T Non-fiction
“Peter Orullian: Let’s get underway by having you give us a snapshot of your work to set the stage for our conversation: genres you write in, recognitions, etc., publishing vitals, if you will. Ted Chiang: I write science fiction short stories. I have a collection of my stories, STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS, published [...]
Continue reading about Interview: The Lifecycle of Software Objects – Ted Chiang
An excellent collection of essays on the Watchmen comic series. Minutes to Midnight : Obsolete Models a Specialty: An Introduction – Richard Bensam Minutes to Midnight : Reassembling the Components in the Correct Sequence: Why You Shouldn’t Read Watchmen First – Walter Hudsick Minutes to Midnight : How the Ghost of You Clings: Watchmen and [...]
Continue reading about Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen – Richard Bensam
“Weirdfictionreview.com: What weird writers did you grow up reading? How did they influence or not influence your writing? Lucius Shepard: I read Tolkien when I was a kid, also a few random books like A. Merritt’s The Moon Pool, but they didn’t make much of an impression. I didn’t really like Tolkien. My father forced [...]
Continue reading about Interview: The Weird and – Lucius Shepard
“Humans have key characteristics other than size. We are tetrapods that are obligatory bipeds so we had the possibility to evolve hands. This is unique among mammals and reflects our unusual evolutionary journey from the trees to the plains of Africa. This change of habitat is somewhat unusual and seems to have been driven by [...]
In episode 100 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester offers up part three in our special three-part podcast on Sword and Sorcery moderated by editor, author and publicist Jaym Gates. This week’s panel: Jaym Gates (moderator) John O’Neill Howard Andrew Jones Ryan Harvey Bill Ward Jason M. Waltz James Enge Sam Sykes John R. [...]
Continue reading about The SF Signal Podcast Episode 100 Sword and Sorcery Panel Part 3 – Jaym Gates
In episode 98 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester offers up part two of a special three-part podcast on Sword and Sorcery moderated by editor, author and publicist Jaym Gates. (See also: Part 1.) This week’s panel: Jaym Gates (moderator) John O’Neill Howard Andrew Jones Ryan Harvey Bill Ward Jason M. Waltz James Enge [...]
Continue reading about The SF Signal Podcast Episode 098 Sword and Sorcery Panel Part 2 – Jaym Gates
“BPB: You mentioned in a recent interview that you were planning on visiting China for some necessary research for the next Darger and Surplus novel. Without giving away any spoilers, can you tell us where you’re going and what you plan to research? MS: The novel’s going to begin in Chengdu, a city in Sichuan [...]
Continue reading about Bradley P. Beaulieu Chats With – Michael Swanwick
“The House of Hashish” starts off with a wonderfully atmospheric opening with Dr. Petrie keeping a lonely nighttime vigil in the now abandoned shadow-filled wharf-side Joy Shop with only the sound of lapping waves and the incessant squealing of rats to accompany him. From a window, he watches Nayland Smith approach an old beggar woman [...]
“And there, in those years of the 1960s, he wrote stories like “‘Repent, Harlequin,&rsqu; Said the Tick-Tock Man,” “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World,” “A Boy and His Dog,” “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” and “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin,” racking up a considerable [...]
In relation to the Book of Cthulhu. 3.5 out of 5 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sheneverslept/2011/12/19/she-never-slept-interviews-author-laird-barron.mp3
Continue reading about She Never Slept Interviews Author – Laird Barron
“But Spinrad’s The Solarians (1966) is an exception, for here humanity actually causes an instability in the sun. We are losing a war of attrition with the relentlessly logical Dulgaari. But the Dulgaari fleet is duped into entering the solar system, ‘Fortress Sol’ – where it is vaporised by an artificial Nova Sol, ‘like a [...]
