“So the manifold delights and pleasures of that rollicking novel The High Crusade came as no surprise, back there in 1960, and those of us who were on the scene then raced through the three installments of the magazine serialization as fast as we could pry them out of John Campbell. ”
3.5 out of 5
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/09/poul-andersons-the-high-crusade-an-appreciation-by-robert-silverberg
Continue reading about Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade: An Appreciation – Robert Silverberg
“Watts: For sure. It’s a tired cliche that science fiction is “the literature of ideas,” and a lot of science fictional ideas for all their coolness don’t have the strength to carry a whole novel. Short stories serve an essential purpose as the one-line jokes of science fiction.
They’re also a valuable proving ground for novels-in-progress. [...]
“Robinson, whose novels have won 11 major science fiction awards, also advocated for writers to rise to the challenge of depicting utopian futures.
“The truth is it’s really hard to write those kind of stories and we don’t see enough of them,” he said.
“Because of the utopian problem – the blueprint is boring whereas the disaster [...]
Continue reading about Still betting on utopia – Kim Stanley Robinson
“I was actually there to promote my first anthology, Killers. And in fact when I met Marco (Marc Gascoigne, Editorial Director of Angry Robot) in the bar, I was so preoccupied with the missing copies of the anthology – which were stuck in a warehouse seventy five miles away, with the hotel and the courier [...]
Continue reading about Angry Robot Author Interview – Colin Harvey
“What got you attracted to Carter Brown in the first place?
Carter Brown is the person about whom I talk the most because he is probably the best known of all Australian writers. It started, as most research projects do, from a very simple question – who is Australia’s most *popular* author…my colleagues at the University [...]
“You’ve announced that you’re next releases will be a short story collection, Manhattan in Reverse, and a stand alone novel in a brand new setting, Great North Road. Can you reveal anything about these two yet and what readers can expect from them?
The collection is every short story and novella I’ve written since Second Chance [...]
Continue reading about Walker of Worlds Interview – Peter F. Hamilton
“6. You have recently embarked on a new project, an e-publishing venture called Wizard’s Tower Press and Kevin is one of your business partners in that, isn’t he? Can you explain what Wizard’s Tower Press is all about?
It is a long story, but for complicated reasons involving travel to the USA I found myself needing [...]
“Elizabeth Hand: Well, to me they never seemed all that transgressive, to tell you the truth. I was a tomboy as a kid—I was skinny and had cropped hair and was often mistaken for a boy—and up until I was about six I had my own very fluid ideas of gender in that I believed [...]
“How did you get involved with science fiction blog i09? How has becoming an influential blogger changed your relationship to the field?
Annalee Newitz and I were putting out other magazine, a print magazine whose theme was not having a theme, for five years from 2002 to 2007. We published people like Rudy Rucker and Terry [...]
“Can you remember the first time you became aware of werewolves? Tell me about that first encounter.
When I was a kid my Aunt Darlene used to tell me stories that would scare me senseless. She was only seven years older than I was, so she was more like an older sister than an aunt. One [...]
Continue reading about Interview with author of Werewolves – Paul Jessup
“Q1. As a Canadian, you has lived teaching English literature in a korean univ. over 7 years and also written Science Fiction. I heard You had been nominated in John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009 Worldcon. Would you explain briefly about your nominated title?
Yes, I’m Canadian and I’ve been in [...]
“But even without sex, swordplay isn’t the hottest thing on Mars. Outside the polar regions, everyone runs around essentially naked. The universal Martian costume is the “harness,” an arrangement of straps and belts designed for little more than supporting weapons and ornaments. While Martian women may be oviparous, Burroughs makes clear that they can easily [...]
“One of the things this series of posts has dealt with in the past is how hard it can be sometimes to find queer speculative fiction, especially when the big presses seem to actively avoid “outing” their books in flap copy. The endless search doesn’t have to be the default for readers seeking queer SFF, [...]
Continue reading about Queering SFF: An Interview with Editor – Steve Berman
An introduction piece – there are a whole bunch of followups :- and this ha links to them.
