SF Tidbits for 12/11/08

• Lot’s of great stuff over at AMC’s SciFi Scanner this week:
  • First, they are giving fans a sneak peek at the making of their upcoming miniseries The Prisoner starring Ian McKellen as Two and Jim Caviezel as Six.
  • Alex Zalben summarizes life lessons given by clones in the Star Trek universe.
  • This week’s episode of The SciFi Dept. looks at Five Freaky Frankenstein Flicks.
• BookSpotCentral interviews Matthew Stover (Caine Black Knife).
• Dark Worlds interviews Dave Tackett of QuasarDragon fame: “I love storytelling that inspires the imagination. My favorite aspect of SF, Fantasy, and horror is that, at their best, they take us beyond the ordinary mundane world and show us more than any human being can ever see.”
• Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
  • @Author’s site: “City of Reason” by Matthew Jarpe (2005).
  • @Manybooks.net: “A Scientist Rises” by Desmond Winter Hall (1932).
  • Audio Fiction:
    • Zombie Astronaut has several audio stories up in MP3 including William Gibson’s “Burning Chrome.”
    • @Transmissions From Beyond: “Heartstrung” by Rachel Swirsky, read by Heather Welliver.
    • The latest StarShipSofa contains audio fiction and poetry by Joan D Vinge, Matthew Sanborn Smith, and Mark Rich.
  • The tables of contents listings for Rich Horton’s upcoming anthologies (Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2009 Edition and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2009 Edition) have been updated with free fiction links.
  • Free Excerpt @ Penguin: Prologue to Princep’s Fury by Jim Butcher.
• From now through Dec. 31, all new/renewing Weird Tales subscribers in the U.S. will receive a free copy of The Neil Gaiman Reader.
• At Futurismic, “Jonathan McCalmont suggests that repackaging the masterworks of the genre with a side serving of serious critical examination might add a cachet to science fiction which it has previously struggled to attain.” It’d work on me. I don’t know how many Masterworks volumes I bought even though I already own an earlier edition of the book.
• Over at Ecstatic Days, guest-blogger K. Tempest Bradford has some tough love for genre fiction writers.
• Lauren Panepinto, Creative Director for Orbit and Yen Press, shares some cool book cover art Still lovin’ the Orcs covers.
• The savvy authors over at Book View Cafe have teamed with PortableReading to make their stories available over the iPhone and through AnthologyBuilder. [via SF Scope]
• Biology in Science Fiction deep-dives into The Biology of Creature From The Black Lagoon. That thing scared the begeezus out of me when I was younger.
• Dark Roasted Blend offers a really cool Steampunk Extravaganza. [via Enter the Octopus]
• Here’s the latest update on the HelpVera Fundraiser. Way to go, sf community!

Related posts:

1. SF Tidbits for 10/10/06
2. SF Tidbits for 3/21/07
3. SF Tidbits for 7/7/08
4. SF Tidbits for 7/8/06
5. SF Tidbits for 5/23/08

Filed under: Tidbits

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