Continue reading about Norman Spinrad’s The Solarians – Stephen Baxter
“SF SIGNAL: Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. What’s the appeal of alien contact stories for you? Mark W. Tiedemann: For me it’s an opportunity to ask questions about the nature of sentience and the consequences of civilization-building. At a basic level, aliens are always just us with a twist, since imagining the [...]
Continue reading about The Alien Contact Interview – Mark W. Tiedemann
There’s a bell that hangs in a hidden cave Under the heathered hills That knew the tramp of the Roman feet And the clash of the Pictish bills. It has not rung for a thousand years, To waken the sleeping trolls, But God defend the sons of men When the bell of the Morni tolls. [...]
Continue reading about Bran Mak Morn Poem – Robert E. Howard
“In episode 96 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester offers up part one in a special three-part podcast on Sword and Sorcery moderated by editor, author and publicist Jaym Gates. This week’s panel: * Jaym Gates (moderator) * John O’Neill * Howard Andrew Jones * Ryan Anderson * Bill Ward * Jason Waltz * [...]
Continue reading about SF Signal Podcast 96 Sword and Sorcery 1 – Jaym Games
“One of these newly surveyed monsters, which weighs as much as 21 billion Suns, is in an egg-shaped swirl of stars known as NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in a sprawling cloud of thousands of galaxies about 336 million light-years away in the Coma constellation. The other black hole, a graveyard for the equivalent of [...]
Continue reading about Astronomers Find Biggest Black Holes Yet – Dennis Overbye
“ActuSF : In your book, you’re describing a situation in less than 50 years where humans will be operating comets for its ice and have colonies on the Moon and Mars. Do you think our actual economy and biggest interests and strategies for future will produce such technological advances and developments ? What in your [...]
Continue reading about Actu SF Interview – Alastair Reynolds
12.05.11 An artist’s concept of Kepler-22b Click image for multiple resolutions. This artist’s conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-22. Kepler-22′s star is a bit smaller than our sun, so its habitable zone [...]
“ll of the titles we worked on were pretty much your basic pulp. The air-wars were the least interesting to work on, partly because every last word of them was written by a single author under contract, David Goodis, who was not without talent — he published better things elsewhere — but didn’t waste any [...]
Continue reading about Popular Publications Part 7: The Beginning of the End – Frederik Pohl
“Al Norton’s principal editorial function was to read all the incoming pro submissions, and what few the three of us had considered possibilities from the slush pile, to pick out the ones he liked well enough to buy. Copy editing, proofreading, writing house ads and departments he left to us. We also picked a few [...]
Continue reading about Popular Publications Part 6: Deadlines – Frederik Pohl
“Although I had been out of the office only a few months, there had been some big changes already and more were coming. Frank A. Munsey’s magazine empire, consisting mostly of the weekly Argosy and a few other odds and ends, had been up for sale for some time, and when the price declined enough [...]
Continue reading about Popular Publications Part 5: There and Back Again – Frederik Pohl
“Turning that way meant you were then heading north, paralleling the adjacent East River. On your right would be an expanse of blank wall, then two sets of office doors, then another several yards of blank walls before you came to any normal-sized office. At that point you would have passed the two king-sized offices [...]
Continue reading about Popular Publications Part 4: Continuing Down the Corridor – Frederik Pohl
“Harry Steeger didn’t take me into his confidence about his reasons for adding fifteen or twenty new half-cent-a-word titles to his existing string of twenty or thirty penny-a-word pulps, but I can see what he might have been thinking. At a penny a word, the average pulp cost about $600 an issue for stories. Cut [...]
Continue reading about Popular Publications Part 2 – Frederik Pohl
It must be noted that Australian publishing houses make money by distributing or publishing foreign-originated titles. Though doing so does not make as much money as originating titles, neither does it require as much investment on the part of the publishing houses. In a sense, publishing houses are competing against themselves. As new authors take [...]
