The Mumpsimus

Unconnected miscellaneous goodies from elsewhere: *The new SF Site has been posted, and includes an essay in which I get all nostalgic about an anthology Robert Silverberg edited in the late 1980s (contents listed here ). *I haven't been able to bring myself to read any of the reports from WisCon yet, because I'm envious of everybody who had the time to go, but if you aren't as paralyzed with envy as I, then an easy way to catch up on everything that happened at the world's premiere convention on feminism and science fiction is to check out the WisCon Technorati tag list . I hadn't realized Technorati had a tag feature until I started seeing it popping up on some of Gwenda's posts. Huh. Looks like fun. * A remembrance of Guy Davenport by Roy R. Behrens (via ReadySteadyBlog ) *Scott Esposito adds Powells links to a list of some of William T. Vollman's favorite books . Is anybody surprised that quite a few of the titles are big, sometimes multi-volu...

I've been catching up on 2005's short stories recently, because until the last week or two I hadn't read any stories published this year. I haven't yet found very much that excites me -- most of the stories I've read so far are skillful, but few rise above the tyranny of their plotting to offer more than a series of connected events, and only one so far offers the thrill of being unique: "Heads Down, Thumbs Up" by Gavin Grant. Of course, nobody expects fiction from the co-editor of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet to be ordinary, but I've read a few of Gavin's other stories, and while they were good, none prepared me for just how good "Heads Down, Thumbs Up" is. Saying why and how it is good, though, is a bit of challenge. I won't pretend to understand "Heads Down, Thumbs Up" in the way that I could say I understand a more straightforward story, a story that seeks to be transparent. This story is befuddling, and it...

Over at the LitBlog Co-Op , Reagan Arthur, the American editor for Kate Atkinson's novel Case Histories has offered some background on how the book came to be published in the U.S. and what her role was as editor. She's been responding diligently to comments, and so it's a good chance to ask questions about the book and publishing. Not having been one of the original members of the Co-Op, I hadn't read Case Histories when it was announced as this quarter's selection, and I knew very little about it (this will be different next time, when I'll be a full voting member). I did order a copy of the book once I knew it was selected, and read it last week, so will probably offer a few thoughts as we go along. I liked parts of it, but didn't love it on the whole, and am now trying to think about why. It's worth reading, especially because I think it raises some interesting issues of how plot balances with other elements, and Atkinson is certainly a writer...

As further proof that this was not a joke, two news items: 1. Jonathan Strahan : I'm very happy to announce that Gary Wolfe and I will be co-editing an anthology of the year's best non-fiction writing about science fiction, fantasy and horror for Chris Roberson at Monkeybrain Books. Tentatively titled Best New SF Writings: 2005 , it's a book I'm really excited to be doing. I love the idea, and I really like the books Chris has been publishing. If you have anything you've read that you'd like to recommend, we'd love to hear from you 2. via Sean Wallace : John Gregory Betancourt, editor / publisher of Wildside Press and co-publisher of Weird Tales , has announced that he will edit a Year's Best Horror 2006 , covering the year of 2005. Stories originally published in 2005 are eligible for consideration for the first volume. If your work was published in an anthology, magazine, or story collection in 2005, please have your publisher send a review copy to t...

Code 46 is not a perfect film, but it is an intelligent one, and the hostility many reviewers expressed toward it is frustrating, because there's too much that's good about the movie for it to be dismissed as a boring Blade Runner imitation. (A better comparison, actually, would be to Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World .) Even a critic as astute as Lucius Shepard -- easily one of the best film critics in the U.S. -- has been so conditioned to see science fiction movies as excuses for gunfights that he doesn't enjoy much of Code 46 ("I found myself yearning for a stray gunshot," he says, "a fistfight in the background, two people bumping into each other, anything to break the monotony, the slow, step-by-step expository grind of the picture"). It's understandable that many viewers would find the pacing of Code 46 slow or Tim Robbins's performance understated. They are. But it seems to me that there are reasons for both, and they...

Two very fine writers have started weblogs: Ian MacDonald and Justine Larbalestier . Please go encourage them. Next week I'll try to update the sidebar here with all the various new blogs that have been popping up, as well as other things I've promised or thought about...

For some reason, various people think I'm going to be at WisCon , but, alas, I'm not, because it's graduation weekend at the school where I work. I don't know where the rumor started, but I've gotten a bunch of emails over the past month saying, "Hey, so I hear you're going to be at WisCon!" I would love to be at WisCon, because I hear it's one of the most interesting conventions in existence, and lots of people I very much want to meet in person will be there, but it is not to be. Before today, I was particularly upset not to be at WisCon this year, because the new Rat Bastards chapbook was going to be released, and I've got a story in it. But now I hear it's been delayed at the printer, so while there will be an infestation of Rat Bastards, there will not (last I heard) be any of the new chapbooks. So I'm not quite as upset as I was before. (But I still wish I could go.) Soon I'm sure you'll be able to order copies of t...