SF Tidbits for 7/3/08
By John DeNardo |
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at
12:09 am

- Charles Stross News:
- Over at his blog, Charles Stross shows off the UK and US covers for Saturn’s Children. (Read this before you sound off about the US cover, sez Charlie.)
- Orbit has posted an extract from Saturn’s Children.
- Stross has also announced three upcoming books: a new short story collection, provisionally titled Palimpsest; a sequel to Halting State, provisionally titled 419; a third Laundry novel called The Fuller Memorandum.
- Free Fiction:
- @Gutenberg: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
- @FeedBooks: The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel.
- @FeedBooks: “Food Chain Blues” and “SETI” by Richard Kadrey.
- @Solaris: “Three Unbroken” (Part 40) by Chris Roberson.
- The latest StarShipSofa features fiction from Mary Rosenblum and Matthew Sanborn Smith..
- Tor has posted Part 3 of a video series of Cory Doctorow reading Little Brother.
- Interviews & Profiles:
- The Book Show has an audio-interview with Neil Gaiman. [via SFFaudio]
- Shirley Jackson Awards Blog interviews William Browning Spencer and Joe Hill.
- Adventures in Scifi Publishing podcast-interviews Marie Brennan and Patrice Sarath, respective authors of Midnight Never Come and Gordath Wood.
- Author Author interviews Jo Graham (Black Ships).
- At SciFi Wire, John Joseph Adams profiles John Helfers, co-editor of Future Americas with Martin H. Greenberg.
- Gareth D. Jones interviews Pete Crowther.
- Controversy of the week: Margo Lanagan’s story, “The Goosle,” (published in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow) came under fire by Dave Truesdale at SF Site. This spawned responses from Niall Harrison and Jonathan McAlmont. Ellen Datlow is following the discussion.
- All next week, Richard K. Morgan, author of Altered Carbon and Thirteen, will be guest-blogging on Omnivoracious.
- Author Christopher Paolini (Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr) talks about Vroengard Academy, Alagaesia, and what’s next for him. Watch the video!
- Norilana Books presents Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, the first volume of this extraordinary new annual anthology series of fantastic literature, edited by Mike Allen.
- The new issue of File 770 is posted at eFanzines as a PDF file.
- Futurismic discusses the economics of book retailing: “…the same technological factors that have flattened the music industry sales curve have made the book market more spiky.”
- SFWA News:
- Jayme Lynn Blaschke has been appointed as the Communications & Marketing Director.
- Cat Rambo has been appointed the new chair of the SFWA Copyright Committee.
- “Here are seven photographs of our possible future on the Moon, and a look back, with ten images from our last visits with the Apollo missions, more than 36 years ago now”
- Kevin Maher tells us Why Conquest of the Planet of the Apes Rules.
- And the Scalzi says…”Science Fiction Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard“
- The 2008 finalists in the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge are up and ready for voting at Atom.
- The Crotchety Old Fan lists The Top 35 SF & F Magazine Covers of All Time. What, no sign of the classic Astounding Science Fiction Freas cover?
- How To Split An Atom lists 32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read. I’ve read 22 of them. OK, one of them is really a short story, but still…Yay me!
- The Samurai Gunslinger lists The 15 Sexiest Women of Sci-Fi. I’m just sayin’…
Related posts:
- SF Tidbits for 12/7/06
- SF Tidbits for 1/1/07
- SF Tidbits for 10/5/06 – The Biggest Set of Tidbits Ever!
- SF Tidbits for 6/26/07
- SF Tidbits for 7/18/07
Filed under: Tidbits
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The US cover for Saturn’s Children looks like an ad for breast implants. She’s
even holding one in her hand.
Has anybody mentioned the SFBC edition of Saturn’s Children?
They use art by Scott Grimando, rather than the Ace or Orbit ones.
Here it is on Scott’s website .
Thanks, Lou! I had no idea it existed. Readers can see part of the whole wraparound image above, next to the other covers.
There were a couple on that list of 32 novels I thumbed through but didn’t get very far: Frankenstein and Clockwork Orange. Two examples where the film versions were canonical, the book versions relatively obscure. I should give ‘em another try, maybe.
“32 books that have pushed the boundaries of the genre, inspired generations of thinkers and in some cases have even predicted key aspects of societies development”
Really? Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Timeline? Really?
Oh, 23 out of 32. Darn old, old SF books.
I might buy in with the Doctorow because it was several kinds of awesome, but Timeline?
Thanks for the mention (re: 32 books). I explained a lot better in the comments, but here’s a brief justification for Timeline.
Yea, it’s not a great book.
It is, however, for all it’s flaws a popular (as in lots of people have read it) book.
I wanted the list to cover a broad range of “types” of SF.
What was really nice was that if you read the comments so many of you provided me with books I just didn’t remember (The Left Hand Of Darkness, shame on me) and many I hadn’t read.
I hope this helps ease your mind a little, and thank you for reading.