Continue reading about No Future? The Lack of Science Fiction Published in Australia – David Golding
““Good morning, Pohl,” he says — we knew each other for ten years before he ever addressed me as Fred — “Do you know why television can never replace radio in the American home?” And I knew that all was well with the world and John Campbell had begun work on his next month’s editorial. [...]
Continue reading about Astounding: The Campbell Years Riding High – Frederik Pohl
“Was that what you would call a dream job? For a grown-up faaan who still loved cons and fandom in general, you bet it was! But it wasn’t unwarranted. More than any other single human being, Julie was responsible for returning DC Comics, and indeed the whole comics industry, to the money-making powerhouse status it [...]
Continue reading about Julie Schwartz King of the Comics and Agent Editor Faaan – Julie Schwartz
“Aliette de Bodard describes her Obsidian and Blood series as a cross between “historical Aztec fantasy and a murder-mystery, featuring ghostly jaguars, bloodthirsty gods and fingernail-eating monsters.” Think Philip Marlowe slogging through the mud and blood of Mesoamerica or Sam Spade sleuthing among the Aztecs, shadow beasts, and flesh-eating star-demons. Imagine the lone detective in [...]
Continue reading about Disrupting the World in Large Ways: A Conversation with – Aliette de Bodard
“5. I know this is only the first of a series of Silverberg projects for Planet Stories. Will you describe what follows this volume? After Hunt the Space-Witch we have two additional Silverberg collections. The Planet Killers, which is on the way to store shelves as I write this, contains three early Silverberg novellas from [...]
Continue reading about The Planet Stories Line: Robert Silverberg and Others – Erik Mona
“She’s a pre-feminist action hero, a serious contender for the hardest secret agent around, and she’s a cartoon strip turned into a series of novels. Modesty Blaise predates Lara Croft and Emma Peel, and could beat them hollow: she could probably sort out Bond as well. She’s the original fighting machine, performing in breathtakingly exciting [...]
Continue reading about Peter O’Donnell and Modesty Blaise – Kate Macdonald
An article on Francis Gordon. 3.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Six Guns And Scimitars: The Wild West In The Middle East – Mark Finn
““The Queen of Hearts” finally gives readers the return of the Devil Doctor they had been so eagerly awaiting since first learning Fu-Manchu still lived six months earlier. The story starts with Rohmer’s trademark abrupt beginnings (in this instance Dr. Petrie yells, “Come in!” rather than “Who’s there?” in the opening line) with the unexpected [...]
“The classic saucer wasn’t dead though. The Millennium Falcon from epochal sci fi game-changer Star Wars is probably the single most beloved spacecraft in fiction, and it’s at its heart a pimped-out saucer. Probably the most interesting bit of spacecraft deign to come out of Star Wars was the Slave 1, personal runabout of bounty [...]
Continue reading about What should a sci-fi spaceship REALLY look like? – Michael Moran
““The Flower of Silence” finds Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie rooming at the New Louvre Hotel in London. Smith has been recalled from Cairo by his superiors. When the story opens on a chilly November night, Smith has returned to their apartment to inform Petrie that he has just leaned the name of the mysterious [...]
““Zarmi of the Joy Shop” gets off to a cracking start with Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie bringing the purloined brass box belonging to the Si-Fan to Inspector Weymouth’s office. The Inspector introduces them to Detective Sergeant Fletcher who patrols Limehouse. Fletcher tells them of John Ki’s Joy Shop, a gambling house of ill repute [...]
“The original story cycle has its origins in Persian times, but inspiration probably goes back even further. One of the characteristic features of the 1001 Nights is the puzzle-box story, where a framing device is used to connect stories. Characters within one of those stories may tell a tale within a tale, and sometimes, a [...]
Continue reading about On the Roots of Arabian Fantasy – Howard Andrew Jones
“I don’t think of myself as writing dystopias. To me, a dystopia is a deliberately designed society which is superficially perfected, but which is hell for the depicted individuals. That’s not what I do. I describe places where society has broken down or collapsed. I write about poor people. I write about places where technology [...]
