What, you need more prompting than the headline?

Tell us!

Based on the Jules Verne classic…

[via Divers and Sundry]

• Robert J. Sawyer tells us that Flashforward returns on Thursday, March 18, 2010, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, with two new episodes airing back-to-back in a two-hour block.
• Max Headroom heads to DVD! Fi-fi-finally.
• Bruce Campbell says Evil Dead is Dead.
• Rich Horton summarizes Kaleidotrope for 2009.
• Here’s a first look at Maurizio Manzieri’s beautiful cover for Peter S. Beagle’s new novella, Return, coming soon from Subterranean Press.
• Christopher Paul Carey on the Expresso Book Machine.
• @Suvudu: Ari Marmell on The Father of Gaming, the Uncle of Fantasy.
• @PopCrunch: The 16 Best Dystopian Books Of All Time.

I’ll echo Chris Roberson‘s statement that I’m not an immediate huge fan of the classic book mashups, but this book trailer is pretty cool.

[also via Orbit Books]

• @NextRead: The Midnight Watch by Tim Waggoner (a Nekropolis and Dead Streets story)
• @Strange Horizons: “Sundowning” by Joanne Merriam
• @Candlelight Stories: “The House and the Baboon” by Bill Ectric
• Here’s a batch of free PDF fiction from Punktown author Jeffrey Thomas:
  • “Post #153” by Jeffrey Thomas
  • “Sweet Oblivion” by Jeffrey Thomas
  • “The Dance of Ugghiutu” by Jeffrey Thomas
  • “Pressed Flowers” by Scott Thomas
  • “Halloween Tea” by Scott Thomas
• @ManyBooks.net:
  • “The Invaders” by Murray Leinster
  • “The Man Who Staked the Stars” by Charles Dye
  • “The Ultroom Error” by Gerald Allan Sohl
  • “B-12′s Moon Glow” by Charles A. Stearns
  • “To Each His Star” by Bryce Walton
  • “The Inhabited” by Richard Wilson
• Serialized: @Timeslingers: “Subassembly” (Episode 21-2)
• Audio:
  • @Transmissions From Beyond: “Metal Dragon Year” by Chris Roberson (awesome story)
  • @StarshipSofa: “The Clapping Hands Of God” by Michael F. Flynn.
  • @Dunesteef: “Not My Slave” by Derek Palmer
  • @Archive.org: “Clockwork Fagin” (Part 2) by Cory Doctorow. [via author]
  • @BeamMeUp: “Night Waking” by Benjamin Rosenbaum
  • @Pseudopod: “Learning to Fly” by Garth Upshaw, read by Jacquie Duckworth:
  • @SFFaudio: Completed Audiobooks from the SFFaudio Challenge. Lots of great stuff here…
  • “The Devil’s Rescue” by L. Ron Hubbard [via SFF Audio, requires newsletter signup]
  • @Tor.com: “Down on the Farm” by Charles Stross.

Interviews & Profiles

• Scalzi’s Big Idea profiles N.K. Jemisin (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms).
• Frederik Pohl on Isaac Asimov (Part 4).
• “Genre is a maximum security prison,” says author David Shields in his manifesto Reality Hunger. [via Omnivoracious]
• Lou Anders on Genetic Engineering.
• @Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews: Artist Dave Rapoza.
• @BoingBoing: Bruce Sterling explains “atemporality for artists”.

News

• Holy comic book, Batman! Detective Comics, featuring Batman’s debut, outsells the recent $1 million sale of Superman’s Action Comics #1.
• Hodder & Stoughton has acquired a new Stephen King title, Full Dark, No Stars, a volume of four novellas
• The International Aeon Award 2009 short fiction contest winners have been announced.