“On August 17, Tor Books will publish the first half of William H. Patterson Jr.’s two-volume authorized biography of Robert A. Heinlein, Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1, 1907-1948: Learning Curve. In commemoration of [...]
Continue reading about Robert A. Heinlein: The Tor.com Blog Symposium – Patrick Nielsen Hayden
“I did by chance run into Jack Williamson, briefly, at the first-ever Worldcon in 1939, which was in the same summer as New York’s first World’s Fair — and which Donald Wollheim had proposed we New York fans should use as the opportunity to convene a World Science Fiction Convention in the hope that it [...]
Continue reading about Jack the Wonderful Williamson 2 – Frederik Pohl
“My dear friend Jack Williamson, who died a few years ago, was ten or eleven years older than I, and I didn’t actually meet him — in the flesh, that is, though I certainly knew and revered him through his wonderful stories — until he was an elderly 30 and I was 19, and just [...]
Continue reading about Jack the Wonderful Williamson 1 – Frederik Pohl
““Beyond the Sunrise” is the unofficial title afforded an unfinished Kull story that did not see print until over forty years after the author’s death. Its significance is due largely to the fact that it was the first of four widely differing attempts to continue the Kull series following the publication of both “The Shadow [...]
Continue reading about Robert E. Howard: Anatomy of a Creative Crisis – William Patrick Maynard
“Many people who read science fiction also read comic books, but not all and that’s a shame. There are a lot of really good comics out there that are worth the time to read. To find out which ones, we asked our panelists this question:
Q: Comic books have be garnering more public attention in recent [...]
Continue reading about MIND MELD: Comics For Science Fiction Fans – J. P. Frantz
“Battles were fought and won based on the strength and keenness of blades as well as the ability to use them effectively. Bob Howard was not only interested in the various types of swords, he was also fascinated with the history they represented. In his poetry and his stories, he uses his knowledge of weapons, [...]
Continue reading about Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector and His Poetry – Barbara Barrett
“As editor, what were you looking for in these stories?
What I wasn’t looking for, and has been done already, is an outsiders, ironic take on superheroes. I didn’t want stories that poked fun at the genre with a wink and a nudge. I wanted stories that would be recognizable and appealing to today’s sophisticated reader [...]
Continue reading about Editor of Masked Talks Superhero Fiction – Lou Anders
“Beyond such a fortunate coincidence, however, the appearance of academic characters in weird narratives seems to me to serve a couple of ends. There’s the obvious device of furthering the plot in terms of exposition of crucial information. There’s also the less obvious — I’d almost call it a symptom of the weird narrative’s vexed [...]
Continue reading about The Secret to Writing Is Writing: A Conversation with – John Langan
“My question for the author would be: The Absence is interesting, and bringing up star dams, I figured that somebody or something had managed to just put Dyson spheres around all the stars, on their way to being a Kardashev type III after having perfected type II. The fact that opening a wormhole could [...]
Continue reading about Author Fields Your Questions! – Alastair Reynolds
“In many ways, though, it’s not just a science-fiction novel, right? Most of the technology you describe, at least in terms of non-biological technology, is older than what we have now.
Yeah, it’s more like throwback technologies. When I say science fiction, I think of classic Foundation, I think of rocket ships. But there’s this other [...]
Continue reading about Interview: talks about The Windup Girl – Paolo Bacigalupi
“Jason Nahrung is the other half of an Aussie spec-fic writing duo – the other half is Kirstyn McDermott. I’d love to say that, as a duo, they dress up at night and fight crime, but it would be (a) a little too personal, and (b) untrue. Realistically, they’re more likely to be fomenting some [...]
“Were there any formative experiences that led you to become a science fiction writer?
Probably the most formative experience was reading the Foundation Trilogy when I was about twelve years old. That wasn’t the first science fiction I had ever read but it’s something that stands out in my memory as having had a big [...]
“A few months back, we were so focused on asking people about The Best Sword & Sorcery Stories, that we overlooked a more basic question: What is it? This week, we turned to the contributors and editors of the recent publication Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword & Sorcery and asked them:
Q: How do [...]
