• While the rest of us are talking amongst ourselves, sf author Walter Jon Williams is talking with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Apparently, Williams' book, Implied Spaces, makes for good reading...in spaaaace!


• SF Site interviews Fiona McIntosh (Royal Exile, book 1 of The Valisar Trilogy). [via Eos]


• SciFi Wire profiles K.J. Parker (The Company).


• Auxiliary Memory talks about The Children of Science Fiction: "I feel the kids who grew up with Star Wars are much different from my generation that grew up with Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke. Sure we might have evolved some when we started reading Delany, Zelazny and Dick, and the New Wave writers, but we're strangely tied to that generation of Ace Doubles and Ballantine Books and finding our reading thrills on twirling wired racks. And I wonder if the kids who grow up now with the many forms of science fiction today have any sense of kinship at all."


• Fantasy Magazine looks at Diversity In Speculative Fiction: "It seems like a common trope that diversity and quality in speculative fiction are mutually exclusive. Or, at least not a double necessity. Whenever an internet discussion blows up over this issue, ...I see it frequently stated that quality is more important than diversity, to the point where you would think quality and diversity couldn't live in the same story. And nobody ever questions this."


• At Futurismic, Mac Tonnies looks at UFOs and Science Fiction: "A casual onlooker might assume the anything-goes literary arena of science fiction and the often wild-eyed domain of contemporary ufology might make natural partners. But strangely (to my mind), science fiction has never gravitated to UFOs."


• John Scalzi asks: Are You Living in a Science Fiction Movie? "We don't spare any time to think of the virtual miracle of the touchscreen computer that we use as our phone (which has more processing power in it than was used to send the astronauts to the moon); rather, we whine and moan when our phone signal drops, when we can't access our e-mail, or when the picture we just took with the phone is blurry."


• One for the writers from Book View Cafe: On Being a Professional Amateur (Part 1): "To me, being a truly amateur writer--a lover of writing--means you love your craft enough to have a professional attitude toward it, a desire to do it with the highest level of skill you can. So, how do you make your craft reflect true amateurism and not the other kind? By weeding out the signs of amateurism and cultivating craft."


• Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
  • "A 'Verse Full of Scum" by Alan Baxter.
  • Audio Fiction:
    • @PodCastle: "Clad In Gossamer" by Nancy Kress, read by Paul S. Jenkins.
    • The latest episode of StarShipSofa contains audio fiction by Jeff VanderMeer, L. E. Modesitt Jr., and Mikal Trimm.


• In December, the KGB Fantastic Fiction Series welcomes Christopher Barzak & Alaya Dawn Johnson.


• Believe it or not, CosmoBells has the unaired pilot for a sequel series to the 1980s superhero show The Greatest American Hero called The Greatest American Heroine. (See also; This YouTube Clip) [also via QuasarDragon]


• Not a Planet Anymore lists Top 5 SF Movies with Toilet Scenes.


• SciFi Wire lists 10 Ways To Update The Day The Earth Stood Still.


• I promised myself I would not post a link to Top Ten Reasons Books Are Better Than Sex. Oops.

Comments (4) | PermaLink | Category: Tidbits
Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday November 20, 2008 at 12:07 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

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