Continue reading about Nebula Awards Interview – Paolo Bacigalupi
“Major influences upon Kane’s character include: Captain Nemo, Caine Miro (from Roger Corman’s film GUNSLINGER), Dr. Frankenstein, and Melmoth the Wanderer from Maturin’s novel of the same title. Q: What was your source for “The Mark of Kane”, that being his “killer’s blue eyes”? KEW: According to the legends, Cain had blue eyes, red hair, [...]
Continue reading about An Interview for Dark Troubadour – Karl Edward Wagner
“Dr. J. chats with Ted Chiang about his Hugo award winning novella “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” the ethics of creating intelligent machine minds, and the state of science fiction. (Part 1 of 2)” 4 out of 5 http://www.archive.org/download/TheEthicsOfCreatingConsciousBeings/20110929chiang-a.mp3
Continue reading about The Ethics of Creating Conscious Beings – Ted Chiang
“SF SIGNAL: Hi, Paul! What’s the appeal of alien contact stories for you? Paul McAuley: I think this anthology shows just how flexible first contact stories can be. No matter when or where they are set, whether the aliens come to us or we stumble upon them, they all address that fundamental question: are we [...]
Continue reading about The ‘Alien Contact’ Interview – Paul J. McAuley
“SFS: What projects are you currently working on? MR: Jack McDevitt and I just handed in a novel, The Cassandra Project, to Ace. I have a novel, The Doctor and the Kid, coming out this December from Pyr, and I just signed to do two more in the series, The Doctor and the Rough Rider [...]
Continue reading about The Alien Contact Interview – Mike Resnick
“SPCC: What’s next for Morlock? What are you working on currently?JE: The Wolf Age did well enough that Pyr signed me to another 3-book deal. Currently I’m finishing up an origin story for Morlock. It’s called A Guile of Dragons and is due out next summer. It’s very old school fantasy in some ways — [...]
Continue reading about An Interview with Fantasy Writer – James Enge
” After my recent review of Les Savage’s collection of western stories THE SHADOW IN RENEGADE BASIN, Keith Chapman left a comment about Señorita Scorpion, the aptly named blonde heroine who appeared in one of them. As part of my reply to him, I thought I’d work up a checklist of all of the stories [...]
Go back in time to try and score some cash for retrieval – start war with alien lizardmen. 3.5 out of http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/4784/full
“Takeshi Kovaks, Carl Marsalis, and Ringil Eskiath are three of your main protagonists, and all are fairly dark characters, anti-heroes each. Takeshi shoots people in the head to deprive their consciousness of rebirth, Carl is racking up the death toll from chapter one, and Ringil snaps children’s necks like it was nothing. How do you [...]
Continue reading about Feature Interview – Richard K. Morgan
“Alastair Reynolds Alastair Reynolds is a science fiction writer and former scientist. He lives in Wales. His latest novel is the far-future Terminal World. Coming up is Blue Remembered Earth, book 1 of the Poseidon’s Children trilogy. The notion of absolute post-scarcity has always struck me as more fantasy than fiction: unless one is dealing [...]
Continue reading about MIND MELD: Character Stakes in Post-Scarcity Novels Part 1 – Paul Weimer
“Q: What does the blog’s tagline “ideologically suspect” encompass? A: Well, it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, obviously. Occasionally I’d play with different sub-headings. But I think it has a serious undertone, too: that we’re challenging a lot of the underlying assumptions of “default” sf/f. You know, when James Gunn says, “American science fiction is the base [...]
“Athans: Chad Akins, also via Twitter, wants to know, “did writing Alien give you the creeps?” Reading your novelization scared the crap out of me, too, even though I read it after I’d seen the movie. Any advice for authors on how to approach a scary scene? One of the scariest books I’ve ever read. [...]