Continue reading about MIND MELD: What ‘Sword and Sorcery’ Means to Me – John DeNardo
“Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father’s love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library. I read the covers off those flimsy paperbacks, read them to tatters. I also wrote like a fiend. I [...]
“4. Did your shared disgust for what was (and is still) known as the “Golden Age” of SF extend to the way these texts were visually translated in the covers of magazines and paperbacks? In other words, were both of you claiming for a new visual identity for SF as well as for new themes [...]
Continue reading about I think I preferred my own imagination Part I – Michael Moorcock
“The award-winning Elizabeth Hand is that special kind of writer who can seemingly do anything. She’s written novels (including: Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and most recently, Illyria), short stories, comics (Anima), and movie and television spin-off novels (including: Boba Fett: Maze of Deception and12 Monkeys).”
4 out of 5
http://www.ifyourejustjoiningus.com/podpress_trac/web/106/0/elizabeth_hand(If_Youre_Just_Joining_Us).mp3
Continue reading about Illyria Theater Terrible Auditions Naming Chracters – Elizabeth Hand
“”And you have to live it to write about it. Not a pleasant experience. One slightly odd reviewer seemed to think I was condoning torture simply because I included it in the story. Very bizarre. If you’re writing about spying in this era, it would be a betrayal of the history not to look at [...]
Continue reading about Mark Chadbourn Draws The Sword of Albion To Defend England – Sandy Auden
“Now Chiang is working with boutique presses that are willing to offer him creative control such as Subterranean Press, which is allowing the author to control the full packaging of Lifestyle. Asked about his bold move to risk mainstream appeal for artistic vision, Chiang is clear that he considers the move a no-brainer.
“When you’ve been [...]
Continue reading about Ted Chiang vs Tor Publishing – Mark Baumgartner
“At SF Signal, we loves us some space opera, so we asked this week’s panelists:
Q: What are some of the best space opera books? What makes them so good?
Is your favorite listed below? ”
5 out of 5
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/06/mind-meld-the-best-space-operas-in-science-fiction/
Continue reading about MIND MELD: The Best Space Operas in Science Fiction – John DeNardo
“At SF Signal, we loves us some space opera, so we asked this week’s panelists:
Q: What are some of the best space opera books? What makes them so good?
Is your favorite listed below? ”
5 out of 5
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/06/mind-meld-the-best-space-operas-in-science-fiction/
Continue reading about MIND MELD: The Best Space Operas in Science Fiction – John DeNardo
“Your writing technique has certainly been evolving over the years and yet horror has been the topic of your stories. What makes you keep on going back to horror?
I could write a hundred years and not have the opportunity to try my hand at the entire spectrum that comprises the dark genres. But the real [...]
Continue reading about Shirley Jackson Awards Interview – Laird Barron
“Over the course of many years, Mike visited Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Botswana, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Egypt, and Zambia. I suspect that is more African countries than most Americans have visited or can even name.
Now, to Mike’s writings. Mike has published eight novels that heavily rely on African history and culture for their themes: Adventures, [...]
Continue reading about Mike Resnick and Africa – Michael A. Burstein
“Frank had written with real people and places in mind, though he gave them invented names for his stories, just as Cordwainer Smith had for his own stories of the imperfectly concealed Middle East. Arrakis was Frank Herbert code for Iraq, The Baron was Dick Cheney, Selusa Secundis was Afghanistan and so on. (I’m sorry [...]
Continue reading about Frank Herbert the Dune Man – Frederik Pohl
An interview with David Conyers, from Albedo One Magazine
“Do transhuman characters with god-like powers alienate readers? Are they too far removed from human emotions and frailties that we experience in modern society?
The frailty of our bodies is an enormously important part of our current reality — and I very much doubt that anyone will ever [...]
Continue reading about Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures – Greg Egan
“What kind of books and stories do you look for when deciding on submissions? Like, do you have a set of criteria (such as, must have swords, wizards, minimum of 10 decapitated bodies) or do you tend to examine each piece on its own—if so, any themes or styles you tend to find yourself [...]