Articles

• @Incwriters:
  • Andy Cox’s behind-the-scenes look at Interzone.
  • Peter Tennant’s article on Horror Fiction has its Aficionados. (Beware: Killer psycho-bunny! That thing still gives me the creeps.)
• Galaxy Express on The Science Fiction Romance CoverConundrum.
• Dark Matters podcast on Bad Science Fiction
• Christopher Barzak writes Dear Reader…
• Smart Pop Books has posted online (for one week) Kris Rusch’s controversial essay Barbarian Confessions from the book Star Wars On Trial edited by David Brin and Matthew Woodring Stover.
• Tobias Buckell posts another chapter of his writers’ guide It’s All Just A Draft: Published Writers Find Markets.
• S. Andrew Swann’s Quick rules for tightly plotted fiction.
• Suite 101 on H.P. Lovecraft’s Fiction.
• Dustjackets? We don’t need no steenkin’ dustjackets! [via Bookninja]
• David Brin on Science Fiction That Teaches.
• H.G. Wells’ scornful Review of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. [via John C. Wright]

Fun Stuff

• The National on The 7 types of book bore
• Irene Gallo points us to The Philip K. Dick Covers of Antonello Silverini.
• Historical footnote: Harlan Ellison blurbs Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book, dammit. [via File 770]

REVIEW SUMMARY: Celtic gods and creatures, Arthurian legends emerge as the technology of the current world fails. A well paced, character and setting rich “old world dies, new world begins” fantasy novel (first of a trilogy)

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Our current age of technology is ending, as creatures of myth awaken. Five seemingly ordinary people in England are thrust into fighting for humanity against the gods of old. They must figure out who they are, find objects of power, and complete impossible quests…all while the world they know stops working, dodging dragons and ghouls.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Transition from modern normalcy to chaos smooth and believable (even for a fantasy novel); Celtic myths and Arthurian legends interwoven with English landscape; awesome Picacio cover; bad ass fire bombing dragons!

CONS: Took me away from my own writing; I will get Chadbourn for that (or have him buy me a pint).

BOTTOM LINE: A excellent rendition on “the end of this world” with the starting of a different one, well written, great characters…a first book that makes you go out and hunt down the next two in the series.

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It’s really time to fire up The Fifth Element again…

[via 5th Element - Zorg Industries' ZF-1]

Kelley Armstrong’s The Summoning, the first book in her paranormal young adult Darkest Powers series, is available for a limited time as a free online read.

Here’s the book description:

My name is Chloe Saunders and my life will never be the same again.

All I wanted was to make friends, meet boys, and keep on being ordinary. I don’t even know what that means anymore. It all started on the day that I saw my first ghost–and the ghost saw me.

Now there are ghosts everywhere and they won’t leave me alone. To top it all off, I somehow got myself locked up in Lyle House, a “special home” for troubled teens. Yet the home isn’t what it seems. Don’t tell anyone, but I think there might be more to my housemates than meets the eye. The question is, whose side are they on? It’s up to me to figure out the dangerous secrets behind Lyle House . . . before its skeletons come back to haunt me.

You can also sample the opening chapters of the other books in the series, The Awakening and The Reckoning.

[via Robots and Vamps]

Interviews/Profiles

• Matt Staggs interviews Ari Marmell.
• StarShipSofa interviews Cheryl Morgan (podcast).
• Fantasy Magazine interviews Scott William Carter and Ray Vukcevich.
• A.V. Club interviews Joe Hill.
• Eos shares a video interview with Kim Harrison.

News

• RIP: Actor Andrew Koenig, son of Walter Koenig.
• Nintendo Enters eBook Market.
• Dreams of Decadence to Relaunch.
• Good news for U.S. fans of Doctor Who: BBC America premieres the new season on Saturday, April 17th.
• James Morrow takes part in Candide 2.0, a “a complete online edition of the [Voltaire's] book in an innovative social format that enables readers to post digital marginalia alongside the text.”

Articles

• Rose Fox on Do the Right Thing.
• Nick Kauffman on Assault at SwanCon.
• Connie Willis on Blackout (part 7).
• Heather Tomlinson on YA Fairy Tale Fiction.
• Rick Klaw on Six Degrees of Michael Moorcock (Part of Tor.com’s Michael Moorcock celebrations).
• Paul Crilley on The many faces of plotting.
• Nancy Jane Moore on Brave New (Writing) World: Some Things Never Change.
• Charlie Stross on CMAP #2: How Books Are Made.
• Kristine Kathryn Rusch on The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Networking Part One.
• Juliette Wade on Different Minds, Different Voices.
• John Scalzi on This Manuscript Hires People.
• Nicola Morgan on Good Author Behaviour: Responding to Negative Feedback.
• Mark C Newton on Book Cover Conversations Are So Very Clichéd.
• Pimp My Novel on Terms to Know: Frontlist vs. Backlist.
• @SciFi Squad: Scientists Demand Realism in Sci-Fi.
• Cover Pr0n: Kraken by China Miéville.
• Quite Earth shares some Ultramarines movie concept art.
• Captain Jack sings!  John Barrowman’s Ode to Doctor Who.
• John Scalzi on Sci-Fi Video Games That Could Make Good Movies, If They’re Done Right.
• John Anealio asks: What is Your Favorite “Space” Song? (Part 2 )
• There’s SF/F titles in this list of The 50 Most Captivating Covers of All Time, which nicely includes artist accreditation.

