Trek Slash…the savior of low content days…

[via Topless Robot]

• Ellen Kushner’s The Golden Dreydl has been adapted for Broadway as The Klezmer Nutcracker, running December 6th 2008 through January 2009, and features Kushner in the cast. [via Locus Online]
• Interviews & Profiles
  • @Locus Online: Excerpts from an interview with Paul Melko (Singularity’s Ring and Ten Sigmas and Other Unlikelihoods).
  • StarShipSofa interviews Richard K. Morgan. [via SFF Audio]
  • The Washington Post profiles M.T. Anderson. [Gwenda Bond]
  • Cititor SF interviews Alistair Rennie (The New Weird, Weird Tales, Electric Velocipede.
• Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
  • @Apex: “Paying It Forward” by Michael A. Burstein (a free sample of Burstein’s collection I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein).
  • @Manybooks: Shapes that Haunt the Dusk, edited by Heney Mills Alden and William Dean Howells (1891).
  • Audio Fiction @Escape Pod:
    • “Skyscrapers” by Rachel Swirsky, read by Ann Leckie.
    • “Karakuri” by Gideon Fostick, read by Dave Leckie.
• Here’s Léna Roy, Madeleine L’Engle’s Granddaughter, on the occasion of Madeleine L’Engle’s 90th Birthday: “It is a beautiful October day in Northwestern Connecticut, the leaves delicious in their gold and red grandeur, the kind of day my grandmother, Madeleine L’Engle would have gloried in.” [via Locus Online]
• The medical-technology blog Medgadget just posted the winners from its third annual medical-SF story contest, which are posted at the site (more free fiction!).
• Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who) has received his OBE for services to drama from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace.
• Fun weekend papercraft: BURN-E Paper Model. [via Super Punch]
• SF universe lists Things SF Fans Can Be Thankful For. I would add that I am thankful for the Fringe bumpers that say when the show will return wo I know how many times to hit my Tivo commercial-skip button. Thanks, Fringe!

OK that might be a little extreme, but hear me out. My friend Megan is a librarian at a major metropolitan library. She recently asked me “why don’t sci-fi and fantasy readers use libraries?” I was taken aback – I figured that genre fans everywhere used libraries and that would include readers of science fiction. But no, apparently they don’t.

Her library’s reports regularly show that sci-fi/fantasy is the least circulated genre in the library’s collection. Non-fiction books are even circulated more than sci-fi. Yikes. I wondered if many readers were also collectors; they want to own these books and thus the library holds little appeal. Or maybe the disappointment at not finding a book you wanted turned you off to libraries?

The library has a limited budget to spend and realistically they need to spend that on the books that will be used the most. Sure, the library should be well-rounded, but why invest in a book like (the excellent) Fitzpatrick’s War that 2 people will ever check out when she could buy another copy of the latest James Patterson novel that will spend the better part of a year outside the library in the homes of happy readers.

So I thought it would be good to ask you, the readers here, what can she do? What would coax those of you who haven’t stepped foot in your local library in the last year to take another look and actually utilize its services? Let us know in the comments, and thanks!

The band How I Became the Bomb offers up this SciFi music video for their song “Salvage Mission”.

[via Gerry Canavan]

• Crackle is streaming Gattaca, the 1997 genetic engineering SciFi film starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law. Great film.
• The Dragon Page interviews T. A. Pratt (Dead Reign).
• Artist John Picacio now has a Facebook page.
• Peggy continues to update the list of responses to her science/science fiction question, including David Brin and Peter Watts.
• Happy first birthday to SF audio magazine Starship Sofa!
• Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
  • @Grantbridge Street & other misadventures: Comic book scans of “Adam Link in business,” adapted from the second sequel to Eando Binder’s “I, Robot,” first seen in Weird Science-Fantasy #29.
  • @Feedbooks: Phantastes: A Faerie Romance by George MacDonald (1858).
  • Audio Fiction:
    • Zombie Astronaut has four different versions of Hitchcock’s The Birds.
    • @Escape Pod: “Mission to Dover” by Gideon Fostick, read by Lyle Merithew.
    • @Broken Sea Audio: Queen of the Black Coast by Robert E. Howard, performed by a full cast. [via SFFaudio]
• SciFi Scanner looks at Spielberg SciFi Sequels That Never Were (And One That Never Should Have Been).

