SF Tidbits for 5/29/08

• The Telegraph profiles William Shatner, who talks candidly about the death of his wife, which he discusses at length in his new autobiography Up Till Now.
• Boing Boing TV has Cory Doctorow reading from Little Brother.
• A handwritten, 800-word, card-sized Harry Potter prequel written by J.K. Rowling is being auctioned to benefit English PEN, the writers’ association, and the British charity Dyslexia Action. Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing and novelist Margaret Atwood are also scheduled to provide auction items.
• Free Fiction:
  • StarShipSofa offers “Easy as Pie” by Rudy Rucker. Also available: an article by Peter Watts and Poetry by Laurel Winter. [via SFFaudio]
  • John Scalzi will be writing new short short fiction for the Subterranean Press newsletter.
  • Recently-free fiction at ManyBooks.net:
    • “The Nothing Equation” by Tom Godwin (1957).
    • “The Hunted Heroes” by Robert Silverberg (1956).
    • “Postmark Ganymede” by Robert Silverberg (1957).
• Over at Futurismic, Jonathan McCalmont looks at the entanglement of science fiction with Young Adult literature, and wonders whether YA is the latest victim of science fiction’s aggressive expansionist tendencies: “SF has proved itself not only to be a survivor but also a voracious predator and a cunning diplomat, endlessly subsuming or allying itself with smaller and related sub-cultures.”
• Weird Tales has recently started posting 365 Days of Blasphemous Horrors, a year of artwork based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.
• SpaceWesterns podcast-interviews SFWA President-elect Russell Davis.
• Event: The June 3rd New York Review of Science Fiction Reading features Thomas M. Disch and Karen Russell. [via Tachyon]
• At SciFi Scanner, John Scalzi explains Why the Movie Version of Your Favorite SciFi Book Stinks and Kevin Maher looks at The Truly Alien Nature of Politics Revealed in They Live.
• Can you guess which genre movies made Scene-Stealers’ list of Top 10 Flops Turned Classics? Hint: It’s not Waterworld.
• Jeff VanderMeer is wondering about Unfilmable Novels.
• Laughing Squid shares this grieving Stormtrooper poster: “I had friends on that Death Star…”
• Topless Robot lists The 10 Most Blatant Star Wars Toy Rip-Offs of the ’70s. I think I had one of those Black Hole robots.

Related posts:

1. Silverberg Restrospective Series in the Works
2. More SF Tidbits for 2/5/06
3. SF Tidbits Part XXVI
4. SF Tidbits Part XXI
5. SF Tidbits for 10/7/06

Filed under: Tidbits

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