Continue reading about Editor of Pyr books BCS interview – Lou Anders
“Sean Williams is a prolific author of fantasy and science fiction – oh, and yeah, he’s talented too. Sean’s series include The Books of the Change, Astropolis, Geodesica, Broken Land … and of course, those Star Wars books. He has a choclit habit. He was also kind enough to consent to be the first victim [...]
“Jason Sizemore is a very busy guy. For one thing, he runs Apex Publications in those tiny cracks of time between working a day-job, his own writing, not to even get started on his exhaustive plans for world domination. He has nurtured Apex Publications from its roots as an SF/Horror market under the heading of [...]
“In Zendegi, Greg Egan has created a beautiful, brilliant, near-future world that expertly explores the consequences of mind-mapping technology in the politically volatile world of Iran.”
3.5 out of 5
http://io9.com/5564075/with-zendegi-greg-egan-plunges-us-into-the-techno+future-of-iran
“[Continued from Part 1] This week’s topic was suggested (separately) by Blue Tyson and Scott A. Cupp:
We’ve discussed essential science fiction novels, but what about essential short fiction? Many authors have published collections of their short fiction over the years, so we asked this week’s panelists:
Q: What single-author, non-”Best-of” collections of sf/f/h stories should be [...]
“With new movie versions of Robert E. Howard’s black-maned hero Conan and Edgar Rice Burrough’s gentleman adventurer John Carter of Mars, it would appear that the sword & sorcery genre may be about to resurge into the public sphere. ”
4 out of 5
http://www.suvudu.com/2010/06/is-sword-sorcery-ready-for-a-comeback.html
Continue reading about Is Sword & Sorcery Ready for a Comeback? – Matt Staggs
“Deborah Biancotti has done the world a favour by writing. She’s won Aurealis Awards and Ditmars. Her short story collection, A Book of Endings (Twelfth Planet Press), has garnered attention both in Oz and overseas, and has bagged awards and recommendations ad infinitum (Look! Here’s a list http://deborahbiancotti.net/the/press/book_of_endings.htm), and been named on Guru [...]
Continue reading about We’re All Strangers Here: Baggage and – Deborah Biancotti
“What first inspired you to write?
I wanted to write as far back as I can remember. I recall starting a science fiction novel when I was in the 4th or 5th grade. As best I can recall, I got about ten pages into it. It’s probably a good thing I stopped when I did. It [...]
Continue reading about Absent Willow Review Interview – Jack McDevitt
“What Are The “Must Read” Science Fiction Romance Books?
Mr. Kat Reading
A Galaxy Express passenger—her name is Tamara—contacted me recently to inquire if a “Top 10 or 100 list” of science fiction romances was available. And boy, did that question ever spark the proverbial light bulb.”
4 out of 5
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2010/05/what-are-must-read-science-fiction.html
Continue reading about What Are The Must Read Science Fiction Romance Books? – Heather Massey
“[This week's questions comes from Heather Massey, proprietor of The Galaxy Express.]
From Star Wars to Avatar, stories blending science fiction and romance have persisted for decades in books, films, fan fiction, and even video games. However, despite such evidence, there are those who believe the two genres can’t, or shouldn’t, be combined. We asked this [...]
By Russell Blackford :-
“7. Blackford: Is it similar when you deal with advanced scientific and mathematical concepts—concepts that might “lose” even readers with reasonable levels of scientific literacy—or do you see that as a different kind of problem? Again, I’m interested in how it feels from the inside to an author writing this kind of [...]
“This week’s topic was suggested (separately) by Blue Tyson and Scott A. Cupp:
We’ve discussed essential science fiction novels, but what about essential short fiction? Many authors have published collections of their short fiction over the years, so we asked this week’s panelists:
Q: What single-author, non-”Best-of” collections of sf/f/h stories should be in every fan’s library? [...]
“MacLeod’s idea is that there are actually scientific ways you can justify even the most preposterous ideas. But, as you’ll see in our interview, there are some rules that even MacLeod won’t break because the results are “just silly.””