When I was younger, Channels 9 and 11 in New York used to show monster movies on Thanksgiving weekend. In that spirit, we offer you The Giant Gila Monster in which “a teenage hot rodder and his buddies meet a large lizard that devours trees.”

Perhaps inspired by this photo-chop, comes DJ Spock!

[via OpticalPoptitude]

• Interviews & Profiles:
  • @BookSpotCentral: Hal Duncan (Escape from Hell!): “…I grew up on all those old SF novels that were 150 pages max. I love that stuff, but it’s hard to find a book these days that’s not at least twice that length.”
  • Locus Magazine has posted and interview excerpt with editor Gardner Dozois: “Although SF is leaking into mainstream fiction and mainstream is leaking back, you can still tell whether or not something is core science fiction, if you care to make that distinction in the first place.”
• Free Fiction [courtesy of the ever-vigilant QuasarDragon]
  • @Book View cafe, Pati Nagle is serializing her story “Glad Yule“, a fantasy novella with strong romantic elements which originally appeared in An Armory of Swords edited by Fred Saberhagen.
  • Ray Gun Revival #48 features fiction by Scott Davis, Mike Duran, D. Thomas Mooers, R. J. Walker Miller, M. Keaton, Keanan Brand, Sean T. M. Stiennon, and John M. Whalen.
  • Audio Fiction:
    • @PodCastle: “Bury the Dead” by Ann Leckie, read by Tina Connolly
    • @Dunesteef: “Überman” by John Medaille.
• Over at SciFi Scanner, Mary Robinette Kowal asks Why Do Fantasy Movies Always Kill the Parents?
• S.M. Duke is talking about Werewolves and Misconceptions About Science Fiction: “Since when have science fiction and fantasy been at all synonymous?”
• Over at SF Gospel, Gabriel Mckee names his choices for the Asimov’s and Analog readers’ polls.
• There’s a discussion on Asimov’s forum about The Best SF Novels of 2008.
• One for the writers: The Importance of Story-World [PDF link] by Gary Reynolds takes an introductory look at story-world creation.
• The Washington Post ran a contest for the worst ending of a novel. Here are the “winners“. [via Edward Willett (who lists his own endings) via Scott Edelman]
• io9 lists Ten of the Kinkiest Science Fiction Books You’ll Ever Read. (Note to self: move Saturn’s Children higher up in the reading pile.)

Tobias Buckell, author of Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose, is back in the hospital today due to a pulmonary embolism.

Head on over to his blog and wish him well.

Get well, Toby!

When Book View Café (BCV) launched back on November 18th I was most surprised to see this rather large list of published authors who have signed up to be contributors. The list includes established authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin and rising newcomers such as Sylvia Kelso. I was immediately intrigued; why have these authors all come together in this way? What are they hoping to accomplish? And, why are they all women?

With these and other questions in mind, I set out to interview Amy Sterling, the author who brought the launch to our attention. Lucky for me (and you!) she consented to give us a behind-the scenes look at the new venture.

SF Signal: First, how did this all get started?

Amy: After a lot of discussions in recent months about alternative types of publishing and cooperative writing, some of us who have been writing friends for a long time decided to get together and take charge of our creative lives. The main impetus came out of the SF-FFW’s, an informal group of professional science fiction and fantasy female writers that has been together about five years. Sarah Zettel took the leadership, but I’m proud to say that I think it was an encouraging message from me that was part of the spark.

SF Signal: How long did it take to get going once you decided to make it happen?

Amy: The idea was first discussed in April – so it has been about 6 to 7 months. Our launch was originally planned for September. We also coordinated with the iPhone application TextOnPhone, and the combination of this and their planned fall subscriber push encouraged our November 15 launch.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Have some turkey: Here’s Irwin Allen’s production of Time Travelers.

Story by Rod Serling? Yikes!