Continue reading about The Fantasy Author’s Handbook Interview – Alan Dean Foster
“Science fiction is more than just a genre of fiction. Hell, it’s more than just fiction. It’s a mode of thought; because our brains are hardwired and optimized to think in narratives, SF can be seen as a primary means by which we make sense of and plan for the future. By understanding how this [...]
Continue reading about Science Fiction as Foresight – Karl Schroeder
“The idea of an online third edition of the SFE has been around for the best part of a decade, and John Clute and others have been working on entries for five or six years. Although the third edition was originally contracted with (and generously supported by) Orbit, we amicably parted ways a few years [...]
Continue reading about The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: Some History – Graham Sleight
“3. What should always be edited out of a story? The boring parts.” 3 out of 5 http://www.angelaslatter.com/the-good-science-fiction-drive-by-gardner-dozois/
Continue reading about The Good Science Fiction Drive-by – Gardner Dozois
““One reviewer did confess to me yes, this is even slightly arousing, you know. Again that made me proud. The thing I would compare it to is there’s a fantastic book by Pete Dexter called Train, and it deals with golf. I am not interested in golf at all, it bores me rigid, and I [...]
Continue reading about Guy Haley Interviews – Richard Morgan
“Q: Your previous title, Silver Sands, appears to be an SF mystery. The world sounds quite noir – ‘a world of political intrigue, espionage and subterfuge; a world of retired cops, digital ghosts and corporate assassins’. Are you a film noir fan? A: I have long been a fan of films such as The Maltese [...]
““Bubbles” was originally written in 1995. What inspired you to write this story? Most of the universe is the regions between galaxies, yet no stories are ever set in that vast emptiness. I like a challenge.” 3.5 out of 5 http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-david-brin/
“Ye gods, Carson Napier, but are you ever going to do something proactive? The character’s passivity in Carson of Venus starts to get maddening. Perhaps it’s prudent to bide time within the enemy city of Amlot for the right time to act; but in an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure, heroes should be bombastic and risk-taking, [...]
Continue reading about Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Venus Part 3: Carson of Venus – Ryan Harvey
“In this particular story, Richards and Klein are sort of bullied by the AI head of the European Police into investigating the death of Zhang Qifang, the world’s foremost AI rights activist, who appears to have been murdered more than once. As they draw closer to solving this unusual homicide, they discover a plot that [...]
“British science fiction paperbacks of the time frequently had covers decorated with little more than abstract swirls. So Foss’s ability to paint distinctive, yet convincing, spaceships, robots and planets was seized upon by publishers. “Suddenly, I revolutionised book covers,” says Foss (who does not come over as a man who believes in hiding his light [...]
Continue reading about Chris Foss: The Joy of Starships – Sumit Paul-Choudry
“They strike from the heavens and rain down fiery death. They infiltrate us secretly, replacing us with doppelgängers. Their evil plants strangle our children and livestock. They impregnate our women with creepy telepathic children. Their terrible death machines burn our cities into ash. They affix to our brain stems and control us like meat puppets. [...]
Continue reading about Five Ways to End an Alien Invasion – Jeremiah Tolbert
“Will you tell us about the origins of the Luyten and the Defenders? I’ve always found starfish kind of creepy. They just don’t seem like they could be alive, given their appearance. So when I wanted to create an alien race that would be repulsive to Lila, starfish came to mind. I got the name [...]
“So that’s what led me to write Welcome To Your Dreamtime. The McGuffin, the science fiction of it, is a device which allows you to put a net on your head and a “dreamchip” in a player and experience a dream created for you by a dreamwriter.” 4 out of 5 http://www.sfwa.org/2011/09/an-interview-with-norman-spinrad-anarchist/
Continue reading about An Interview with Anarchist – Norman Spinrad
“In short, I’m tired of being invaded by US culture. I’m tired of US tropes being cited as the norm (even when it’s obvious that the rest of the world doesn’t follow such tropes), of bookshelves featuring translations from US writers and movies following standard Hollywood fare–of the one-way street which means the US sets [...]