3.5 out of 5
http://io9.com/5564418/ken-macleod-explains-the-science-of-galactic-princesses
Continue reading about Ken MacLeod explains the science of galactic princesses – Annalee Newitz
“”Its appeal for me,” says Gascoigne, “is that whether she faked it or is really that cool, Beukes caught an up-to-the-minute flavour of teen digital culture. Her technological predictions are so on the money that over a dozen have actually been reported in prototype or experimental form since Moxyland was published.””
4 out of 5
http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/article499643.ece/Voodoo-Child
Continue reading about Voodoo Child Profile: Lauren Beukes – Nehama Brookes
“Since 1995, his title at Tor/Forge Books has been “Senior Editor.” He chairs the board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention, is on the board of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and, with Gordon Van Gelder, is the administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award. He holds a Ph.D. in [...]
Continue reading about Odyssey Workshop Interview – David G. Hartwell
China Miéville on The Walrus & the Warwolf!–In Praise of Stupid Boys
“This isn’t just history, either. Anyone who reads the tale of a boy-wizard to see how he turns out, why, and what happens to him on the way, or who recalls how a callow Tattooine moisture-farmer ends up, several adventures later, a self-possessed Jedi, [...]
Continue reading about In Praise of Stupid Boys – China Mieville
“We did it again yesterday morning, and we once again reveal our collective lack of technical skills in the audio arena and briefly mention:getting contributor’s copies,
re-editing classic books, ebook design and the iPad, books I’d like to see exist that don’t, The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson and how humanists wrote short fiction,
entry-level SF novels [...]
Continue reading about Episode 6: Live – Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
“Gary calls in from Florida and we talk about all sorts of stuff in our latest chatfest.”
4 out of 5
http://media.blubrry.com/notesfromcoodestreet/members.iinet.net.au/~jstrahan/podcast/audioblog0013.mp3
Continue reading about Episode 5: Live – Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
“And we do it again! Our fourth ramble, this time touching on all sorts of things, many of which we’ve touched on before!”
4 out of 5
http://media.blubrry.com/notesfromcoodestreet/members.iinet.net.au/~jstrahan/podcast/audioblog0011.mp3
Continue reading about Episode 4: Live – Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
“You can see traces of that thought in some of the best Clarkes, like Childhood’s End or the short story “The Nine Billion Names of God.” And he did confess to me once, over a meal at the restaurant next to the old Hotel Chelsea, that he was kind of wondering if it was possible [...]
Continue reading about More About Sir Arthur C. Clarke – Frederik Pohl
“PB: If you’re in a closed society, you’ve got a tiny little spigot of relevant information. Everything else is state-run media trash. That’s the stuff that tells you how the children sang for the general or how much the factory has produced, and those are the kind of toothless headlines that fill the newspapers in [...]
Continue reading about Shareable: Earning the Future: A Q and A with – Paolo Bacigalupi
“When you started writing “Sublimation Angels,” did you know it was going to be the length of a novella? Was it difficult finding someone to publish it?
I started the story with certain characters and ideas in mind, but didn’t realize how long it would take to capture these aspects until I began banging into novella [...]
Continue reading about Nebula Awards Interview 2010 – Jason Sanford
A talk at the company.
4 out of 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQp__BDHH6s
“Science fiction served a similar purpose in the ’50s. Having vaulted from the fringes of pop culture into the mainstream after a newly atomic America became obsessed with films about mutants and aliens, SF literature matured and flowered throughout the ’60s and beyond, just as rock ‘n’ roll did the same. It was inevitable that [...]
Continue reading about Moonage Daydream: The Rock Album as Science Fiction – Jason Heller
In which Sheila Finch picks Terry Dowling’s Tom Tyson series, and Cynthia Ward picks Leigh Brackett’s Skaith. Can’t argue with that!
4.5 out of 5
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/06/mind-meld-what-science-fiction-series-is-underrated/
Continue reading about MIND MELD: What Science Fiction Series is the Most Underrated? – John DeNardo
” Although he was still in his twenties when he created Chester Drum, Stephen Marlowe was already an established writer. (“At the age of eight,” he has been quoted as saying, “I wanted to be a writer and I never changed my mind.”) In 1949, after graduation from William and Mary, he joined the staff [...]