[via QuasarDragon]

• Interviews & Profiles:
  • @SFScope: James Patrick Kelly (The Wreck of the Godspeed).
  • @Concept Sci-fi: Andy Remic (Biohell).
  • Locus Magazine posts interview excerpts with Greg Bear (City at the End of Time).
  • LA Weekly interviews Wil Wheaton.
• Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
  • The final online issue of The Martian Wave features fiction by Anne Stringer and Rick Novy.
  • @Big Pulp:
    • “Cloning The King” by Bill Ward.
    • “The Thing That Ate Mrs. Wilson’s Dog” by Sophie Bachard.
  • Audio Fiction:
    • @Digital Meltdown: Christopher Lee’s Fireside Tales. [via Crosseyed Cyclops]
    • @Pseudopod: “Lala Salama” by Gill Ainsworth, read by Heather Welliver.
    • @RevCast: “Cookies Have No Souls” by Ryan C. Thomas, read by Matthew Bey.
    • The latest StarShipSofa contains audio fiction and poetry by Samantha Henderson, Joe R Lansdale, and Michael Moorcock. And some nice cover art!
• Free excerpt: Read the first chapter of Perfect Circle by Carlos J. Cortes.
• Joe Abercrombie sells out, puts map in book. Gasp!
• Kevin Maher heads to Lebowski Fest to rally Jeff Bridges supporters behind his latest endeavor: Tron Fest.
• For Firefly fans…2 words: Kaylee Maquette. [via Fandomania]
• Genre Savvy rounds up scary/sexy robots links.
• Lists:
  • A few genre titles show up in Cinematical’s list of Terrific Turkeys of the Aughts. [via Cynical-C]
  • @The List Universe: Top 10 Star Wars Spoofs. Consider this an update of our won list from 2005.
  • Things John Scalzi is thankful for.

I’m not sure this warrants another post, but I couldn’t resist the headline. Although, now that I watch it again, some comments folks made make me wonder: what the heck does Kirk think he’s doing wrecking a classic car like that? Reckless jackass. Who in their right mind would give him a starship?

Many say that the best speculative fiction stories are those with strong characters. But sometimes we run across characters that outshine the story. We asked this week’s panel:

Here are their answers…

Memorable characters, in no particular order

Ben Reich (The Demolished Man) – he’s bright, he’s tough, he’s willing to buck a system that has stacked all the odds against him (how do you get away with a murder when the police are telepaths?), and to this day I think he gets away with it if Alfie Bester doesn’t decide that he shouldn’t.

The Mule (Foundation and Empire) – one of the only two believable characters Isaac Asimov ever drew, he is at first totally awesome (until we realize who he is) and totally villainous (until we understand him), and although he is completely at odds with what Isaac clearly considers the salvation of Civilization, he nonetheless arouses the reader’s sympathy.

Charly Gordon (Flowers for Algernon) – possibly the most fully-realized character of those I’m mentioning, you admire his ascent from imbecile to genius and suffer through his descent back to imbecility. An incredibly moving story, quite possibly the best novella in our field’s history, and since it is comprised entirely of Charly’s diary he is the singular engine that drives the story and sways the reader’s emotions.

Jonathan Herovit (Herovit’s World) – to me, Herovit, who is slowly going mad writing an endless series of generic space operas, is the most memorable science fiction writer ever created. And, since it’s by Barry Malzberg at the peak of his powers, the most tragic as well.

Jenkins (City) – okay, so Jenkins is a robot and not a human being at all, but thank heaven Cliff Simak didn’t feel compelled to follow Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics as almost everyone else of his era did, and created a robot with hopes and dreams, a robot who was thrilled to be working for a Webster once again, and a robot who in the end is willing to lie when he feels the situation requires it.

Nameless child (“Born of Man and Woman”) – it’s a very short story, and the narrator doesn’t even have a name…but it is so brilliant, so horrific, and so memorable that it made Richard Matheson a star with his very first story. It’s hard to read this and not be chilled by it – and it’s even harder, decades later, to forget the narrator, who is as memorable as they come, even if that memory is accompanied by an involuntary shudder.