After cutting his teeth on Inferno! and Warhammer Monthly (the only comic book ever to win an Eagle Award and get canceled in the same week), Christian Dunn spent many years as the Commissioning Editor of both Black Flame and Solaris. He is now safely ensconced back in the bosom of Black Library as their Range Development Editor where runs the e-book, Print on Demand and audio ranges, as well as being responsible for unearthing new writing talent.

He lives in Nottingham, England and always keeps a freshly greased chainsaw under his pillow in anticipation of the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

SF SIGNAL: Hi Christian! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, could you tell us more about Black Library’s new Print on Demand book line? Do you have an official name for it yet?

CHRISTIAN DUNN: In a nutshell, the Print on Demand range is Black Library’s opportunity to not only bring back many of the out-of-print novels from our ten year back catalogue but also introduce new titles that we don’t think fit our main range but know that readers would like to see. Readers will be able to visit our website and order Print on Demand titles just as they would any other Black Library title. The only difference being that PoD titles are Trade Paperback format and they take slightly longer to ship than a regular title due to being made to order.

Because there’s very little difference to the reader in the way that they can order these titles and the look and feel of the finished books, we made the decision not to separately brand the PoD line. PoD titles will be flagged as such on the website so that readers know that the book they’ll receive will differ slightly from the Black Library books that they’ve been used to, but we won’t be calling the range anything fancy.

However, we are branding some of the books within the PoD range as ‘Heretic Tomes’. One of the great opportunities with PoD is to bring back older titles – some of which even pre-date Black Library – that no longer accurately reflect the Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 universes. These are the kind of novels that we wouldn’t want to put on the shelves of a Games Workshop or bookstore because anybody unfamiliar with Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 might get the wrong idea and come away with an inaccurate picture of our fictional universes. They’re all still great stories though, so badging them as Heretic Tomes allows us to get the books back into the hands of fans but also tip them off that the background and IP might be a bit different from what they’re used to. The first Heretic Tome – the first of our PoD releases in fact – is Ian Watson’s Space Marine which has been OOP for at least fifteen years but has consistently been one of the most requested titles for us to reprint. I know Ian’s very happy for it to be coming back into print as he mentions it to me every time I see him at a convention!

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My wife and I went to see Avatar the week that it came out, and we both enjoyed it tremendously. It was big and beautiful and exciting and fun. And if the plot was a little predictable, and if the characters were a little flat, there are worse things. I was excited just to see some big space opera happening on a movie screen again. Full of color and aliens and emotions besides scowls.

But as we were walking out of the theater, there was one thing which had caught and held my attention, and it was something specific which was missing from the ending credits.

Avatar, of course, wasn’t adapted from anything. It came out of James Cameron’s head.

(We can argue, of course, that it was adapted from Pocahontas, perhaps, and fair enough, but you get my point).

The reason this interested me is, nearly everything that hits the theaters is adapted from something.

“Based on the comic book series by Alan Moore”, “based on the television series created by Gene Roddenberry”, “based on the series of words-put-in-rows by Stephanie Meyer”… And we can go further afield than that: “based on the newspaper strip by Jim Davis”, “based on the action figure G.I. Joe”, for haven’s sakes.

The only thing we haven’t yet seen adapted are breakfast cereal mascots. Get Michael Bay to produce a Cap’n Crunch movie. Give it a techno soundtrack and you’ve got a summer blockbuster.

We know that the vast majority of things Hollywood produces are adaptations, because people comment on it fairly regularly, both on the street and in interviews. “Hollywood just rehashes everything, they’ve run out of original ideas,” is neck-in-neck with the other common grumble, “MTV doesn’t play any damn music videos now.”