“MH: You mentioned quite a few Pyr books in the pipeline, but the only Sci-Fi read mentioned was McDonald’s new book. What other Sci-Fi is upcoming?
LA: Actually, I would argue that, although in fairness it may not be clear from our description, Mark Hodder’s Burton & Swinburne in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack [...]
Continue reading about Mad Hatter Interview Editor of Pyr – Lou Anders
A comprehensive guide to the people, places and stuff of Barsoom.
5 out of 5
http://www.erblist.com/abg/Bozarth-ABarsoomGlossary-illus.pdf
http://www.erblist.com/abg/index.html
Continue reading about A Barsoom Glossary – David Bruce Bozarth
“Along the way I think I also figured out why a thousand moving pictures aren’t worth some of the best printed words in the genre.
Burroughs’ very first novel, A Princess of Mars, first appeared in 1912 as a six-part serial in All-Story Magazine titled “Under the Moons of Mars.” It recounts the tale of John [...]
“You’ve edited some critically-acclaimed sci-fi anthologies. (Plus you have fantasy and superhero anthologies forthcoming.) Could you talk a little bit about that particular editorial process? How is editing an anthology different from editing a novel? For you, what makes a good anthology?
Editing an anthology is like editing a mix tape, which is a lost art [...]
Continue reading about Redstone Science Fiction An Interview With – Lou Anders
“Do the limitations of relativity make it more interesting to write space-faring science fiction or just more difficult? What kind of scientific obstacles did you run into while writing the story?
Kaftan: There’s always problems with science not wanting to cooperate with imagination. I imagine a world where I can shoot lasers from my eyeballs, but [...]
“Short fiction has always been the heart of the science fiction field, where new writers are discovered and established pros can take risks and experiment with fiction that takes them outside their comfort zone. And while there is a lot of short genre fiction being published online, the number of fantasy and horror stories far [...]
Continue reading about Why a New Science Fiction Magazine and Why Now? – John Joseph Adams
“One of the difficulties I’ve struggled with as a writer – one of the things I’m still trying to get my ahead around, actually – is plot. More specifically, in my case: how do you concoct a story or novel-length plot that doesn’t, at some point, descend into melodrama? Pretty early on in my career, [...]
Continue reading about On plotting and optimism – Alastair Reynolds
“Again, take the iPad.
“Where did you get the materials for the batteries? What people were hurt in the manufacturing and shipping process? When you ask about using oil that’s running out. . . . If those are your data points, the iPad is just window dressing on something very ugly,” he says.”
3.5 out of 5
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_15177628?source=rss
“We only have a few songs which you could say are directly inspired by literary works, but all of our material is somewhat inspired by either science fiction or mythology. For clarification the songs directly inspired by specific stories or novels are “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” “To Take the Black,” and “The Black River” (all from [...]
“Dozois’s affection for Adventure SF and Space Opera is given voice when he says of Poul Anderson’s 1995 story “Genesis” (from Far Futures, ed. Gregory Benford): “The Anderson in particular delivers a few genuine jolts of pure-quill old-fashioned undiluted Sense of Wonder, something the genre does all too seldom these days.” –Gardner Dozois, in his [...]
“In A Door into Ocean, the Sharers use advanced skills of “lifeshaping,” a kind of genetic engineering, to manage the ecology of their ocean-covered planet. They must use all their skills, as well as the discipline of nonviolence, to repel invading traders and soldiers, without destroying their own way of life.
To appreciate the [...]
Continue reading about A Door Into Ocean Study Guide – Joan Slonczweski
A brilliant and wide-ranging interview:
“H: That’s true. You carry these things around with you all the time. Very often, I get this far-away look and Ed will say, “You’re thinking, aren’t you?”
R: Do you try on your thoughts with each other?
H: Yes, a good bit. Our marriage almost broke up shortly
after it began because I [...]
Continue reading about Youngstown State Oral History Program – Leigh Brackett
” In this paper we discuss a physical observable which is drastically different in a brane-world scenario. To date, the Randall-Sundrum model seems to be consistent with all experimental tests of general relativity. Specifically, we examine the so-called gravitomagnetic effect in the context of the Randall-Sundrum (RS) model. This treatment, of course, assumes the recovery [...]
