writing on your own site or submitting something to me via email. Anything celebratory is welcome, from long and insightful considerations of Mrs. Emshwiller's oeuvre to a few sentences of joyful best wishes. Write a song, make a video, create fanfic!

To learn more about Carol Emshwiller and her work, check out the site. And be sure to stop by on the 12th to share your joy in our cause.
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New Columnists at Strange Horizons

I've been writing columns for Strange Horizons for some time now, chronicling whatever happened to be obsessing me at the moment when the column was due, for better or ill. It's a good challenge. Various other columnists have come and gone during that time, with Karen Healey and John Clute being the most recent regulars, offering diverse and fascinating stuff.

Now, two more folks have joined the roster, and they're both people I've at least been acquainted with for a while, people who I have great fondness and respect for: Vandana Singh and Genevieve Valentine. Vandana's first column appeared last week, Genevieve's this week. Great, great stuff.

We've also been asked to provide names for our columns in addition to the individual column titles. Clute's got Scores, Vandana is Diffractions, and Genevieve is Intertitles. I envy them all. (Being in such hallowed company, I'm tempted to call mine Excrement, but I'll probably come up with something sli…
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Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller Table of Contents

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A book I am looking forward to with more excitement than I can possibly express without exploding or somehow otherwise embarrassing myself is The Collected Short Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Volume 1, forthcoming from Nonstop Press. You'll be hearing a lot more about it and Carol Emshwiller here in the coming weeks, but for now I wanted to note that the table of contents for the book has now been posted.

Wow!

For the moment, that's the most eloquent response I can summon.
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Icarus on the Lonesome Road

News from Lethe Press that the new issue of Icarus is almost ready. It includes a new story of mine, "Lonesome Road", which I think they quite aptly describe as "almost a literary version of hauntology, a different kind of ghost story -- postmodern, but chilling all the same."

The same issue includes an interview with THE ... SodomiteHal Duncan, plus stories by Sunny Morvaine and Alejandro Omidsalar. And more! Single copies will be available for purchase via this link, and subscriptions are available here.

Elements of "Lonesome Road" were inspired by one of my favorite recordings, Sam Collins singing "Lonesome Road Blues", available freely and legally via Archive.org:
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New Site Design

It's long been time for this site to get a facelift.  Well, now it has one.  I've not only changed some of the formatting and colors (yes, I'm fond of purples; it's my site, it will have lots of purple!), but also taken advantage of Blogger's new Pages feature, familiar to anybody who's used Wordpress.  The pages are listed up there beneath the site header.

The About and Fiction pages are self-explanatory, but the Selections page probably needs a few words of introduction.

For a couple years now, I've wanted to put together a collection of the nonfiction I've written over the last seven years or so (since a piece of mine about George Saunders appeared in English Journal in May 2003), but I've struggled to come up with a book-length manuscript that is more than just a collection of miscellanea.  I could easily put together a collection just of my writings on science fiction, or on film, or general book reviews, or extended essays on writers such as J…
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Strange Horizons, World Fantasy Award, and Susan

Yesterday, Susan Marie Groppi won a well-deserved World Fantasy Award as editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons.  I did a little dance for joy when I found out, because aside from this here blog, Strange Horizons is the publication I've had the longest ongoing relationship with as a writer.  It was just about six years ago, in fact, that Susan first asked if I'd be willing to write an occasional column, and the request just about knocked the wind out of me, because all the writing I'd done had been stuff I'd had to hustle myself -- nobody had ever asked me to write for them before.

I've had the pleasure of writing reviews and interviews for SH, too, and it really always has been a pleasure, because the community of staff is exemplary.  The magazine has lasted longer than most of its peers, and the quality of work has been astoundingly strong for a weekly website.

Susan's award was in the "non-professional" category (a category I have a certain fondness f…
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And Now I Have a Bird Head

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When I found out I was nominated for the Last Drink Bird Head award, I thought the other folks in my category were so immensely talented and deserving that it was inconceivable -- INCONCEIVABLE! -- that I could win. Jeff VanderMeer asked me to appoint someone to accept the award in my absence should I win, and also to write an acceptance speech in case I happened to need one. I got busy and forgot about this request, and remembered a couple days ago and thought, "No, there's no way."

And then I won.

So here I am, like the occasional Oscar winner who doesn't write a speech because there's just no way in heckapalooza they could win, and then they do, and they speak extemporaneously and bizarrely, and everyone then thinks, "Wow, that person is a bird brain!"

Here, after the fact, is my extemporaneous acceptance speech upon winning the Last Drink Bird Head award in the category of "Expanding Our Vocabulary":
Oh wow. Gosh. Wow. Okay. So, uh, y…
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Checking In

Egads, I knew October was going to be a slow month for blogging, but this is my first post since September 24...

What have I been up to, you ask?  (Well, no you don't.  But I'm going to pretend you do.  Allow me a few of my delusions, please!  I gave up on world peace and my imaginary friends, so can't I at least have this?!?)

