• Sean Williams shows off the cover of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Is there a special term we give to media tie-in novels based on a games that are based on movies?


• Lou Anders, meanwhile, shows off the cover of his upcoming anthology Sideways in Crime.


• Dark Roasted Blend interviews John C. Wright: "I would venture to say that if you are reading a yarn where there are no space-pirates and no space-princesses, if the Dinosaurs of Mars never make an appearance, if no space-marine shoots through the core of the planet with a hand-weapon in order to kill an enemy standing on another continent, if no ancient alien artifacts larger than worlds stir into life after a million years of dormancy, and if not a single planet is blasted into molten asteroids, no star into a nova star, no galaxy into a Seyfert galaxy, no universe into a new Big Bang, then what you are reading might not be space opera. Space opera should contain at least one of these elements."


• Bldg Blog interviews Kim Stanley Robinson about climate change, the influence of Greek island villages on his descriptions of Martian base camps, about life as a 21st century primate in the 24/7 "techno-surround", how we must rethink utopia as we approach an age without oil, whether "sustainability" is really the proper thing to be striving for, and what a future archaeology of the space age might find. Mundane SF responds: "So pay attention all you Science Fiction writers of the future. This is the future, so put aside your time machines, talking robots, and so forth, and tell us what it's really going to be like." [via Futurismic]


• The Ballardian offers the 2-part essay Waste in the Fiction of J.G. Ballard: "For Ballard, waste registers a process, a cycle, a movement, and system in transition: durability and permanence have no place in a fictional world that revels in the power of waste to negotiate and renegotiate value."


• Dragon Page podcast-interviews Karen Miller (The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage).


• Here's a very brief article on How to Write Alternate History.


• Forbes lists Cory Doctorow among their list of web celebrities. [via SF Scope]


• Over at the Guardian, Gemma Malley lists Top 10 Dystopian Novels for Teenagers. (Short version: 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, The Children of Men by PD James, The Chrysalids by John Wyndam, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Children's Story by James Clavell, and The Diary of Anne Frank.) [via Libertas]


• Ellen Datlow has posted pictures of the December 19th KGB reading with Naomi Novik and Christopher Barzak.


• Roddenberry.com will be posting an online comic strip illustrated by David Reddick. It's called "Gene's Journal" and debuts in January.

Comments (4) | PermaLink | Category: Tidbits
Posted by John DeNardo at Friday December 21, 2007 at 12:25 AM
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