Continue reading about Gravitomagnetism in Brane-Worlds – Ali Nayeri and Adam Reynolds
From Worldchanging :
“Convergence
It’s even harder to predict the second-order consequences of new technologies when they start merging at the edges, and hybridizing.
A modern cellphone is nothing like a late-1980s cellphone. Back then, the cellphone was basically a voice terminal. Today it’s as likely as not to be a video and still camera, a GPS navigation [...]
“1. Quick! Tell us a little about yourself and The Jennifer Morgue.
Must I? Oh very well. The Jennifer Morgue is my latest novel, and it’s the second in a series that follow the misadventures of a slashdot-reading sandal-wearing hacker-geek who’s fallen into the wrong universe and can’t get out. We first met “Bob Howard” (as [...]
“The initial premise for my Signs of the Zodiac series was simple: take the superhero construct of good and evil and drop those dueling sides – represented by Light and Shadow – down in Las Vegas to watch them battle it out against the neon backdrop. Vegas is my hometown, so research is a cinch [...]
“With some honorable exceptions, though, science fiction seems to have rather fallen out of love with the idea of the technological but livable future. After writing a slew of books and stories set in the Revelation Space universe, I was a little taken aback to find myself routinely described as a purveyor of dark, grim, [...]
Continue reading about Optimism and pessimism-where did it all go right? – Alastair Reynolds
“Back in mid-2008 I mentioned that what I thought was a futuristic-circa-2023 technology for the next novel was too damn close. Slightly more recently, in Living through interesting times, I mentioned that it was becoming near-as-dammit impossible to write near-future SF; I was sore because Bernie Madoff had stolen the plot of my next novel.”
3.5 [...]
Continue reading about Sandbagged by the near future – Charles Stross
“When is science fiction a form of political intervention?
That’s a tough one!
Looking at fiction in the broader sense, it’s fairly clear that it can have political repercussions; Orwell’s work (from “Animal Farm” and “1984″ to the less-well-remembered journalistic indictment, “The Road to
Wigan Pier”) was unequivocally political, and in “1984″ he certainly worked with tools from [...]
Continue reading about Talks to io9 About Sex Prison and Politics – Charles Stross
Anticipation World Con, audio recording of the discussion.
4 out of 5
http://cluebytwelve.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06.mp3
Continue reading about Anticipation World Con – Charles Stross and Paul Krugman
““Act One,” your novella on the final ballot for the Nebula Award for 2010 , is a story of genetic engineering in the near future. What was the inspiration behind this story?
It wasn’t any one thing, but rather a combination: a long-standing interest in the ambiguities of genetic engineering; happening to stumble across a fascinating [...]
Continue reading about Nebula Awards Interview 2010 – Nancy Kress
“cstross: Question: 2006ade: Charles Stross: You skip forward in time considerably with story number four, which picks up with Manfred’s daughter Amber. At first I was disappointed to see Macx go, but now I’m falling in love with her. Why the generational jump and will we do this again in part three? Any chance dad [...]
“Consider a carbon crystal, created (and edited) one atom at a time by nanomachinery; there are two stable isotopes of carbon, and we can use a Carbon-12 atom to represent a binary 0 and a Carbon-13 atom to represent a binary 1.
ONE PETABYTE EQUALS
1024 terabytes
1,048,576 gigabytes
1,073,741,824 megabytes
One gram of this substance could store 10 to [...]
“But for all the consistency of his intelligence, he has always made a point of working in as many of science fiction’s diverse sub-genres as possible, resisting the pressures of a commercial genre to repeat a formula. “I decided a long time ago that I wanted to write full-time,” he explains. “But because I get [...]
Continue reading about Tomorrow’s Everyday – Damien G. Walter
“John DeNardo and the good people over at SFSignal.com discuss ‘What science fiction books should be in every fan’s library?“. While I love SFSignal and think they do cool stuff, the question itself bothers me so I recorded a new monologue where I talk about canon building, making lists and so on.”