Marid Audran (When Gravity Fails, etc.) – Marid was the protagonist of George Alec Effinger’s masterworks, When Gravity Fails and A Fire In The Sun (as well as The Exile Kiss, which was not quite as successful). In an age of cynical atheism, Marid is Islamic; in an age of urban sprawls in the Orient, Marid wanders a Middle Eastern city drawn from the French Quarter in New Orleans; in an era where “punk” was at least as important as “cyber”, George (and Marid) ignored it in favor of art. There’s never been a protagonist quite like Marid, before or since.

Northwest Smith (13 stories) – I don’t know if any other respondents will name anyone else on my list, but I feel reasonably confident that only I will name Northwest Smith. He’s pulpish and two-dimensional at best, no question about it. His adventures are similar, usually erotic without being sexy (if that makes sense to you; it made sense to the distributors or the magazines wouldn’t have reached the stands), and he is saved from his particular vices far more by others than by himself. But he’s here because whenever my sensawonder needs a shot of adrenaline, I just pick up one of Catherine Moore’s Northwest Smith stories and I’m fine twenty minutes later. I don’t have much higher praise than that.

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You think you’re having a bad day?

[via Poe TV]

• Interviews & Profiles:
  • @Whatever: Christopher Barzak (The Love We Share Without Knowing).
  • @The Nebula Awards: Kij Johnson (The Fox Woman and Fudoki).
  • @Eldritch-Infernal: Thomas Ligotti (The Nightmare Factory). [via Bibliophile Stalker]
  • @Suvudu: Five Questions for David Farland (The Wyrmling Horde).
  • Star Wars Books interviews Karen Miller (Clone Wars: Wild Space).
  • @The Sci-Fi Genre Review: Five Questions for Barbara Romo
  • @Fusion Despatches: Charles Tan (co-editor of Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler).
  • @BlogCritics: Orson Scott Card (The Lost Gate).
  • @Bibliophile Stalker: Pat St-Denis of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist.
  • @SF universe: John Noble (Fringe‘s crazy Walter Bishop — still the best character on television)
• Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
  • @Tor.com: The Buried Pyramid by Jane Lindskold.
  • @Monsters and Critics: a free download of Six Bad Things (in glorious PDF) by Charlie Huston. (OK, not sf/f but Huston’s done great stuff with his Joe Pitt vampire series, so there.) [via Charlie Huston]
  • @Grantbridge Street & other misadventures: Comic book scans of The Trial of Adam Link, adapted from the sequel to Eando Binder’s I, Robot, first seen in Weird Science-Fantasy # 28.
  • The Daedalus Transfer by Huw Langridge is free online with a new look.
  • @QD2:”Moon Monster” by Jack Anthony (1940).
  • @Fantasy Magazine: “When I Was A Witch” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1910).
  • @The Scientific Indian: “21 Minutes” by Rahul Jaisheel. [via Variety SF]
  • Audio Fiction:
    • @Transmissions From Beyond: “Pseudo Tokyo” by Jennifer Linnaea, read by Ben Phillips.
    • Zombie Astronaut has the NBC University Theater version of 1984, along with more Deep Night and Johnny Chase: Secret Agent Of Space.
    • @Maria Lectrix: Part 4 ,the conclusion, of “The Risk Profession” by Donald E. Westlake, read by Maureen O’Brien.
• School Library Journal’s list of the Best Books of 2008 includes Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, Coraline: Graphic Novel by Neil Gaiman adapt. & illus. by P. Craig Russell, Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, and Nation by Terry Pratchett. [via SF Canada]
• Cover Pr0n: Planet of Mystery by Terry Bisson, available from PS Publishing.
• Kathryn Cramer, Ellen Datlow and Ian Randal Strock
• have posted photos from this week’s SFWA Authors & Editors Party
• Cory Doctorow: willing science fiction into fact. “The activist-novelist explains to Damien G Walter how he hopes his writing will change tomorrow’s world.”
• Mike Brotherton weighs in on the “Science Fiction” vs. “SciFi” debate.
• Pyr has posted their forthcoming sf/f books.
• Meanwhile, Pyr Editor Lou Anders is dreaming of a Batmobile Christmas. Anyone else think that BatBeetle reminds them of Courageous Cat’s car?
• The website Star Wars: A New Heap, or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Death Star highlights connections between architecture, design, movie SF and art. [via Futurismic via Ken MacLeod]
• TheForce.Net notes the option of purchasing a personalized edition Star Wars: Millennium Falcon by James Luceno. Customization includes a personalized photo and printed dedication.
• Andrew Wheeler knows what authors really mean when they talk about genre boundaries.
• Fantasy Magazine asks: Why Don’t Readers Comment On Fiction?
• Peggy at Biology in Science Fiction is compiling response links to her Ask a Scienceblogger meme.
• Lindsay Wagner knows what went wrong with Bionic Woman remake.
• Empire points us to this cool (but brief) Terminator Salvation Promo.
• Lists:
  • Holy Hancock , Batman! @SciFi Scanner lists 5 Original Movie Superheroes That Will Smith Should Study.
  • The Los Angeles Times lists 12 upcoming remakes of Hollywood sci-fi classics.
  • @The Crotchety Old Fan: The Top Ten Collectible SF Magazines.
  • Discover Magazine lists 5 Offbeat Ideas For The Next Doctor Who. Jason Bateman as the Doctor? Awesome.

