Anywhere But Here

Nothing to see here. Therefore:

*The mid-May SF Site is alive and kicking. It includes, among other things, a review I wrote of four recent titles from the Wesleyan Early Classics of SF series, all of which were impressive in some way or another, although I must say the one book that most enchanted and amazed me was The Twentieth Century (first published in 1882) by Albert Robida, here receiving its first English translation in a beautiful edition filled with weird, whimsical illustrations.

*Alan DeNiro has changed both the address and title of his weblog. What once was Ptarmigan is now Goblin Mercantile Exchange. He has also entered the fray of discussing the SFWA's push poll on Amazon's "Look Inside the Book" feature by translating part of the SFWA FAQ about "ePiracy" into PirateSpeak, with good results: "Information may want t’ be free, but ye get what ye pay fer." (For more background on -- or, rather, against -- the poll, check out what John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, and Tim Pratt have to say.)

*There's a new Strange Horizons posted. Lots of good things there.

*A couple of fun posts at SF Signal: Design Your Own Dream Anthology (that is, the anthology you might dream of making, not an anthology of dreams) and a report on a 1973 Cliff's Notes book about science fiction.

*Teresa Nielsen Hayden sparks an in-depth testing and deconstruction of a popular little poll to discover "Which Science Fiction Writer are You" (I was Octavia Butler). I love that Gregory Benford took the poll and the result wasn't Gregory Benford.

*The Tensor takes a close look at linguistics in Robert Heinlein's "Gulf".

*Speaking of linguistics, there's a new blog in the blogosphere: Invented Usage, which looks at a variety of subjects (including supposed differences between poetry and prose) from a linguistic point of view, but without lots of jargon. I look forward to seeing where the writers go with this. (via LanguageHat)

*Sarah Weinman writes about books that are impossible to review and points to Crime Fiction Dossier, a blog that's new to me, where there's been some good discussion of the ins and outs of book reviewing.

*Sonya Taaffe's poem "The Laying-Out" is now a featured poem at Mythic Delirium.

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