SF Tidbits for 1/15/09

• Interviews & Profiles:
  • @SCI FI Wire: Andrew Stanton, director of the upcoming (in 3 years!) John Carter of Mars. Meanwhile, The Crotchety Old Fan offers a John Carter of Mars gallery.
  • Fast Forward interviews author Bud Sparhawk, author of the very awesome “Bright Red Star” (reviewed here).
  • SciFiDimensions podcast-interviews M. M. Buckner (Watermind).
  • Genreville asks publicists: What Do You Think of Book Trailers? Responses come from William Schafer (Subterranean Press), Gavin Grant (Small Beer Press), Jill Maxick (Prometheus Books and Pyr), Vera Nazarian (Norilana Books), and others.
• James Enge talks about how the closing of the American frontier gave rise to 20th Century Sword & Planet, and how the accomplishments of the woman’s movements now gives rise to urban fantasy. [via Lou Anders]
• Jonathan Strahan talks about the books he’s looking forward to: Part one & Part two.
• Bibliophile Stalker Charles Tan has a thoughtful essay discussing the demise of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. Publisher John Klima does too.
• At Wet Asphalt, Matt Cheney and Eric Rosenfield discuss the world of critical writing about science fiction. “…the problem as I see it is that science fiction was an interesting publishing phenomenon of the mid-20th century, and most of the forces that created and nurtured that phenomenon have dissipated, metamorphosed, and disappeared, leaving most of the SF of today to be little more than a reiteration of what was done in the ’50s.” Meanwhile, Nial Harrison responds: “…I do somewhat resent the implication that those not trained in the ways of criticism have no useful contributions to make to critical debate, and I would have thought that attracting people with different sorts of mind to literary studies would be all to the good.” Good comments follow Niall’s response.
• The SFWA announces that Victoria Strauss will be honored with 2009 SFWA Service Awards during Nebula Awards Weekend.
• Orbit is celebrating that they published the bestselling SFF debut novels in both the UK and the US.
• EVENT: Forbidden Planet is hosting a signing with author Andy Remic, author of Biohell.
• Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]:
  • Joel Sieh is publishing a new fantasy story in blog format called “Iron and Ash“.
  • Audio Fiction:
    • @StarShipSofa: fiction and poetry by G O Clark, Church H Tucker, Gregory Frost, and David Brin.
    • @LibriVox: Collected Public Domain Works of Stanley G. Weinbaum read by Gregg Margarite.
• The latest issue of Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation has been posted.
• Lists:
  • Adam Troy-Castro travels to the year 2010 to list The Best and Worst Sci-Fi Movies of 2009. Safe bets, all.
  • The Top 6 Things Overheard at the U.S.S. Enterprise Holiday Party: “The Captain’s standing under the mistletoe. Again.”

Related posts:

1. SF Tidbits for 6/4/07
2. SF Tidbits for 1/1/07
3. SF Tidbits for 2/15/08
4. SF Tidbits for 8/25/06
5. SF Tidbits for 2/5/08

Filed under: Tidbits

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