Night Shade Books has posted the contents of The Best SF and Fantasy of the Year Vol. 3 edited by Jonathan Strahan, due out next year.

1. “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang
2. “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear
3. “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” by Peter S. Beagle
4. “Fixing Hanover” by Jeff VanderMeer
5. “The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi
6. “The Dust Assassin” by Ian McDonald
7. “Virgin” by Holly Black
8. “Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel
9. “The Thought War” by Paul McAuley
10. “Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarskoe” by Garth Nix
11. “The Small Door” by Holly Phillips
12. “Turing’s Apples” by Stephen Baxter
13. “The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates” by Stephen King
14. “Five Thrillers” by Robert Reed
15. “The Magician’s House” by Megan McCarron
16. “Goblin Music” by Joan Aiken
17. “Machine Maid” by Margo Lanagan
18. “The Art of Alchemy” by Ted Kosmatka
19. “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson
20. “Marry the Sun” by Rachel Swirsky
21. “Crystal Nights” by Greg Egan
22. “His Master’s Voice” by Hannu Rajaniemi
23. “Special Economics” by Maureen McHugh
24. “Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment” by M Rickert
25. “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled…” by Michael Swanwick
26. “If Angels Fight” by Rick Bowes
27. “The Doom of Love in Small Spaces” by Ken Scholes
28. “Pretty Monsters” by Kelly Link

[via Jason Sanford]

REVIEW SUMMARY: Part mainstream novel, part thriller, part social science fiction novel, but best at the latter.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A series of outbreaks of sudden, extreme violence grips the nation in fear and paranoia.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Wonderfully increasing feeling of suspense and paranoia; excellent depiction of societal behavior; characters you care about.

CONS: Insufficient reason given for the outbreaks of violence; interstitials of violence sometimes seemed aimed to shock rather than build the world.

BOTTOM LINE: The story shines when it sheds its mainstream pretense.

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Divers and Sundry had this awesome find…it’s Devil Girl From Mars and is the film that author Octavia Butler credits for inspiring her to write science fiction:

I’m going to talk a little bit about the effects of the media on me and on my work. It’s impossible to begin to talk about myself and the media without going back to how I wound up writing science fiction and that is by watching a terrible movie. (Laughter) The movie was called, “Devil Girl from Mars,” and I saw it when I was about l2 years old, and it changed my life. (Laughter) It was one of those old 1950s movies in which the beautiful Martian woman arrives on earth to announce that all the Martian men have died off and there are a bunch of man-hungry women up there. And the earth-men don’t want to go. As I was watching this film, I had a series of revelations. The first was that “Geez, I can write a better story than that.” And then I thought, “Gee, anybody can write a better story than that.”

William Shatner responds to the new Trek Trailer. Twice. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one is more accurate.

This one?

…or this one?

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