What I've been up to is mostly just the ordinary stuff of life, which for me right now primarily means teaching at two different schools, one a university, the other a high school, in a schedule that's leading to a bit of brain discombobulation.  A lot of preparation for next term's classes, too, particularly the Gender & Science Fiction one at Plymouth State -- all the suggestions from folks were helpful, because even in the case of things I was already considering, it's helped me focus.  I still have a week till I have to turn in book orders, so I haven't settled on much yet, but I do know I'll be using The Left Hand of …
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World SF

Suddenly my RSS feeds are full of people posting the table of contents for the upcoming Apex Book of World SF vol. 2, and with good reason -- this is really an exciting ToC, at least at first glance:
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (Philippines)–Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life
Ivor W. Hartmann (Zimbabwe)–Mr. Goop
Daliso Chaponda (Malawi)–Trees of Bone
Daniel Salvo (Peru)–The First Peruvian in Space
Gustavo Bondoni (Argentina)–Eyes in the Vastness of Forever
Chen Qiufan (China)–The Tomb
Joyce Chng (Singapore)–The Sound of Breaking Glass
Csilla Kleinheincz (Hungary)–A Single Year
Andrew Drilon (Philippines)–The Secret Origin of Spin-man
Anabel Enriquez Piñeiro (Cuba)–Borrowed Time (trans. Daniel W. Koon)
Lauren Beukes (South Africa)–Branded
Raúl Flores Iriarte (Cuba)–December 8
Will Elliott (Australia)–Hungry Man
Shweta Narayan (India)–Nira and I
Fábio Fernandes (Brazil)–Nothing Happened in 1999
Tade Thompson (Nigeria)–Shadow
Hannu Rajaniemi (Finland)–Shibuya no Love
Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexico)–M…
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Ultimate Libation Avian Cranium Award Nominations

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Jeff VanderMeer has announced the second year of the Last Drink Bird Head Award nominations, and I was wondrous amazed to find myself listed there in the category of "Expanding Our Vocabulary: In recognition of writers whose nonfiction, through reviews, blogging, and/or essays, exposes readers to new words and, often, new ideas..."

The other nominees in the category are the sagacious Anil Menon, the acroatic Abigail Nussbaum, and the argute Adam Roberts -- lambent flames of intellect, each!

The nominees in the other categories are marvelous as well, and I do not envy the judges their judging, because I would never want to distinguish between such distinguished folks -- in all of the categories, the nominees are people I read with great pleasure and from whom I've learned a lot over the years.

Now I must go back to poring over lexical tomes, preparing to vanquish my rivals in the grand mudwrestling-while-reciting-the-OED event that will, I'm told, determine the true w…
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Public Service Messages of the Day

First, the Norton Critical Editions have their own Twitter account.  I love love love the NCEs and, in fact, have assigned three of them (Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart, Modern African Drama) in a course this term.  I cannot express the incredible booklust the background photo on that Twitter page causes me...

Second, the NCE Twitterers are seeking people's favorite ghost/horror stories.  I said Joanna Russ's "My Dear Emily" and Robert Aickman's "The Stains", though could have certainly listed 100 others, too.  Maybe they'll decide to do a big Norton Critical Edition of horror stories....   Wouldn't that be fun?  Go share your own favorites!

In other news, I am not alone in connecting certain elements of the work of William Faulkner with that of Samuel R. Delany.  [In that discussion, I'm username Melikhovo]

In further other news, and also from Ta-Nehisi Coates's extraordinary blog, news from Paris Review editor Lorin Stein that th…
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Third Bear Carnival Winner!

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Step right up, folks!  Dr. Eric Schaller, Prestidigator & Mime, and I, your humble host, have consulted with our oracles and soothsayers, and after centuries of deliberation, we have discovered a winner of the Win a Unique Third Bear contest.  We were amused by all the entries, and thank everyone who participated.

Congratulations are due to Alys for this contribution:
The Fourth Bear is always there, waiting just out of sight, around the corner, behind you, where you’re not looking, to snatch the only custard doughnut, or the last piece of pie. She hoards these things, as dragons do gold, in her den. She sleeps on a bed of stale pastry, and eats it in her sleep. Sometimes, children have mistaken her for a witch. She keeps her teeth and claws polished clean, but her fur is sticky with chocolate and cherry jam and other substances best not inquired into. (Alys, please email me your mailing address, and I will send the book to you!)
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Sandman, Batman Realities, Etc.

Last week was a busy one for me, and I completely forgot to post a link to my latest Sandman Meditation, this one on the fourth issue of the series, "A Hope in Hell".  I'm tempted to say that just as Sandman seems in the later issues in the Preludes & Nocturnes collection to be finding its feet and style, I'm beginning to feel like I sort of know what I'm doing with these columns, but I know if I say that then writing the next one will be nearly impossible.  And really, no matter appearances or what I think at this moment, I haven't any idea what I'm doing.  And that's okay.

Speaking of having no idea what I'm doing, my latest Strange Horizons column, "Real Action", has just been posted, and as occasionally happens with these things, I read it over and disagreed with myself.  I like the structure of the ideas in the column, but I think that structure led me to simplify some of the points, and in particular to elide important complexi…
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