Continue reading about On the prevalence of US tropes in storytelling – Aliette de Bodard
“The first time I read about her was on the SFWA website. She was the featured author and she instantly drew my attention because here was a young, very talented writer, whose mother tongue was French but who wrote in English. Well, turns out, that’s not the only amazing thing about Aliette de Bodard. A [...]
Continue reading about On writing science and language – Aliette de Bodard
“TP: What’s next for Aliette de Bodard? AdB: Several things are in the pipeline: I have a novella I hope to finish one day, and then I’ll move to editing the Xuya novel, Foreign Ghosts, as well as planning its sequels. Then we’ll see; I reckon that should keep me busy for a bit.” 3.5 [...]
Continue reading about One of the Rising Stars of Fantasy Fiction – Aliette de Bodard
“Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials was the product of a hungry youth with something to prove. I had just left Cooper early and was more than ready to go out and conquer the world. I came up with the idea over a beer with my parents — it was the perfect merging of what they did [...]
“Although many of its foundational writers had already sailed into the west, swords and sorcery reached a Weird peak in the 1960s. In 1961 Fritz Leiber coined the term “swords and sorcery” in the journal Ancalagon. The Swordsmen and Sorcerer’s Guild of America (can I get a membership, please?) began the first of its secretive [...]
“In the final part of the Q&A, Charlie talks about e-books and DRM, different companies’ responses to DMCA takedown notices, how writers are paid and compares text editors.” 4.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Q and A at Apple Part 3 – Charles Stross
“Charlie discusses Knuth, 3D printers and the law, Bitcoin and the future of publishing.” 4.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Q and A at Apple Part 2 – Charles Stross
The first part of Charles Stross’ question and answer session after his reading. 4.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Q and A at Apple Part 1 – Charles Stross
“The parade on the second planet continues in Lost on Venus. This one of the most controversial works that Edgar Rice Burroughs ever published, although it surprises me that enough readers managed to get through the lackluster first book, Pirates of Venus, to want to pick up the sequel and be able to argue about [...]
Continue reading about Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Venus Part 2 Lost on Venus – Ryan Harvey
“Title: On the possibility of extraterrestrial-artefact finds on the Earth Authors: Arkhipov, A. V. Publication: The Observatory, v. 116, p. 175-176 (1996)” 5 out of 5 http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1996Obs…116..175A
“But, outside that, and for myself personally, I have always loved the idea of a society fractured between those living in the sky and those on the ground. There’s lots of examples out there of it, but I think I first saw the idea in an Aliens Vs Predator comic, written by Chris Claremont, an [...]
Secret Agents need a favorite drink? “Surfing culture is big down here. There are folks bobbing up and down in search of waves no matter how fierce the weather. We used to live in a unit full of young guys who surfed and smoked pot endlessly and it occurred to me one day that they’d [...]
“Stories can come out of writing-related work. I was editing a Lonely Planet book on Madagascar, and got so fascinated by the detail that I asked the author if I could use it fictionally. He said yes, and that is how ‘Sagittaire’ (the new story in Matilda) came about” 3 out of 5 http://kaaronwarren.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/sparks-lucy-sussex/
“The Crooked Letter became my Silmarillion, the odd-shaped missing piece that sits between the Books of the Change and the Books of the Cataclysm, and my Broken Land books for kids as well. I think it’s my least successful book, but that hasn’t stopped people liking it (and I’m very grateful for that). It has [...]
“You’ve written several novels revolving around the Chaga, entitled the Chaga Saga. Were they born from “Recording Angel”? Do you think you’ll ever revisit Gaby and her story? No, the sequence is “Towards Kilimanjaro,” Chaga/Evolution’s Shore, “Recording Angel,” Kirinya, and Tendeleo’s Story. I do have the final volume of the Chaga Saga plotted out, but [...]
