‘The End of The World as We Know It’

Kris Rusch gives the legacy publishing doom-mongers an absolute skewering on her blog here, using only the power of actual facts and figures.

“For many in traditional publishing, the world is ending. Their clout is vanishing and their ability to understand what is going on is vanishing with it. They’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, wondering why it has suddenly gotten so cold. Yeah, they may survive in the future, but they’ll always remember the night they hit that iceberg—and the surprise they felt.”

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury

The old master died peacefully yesterday. There’s a wonderful obituary from Lev Grossman at TIME here.

““If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful,” he once said. “I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting.” He sold his first story in 1941 to Super Science Stories and never looked back. He had an essay in the New Yorker last week.”

He’ll be missed.

io9 June Sci-Fi and Fantasy Calendar

Is here. What do we have to look forward to? Some highlights:

  • Redshirts by John Scalzi. I already talked about this a little here.
  • Prometheus comes out!
  • Season 5 of True Blood. They nearly lost me at the end of season 3, but 4 was just good enough on average that I’ll give it a try.
  • A new (non-Malazan) Steven Erikson book of shorts, The Devil Delivered and Other Tales.

And John Carter comes out on DVD. I didn’t see the film because I heard it was terrible, but somehow it going to DVD this early makes me sad.

Anything you’re looking forward to, folks?

B*tches in Bookshops

 

Read so hard / I memorise

The Iliad / I know lines

Watch me spit / classic lit

Epic poems / that don’t rhyme

If you’re a Kanye/Jay-Z fan who’s also a writer, this is pretty much the best thing ever. Well played, ladies.

‘Our Human’ by Adam-Troy Castro

There’s a wonderful short story on Tor.com – Our Human, by Adam-Troy Castro.

I’d not heard of Castro before now, but I definitely want to read more of his work; apparently there are a couple of novels set in the same universe.

This novella is slightly reminiscent of the dark side of Banks’ Culture novels: ugly, flawed, populated by creatures and races with very different moral codes to our own, but all of the same worst characteristics.

Great sci-fi.

Memorable Characters in Sci-Fi and Fantasy

One of the reasons I love sci-fi and fantasy is the scope to create larger-than-life characters who really strike a chord with the reader (or viewer, depending on the medium). The success of The Avengers proves the public’s love affair with these super, heroic characters is still going strong.

But I also think the movie representations of such characters are always going to be shallow compared to what can be done in literature. It’s just a consequence of the shorter form – there’s only so much characterisation you can do in 120 minutes. Here are a couple of examples of some of my favourite, iconic SF/F characters, who could never be done justice on the big screen.

Read more…

‘Fifty Shades of Grey Banned From Libraries for Being Too Racy and Poorly Written’

Just a quick one, because I actually laughed out loud at the headline. Article on io9 (again!) here.

The first comment has a brilliant Amazon review:

“Thanks to the many other perturbed readers who have shared their own choices of the most annoyingly overused phrases in this masterpiece. Following up on their suggestions with my ever-useful Kindle search function, I have discovered that Ana says “Jeez” 81 times and “oh my” 72 times. She “blushes” or “flushes” 125 times, including 13 that are “scarlet,” 6 that are “crimson,” and one that is “stars and stripes red.” (I can’t even imagine.) Ana “peeks up” at Christian 13 times, and there are 9 references to Christian’s “hooded eyes” and 7 to his “long index finger.” Characters “murmur” a whopping 199 times (doesn’t anyone just talk?), “clamber” on/in/out of things 21 times, and “smirk” 34 times. Finally, in a remarkable bit of symmetry, our hero and heroine exchange 124 “grins” and 124 “frowns”… which, by the way, seems an awful lot of frowning for a woman who experiences “intense,” “body-shattering,” “delicious,” “violent,” “all-consuming,” “turbulent,” “agonizing” and “exhausting” orgasms on just about every page.”

Pity the author. Without critical acclaim, all E. L. James has are her 250,000+ e-book sales and seven-figure print deal.

Worlds Without End – Legends of SF

If you’ve not checked out Worlds Without End in my blogroll on the right, take a peek now. It’s OK, I’ll wait.

The site is an incredible resource, and ‘brings together the complete listings of novels, authors and publishers for 12 major awards in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror‘. I’ve mentioned ‘my inevitable Hugo Award’ enough times that you won’t be surprised that was the first place I went. And after spinning through the shortlists for the last 20 years I was awestruck by how many legendary names appear consistently, year on year.

Read more…