3.5 out [...]
Continue reading about On Canonical List Making – Jonathan Strahan
Lucky not only in it for the money, as monologuing is one of the incipient signs of a descent into supervillainry?
(new issue of subterranean magazine is hsi)
3.5 out of 5
http://media.blubrry.com/notesfromcoodestreet/members.iinet.net.au/~jstrahan/podcast/audioblog0006.mp3
Continue reading about On Subterranean Magazine and an Editor’s Living – Jonathan Strahan
“Tools: on a software level, I tend to be fanatical about cross-platform portability. I dislike Windows, but am able to use it; I mostly run Macs, but keep one foot in the Linux pool. My core tools are: Thunderbird (for email), Firefox (web browser), OpenOffice (office suite), and Vim (text editor). It’s no coincidence that [...]
Continue reading about Bad Language Interview with sci-fi author – Charles Stross
“Robert Heinlein’s next, and final, wife was Lt. Virginia Gerstenfeld. She worked with (and outranked) Heinlein at the little wartime research group in Philadelphia that was charged with trying to figure out what a high-altitude (read: space) suit should be like.
Politically, she and I were nowhere near close, but we agreed to disagree and generally [...]
“For years now, people have been telling me to read Richard K. Morgan’s cyberpunksploitation novel Altered Carbon, and I’ve been meaning to get around to it. But holy fuck, it really is that great.”
4.5 out of 5
http://io9.com/5542862/cyberpunk-detective-novel-altered-carbon-really-is-all-that?skyline=true&s=i
“And that’s where Ship Breaker comes in. I wanted to write a story for young people set inside the consequences of our present. Life when the bill comes due, so to speak. But beyond all that disaster stuff, I also wanted to write an adventure story, because, if you can’t tell by now, [...]
“Leiber wrote some great books, and he wrote some stinkers: the majority of his SF novels in particular feel dated and throwaway. He wrote some great short stories in SF and fantasy and horror and there’s scarcely a stinker among them, even when the SF elements feel tacked on or redundant or protective colouration for [...]
Continue reading about Fritz Leiber-Selected Stories Introduction – Neil Gaiman
“Walter is one of the science fiction field’s secret treasures. It wasn’t always thus; his first five novels were of a nautical, if not Napoleonic, type (a form that he has successfully translated into space opera in his Dread Empire’s Fall series). For reasons I’m unclear on (but applaud the results of) he turned his [...]
Continue reading about The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories Introduction – Charles Stross
In this installment of his column he goes looking for other planets :
” It is a pleasure to report that, as I type this, we now know of 429 extrasolar planets (aka exoplanets) in orbit around 362 stars, according to Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s PlanetQuest site. ”
4 out of 5
http://www.asimovs.com/201007/onthenet.shtml
“You’re currently writing your first novel, The Croning. Can you tell us something about it?
On the surface it’s written in the vein of the quieter haunted house, occult-type novels of the 1970s. There’s something of a Bluebeard and Rosemary’s Baby vibe at play – a retired professor spends the summer alone at his wife’s ancestral [...]
Continue reading about Risingshadow.net interview with – Laird Barron
Apparently from Visions of the Human Conference in Prague, 2003.
It is a short paper, making reference to several stories.
3.5 out of 5
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/cyber%20hub/visions/v1/Allouche%20paper.pdf
Continue reading about Glimpses of Humanity in Greg Egan’s Science Fiction – Sylvie Allouche
“To me, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are a literary pair that ranks with Damon and Phintias. Or Roland and Oliver. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. But Modesty and Willie are a greater literary achievement than these more celebrated duos: They are more fully rounded, more human. Their personalities have [...]
Continue reading about Peter O’Donnell Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin – R. C. Harvey
““The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” is Robert E. Howard at his most poetic. His writing had made a quantum leap forward in quality compared with his earlier Kull stories as he transitions from working in familiar genres to blazing a trail none had attempted before him. More than his gift for well-turned phrases and imagery [...]
Continue reading about Robert E. Howard: Peering Behind the Veil of Life – William Maynard