“Of all the “Origin Novels” from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s various series, Pirates of Venus is the weakest — and by a significant margin. Stacked against A Princess of Mars, Tarzan of the Apes, and At the Earth’s Core, all of which were written pre-1920, this is some tepid, weary storytelling going on here on Amtor. [...]
Continue reading about Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Venus Part 1: Pirates of Venus – Ryan Harvey
Pretty much a perfect biography. While Finn is obviously a writer that has a great affection for his subject it doesn’t mean he sugar coats it, either. I have zero interest in early Texas history for example, but that part of the book was good, too, when he was setting the scene for Howard’s life. [...]
Continue reading about Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard – Mark Finn
“SFFWRTCHT: The link between post-apocalyptic and dystopian can vary; is it because post-apocalyptic is often “the end” where dystopia is not? Meaning that dystopia is part of the process of civilization, the rise and fall, that can lead to a bad end. JJA: An apocalypse can involve dystopia, but they aren’t necessarily connected. In dystopian [...]
Continue reading about SFFWRTCHT: Chat With Editor – John Joseph Adams
“What’s next for Will and the gang in Book Three? In The Devil’s Looking Glass all the threads of the first two books come to a head. The characters must battle to prevent the powerful sorcerer Dr Dee falling into the hands of the Fay enemy. It has living dead pirates, The Tempest, and a [...]
“1. The idea for The Tide came from … and how did you convince the participants? “The Tide” came about the usual way story ideas tend to come about. Two completely separate subjects somehow got smooshed together in my mind, in this case immigration (and, more to the point, the Australian mass media’s xenophobic and [...]
Continue reading about The Livings Drive-by I presume – Martin Livings
Morrison gives us his take on what is important in USA comic book history. He is knowledgeable about this, but appears to have fiction black spots. Talks about Batman with no mention of the Shadow. Fantastic Four and Superman, no Doc Savage. The Punisher and mentions Charles Bronson, but not The Executioner, from which it [...]
“PK: The Steel Remains is set up as the adventure after the adventure. Ringil, Archeth and Egar all have rich pasts that are never fully explored or explained. What drew you to write a series about established (or even “washed-up”) heroes, rather than starting from the beginning – stableboys, lost princes, apprentice wizards and the [...]
Continue reading about Pornokitsch Interview – Richard Morgan
“Sympathy for the Devil,book 3 in the Morris and Chastain series just came out. Are there plans for more? In Sympathy for the Devil,we find Senator Howard Stark,who is secretly possessed by the demon Sargatanas,running for President of the U.S. Stark was a “dark horse” candidate at first,but his competitors for the nomination have been [...]
Continue reading about Interview: author of Sympathy For the Devil – Justin Gustainis
“5. What is the strangest thing you have ever done while writing? “When I’m writing TV scripts or comics, it’s really important to describe the action and emotions very clearly to the artist who has to illustrate/animate it. I’ll find myself acting out the movement (would she throw a brick at his head underarm or [...]
“JOHN OTTINGER: How do you pronounce your last name? I heard somewhere that your last name rhymes with “Benji,” not “hinge,” but I don’t know that for a fact. I’ve always said it as V(h)inge. Am I off base? VERNOR VINGE: I pronounce it as rhyming with the word “stingy.” OTTINGER: Do you still think [...]
“As the next generation of spaceships is being conceived, should shuttle designers take their inspiration from sci-fi illustrators? Generations of schoolchildren, openly, and many adults, perhaps more guardedly, have delighted in fantastical depictions of space travel. From Star Wars back to 2001: A Space Odyssey and even further back to comic hero Dan Dare and [...]
Continue reading about What Should Spaceships Look Like – Virginia Brown
“Take two icons of 20th century fantastic fiction. On one side is Superman, defender of truth, justice, and the American way. On the other is Elric of Melniboné, the albino sorcerer-king who wields the soul-sucking blade Stormbringer. And between them is Chris Roberson, the award-winning Austin-based comics author who shocked himself by spending the last [...]
Continue reading about Chris the Conqueror – Richard Whittaker
“So what lies in her own future? ”I’ve had numerous inquiries about turning Parrish Plessis into a movie but none that has got over the line yet, though we have developed it into a role-playing game, similar to Dungeons and Dragons. ”I’m also developing a web comic, which will be on my website around August. [...]
Continue reading about Space opera supremo – Marianne de Pierres
“STEVEN: 7th Sigma was born of my love of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Manly Wade Wellman’s Who Fears the Devil?, the place I live (New Mexico), and studying the martial art aikido for sixteen years. As I’ve said elsewhere I wanted to have the multi-cultural semi-lawless sort of setting that colonial India was and I achieved [...]
Continue reading about Interview: Author if 7th Sigma – Steven Gould
“SFFWRTCHT: I see from your bio that you’ve done some archeological work. Do you think it impacts your writing? JS: Definitely. Storytelling is much the same as archeology. You brush away the dirt bit by bit until the story emerges. SFFWRTCHT: How long does it typically take you to write a short story? JS: You [...]
Continue reading about A Chat with Author/Editor – Jason Sanford
“How do you run a complex society that relies on most people staying within agreed behavioural limits most of the time, if your legal system is not merely broken but *can’t be fixed* because it’s based on false assumptions?” 3.5 out of 5 http://www.orbitbooks.net/2011/07/15/crime-and-punishment/
Continue reading about Crime and Punishment – Charles Stross
“Carpenter’s movie is perhaps the smartest monster movie I’ve ever seen, on all counts: the script, the characters, the monster itselfhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. The fifties-era Howard Hawkes version showed us a creature which was presumably smart enough to travel between the stars, and yet whose actions when he finally got here amounted to no more than roaring [...]
Tries to sort out the complicated history for people. 4 out of 5
Continue reading about Elric: A New Reader’s Guide – John Davey
“BLDGBLOG: I’m interested in the possibility that literary genres might have to be redefined in light of climate change. In other words, a novel where two feet of snow falls on Los Angeles, or sand dunes creep through the suburbs of Rome, would be considered a work of science fiction, even surrealism, today; but that [...]
Continue reading about Comparative Planetology: An Interview with – Kim Stanley Robinson
About the influences, history in France and no more novels. 3 out of 5
Continue reading about Introduction To The French Edition Of Elric – Michael Moorcock
Talks about his own creation being American influenced – so that this is an American homage. 3 out of 5
Continue reading about Introduction To The Skrayling Tree – Michael Moorcock
Oddly on SF and fantasy and its history. 3 out of 5
Continue reading about Aspects of Fantasy 4 – Michael Moorcock
Talking about the growth of the fantasy industry – including D&D making him go more corporate. 3.5 out of 5
Continue reading about Introduction To The Taiwan Edition Of Elric – Michael Moorcock
Outline for a proposed four novel series. 3 out of 5
Continue reading about Earl Aubec of Malador – Michael Moorcock
On Faustian characters. 3 out of 5
Continue reading about Aspects of Fantasy 3 – Michael Moorcock
“Hi, Charles. Can’t say whether I’ve evolved, but I hope I’ve learned a few things along the way. I worked different notes in Occultation; where The Imago Sequence dealt with horror through a hyper- masculine, noir lens, the new collection features, on the whole, a broader spectrum of protagonists, most of them quite ordinary. The [...]
Continue reading about Charles Tan Interviews – Laird Barron
“With: Aliette de Bodard (France), Joyce Chng (Singapore), Csilla Kleinheincz (Hungary), Kate Elliott (US), Karen Lord (Barbados), Ekaterina Sedia (Russia/US) Kate: It’s difficult for me to articulate all the strands of thought interweaving in my head when I think about this. I’m going to throw this out just as a kind of fragmented opener that [...]
Continue reading about Global Women in Science Fiction Round Table – Lavie Tidhar