Adaptations are such a fact of life, something like Avatar – or, another sterling example, any of the perfect pieces of cinematic artwork created by Pixar – catches our attention for sheer fact that it isn’t based off anything at all.

So with that in mind, let’s examine adaptations a little further.

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We’re pleased to welcome Andrew Liptak to our army of SF Signal Irregulars. As is customary, we asked Andrew to write about himself in the third person, here’s what he wrote:

Andrew Liptak is a longtime science fiction fan, and writes regularly at Words in a Grain of Sand on any number of topics, namely speculative fiction and history. He currently holds a degree in History and a master’s degree in Military History from Norwich University, and resides in the green (or white, depending on the season) mountains of Vermont with a growing library of books.

Welcome, Andrew!

While Andrew is ordering us bagels, a custom that I maintain will one day yield me actual bagels, check out his review of WE by John Dickinson.

REVIEW SUMMARY: A noble attempt to create a hard-science fiction novel for the young adult market.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Paul Munro is a communications specialist who is sent off to a distant moon to try and discover why the base is having issues with communications between it and Earth. While there, he sees humanity for what it has really become.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Author John Dickinson has some ingredients to a good novel here: a strong theme of changes in how society functions runs through the novel as Munro looks back on Earth and adapts to his new home, coupled with some hard science fiction that helps give the novel some framework in which to work.

CONS: WE is undermined by sloppy writing, poor, wooden characters and a plot that ultimately isn’t satisfying.

BOTTOM LINE A young adult novel with an interesting premise, but one that is undermined by its execution.

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Night Shade Books has published the table of contents for the upcoming collection Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories, edited by Jonathan Strahan (who reflects on the book’s creation) and Charles N. Brown:

1. Introduction by Neil Gaiman
2. “Smoke Ghost”
3. “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”
4. “Coming Attraction”
5. “A Pail of Air”
6. “A Deskful of Girls”
7. “Space Time for Springers”
8. “Ill Met in Lankhmar”
9. “Four Ghosts in Hamlet”
10. “Gonna Roll the Bones”
11. “The Inner Circles” (aka “The Winter Flies”)
12. “America the Beautiful”
13. “Bazaar of the Bizarre”
14. “Midnight by the Morphy Watch”
15. “Belsen Express”
16. “Catch That Zeppelin!”
17. “Horrible Imaginings”
18. “The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars”

Sadly, I’ve only read three of these stories — but I have fond memories of all of them. Seems like a good time to catch up, eh?

The winners of our Shadow Conspiracy eBook giveaway have been notified:

• Andy D.
• Jessica R.

Congratulations!

Thanks to everyone who entered.

Interviews/Profiles

• The Agony Column interviews Laurie R. King (podcast).
• The Dragon Page interviews L.E. Modesitt Jr. (podcast).
• Dave Brendon interviews Paul S. Kemp and John Jackson Miller.
• Eos Books interviews Kim Harrison (video).
• John Scalzi’s The Big Idea: David Louis Edelman.

News

• 2009 Aeon Award Winners Announced.
• Steampunk Reloaded Table of Contents.
• Launch Pad 2010 Information: Application Window Opening Soon, Guest Instructor Announced.

Articles

• Lee Goldberg on RWA Sells Out Writers.
• Diana Rowland On word counts and interesting books. A response to a commenter.
• SFWA on Another Vanity Award: The 2010 Creative Spirit Awards.
• Nancy Lorenz on The Guy Who Raped Me is a Douchebag and Not Sorry, pt. 1000.
• Jonathan Strahan on What I mean when I say ‘safe space’ and Hugos, eligibility and thoughts on the Best Fan Writer category,
• Mur Lafferty has a nice roundup of Hugos and podcasts.
• Sue Burke on How to Read.
• Playing by the Book on Fantastic Fiction for Kids: Asian Fantasies.
• The Guardian on The spectre of sexism haunting horror fiction. (via Matt Staggs)
• Fingertips Culture on What Makes a Good Book? (via Granta Mag)
• Anna Tambour on Why isn’t the WTO cracking down on the US for Google piracy?
• Amy Sterling Casil on Why Editors Use Form Rejection Letters.
• Lauren McLaughlin on Babies & Novels.
• Rachelle Gardner on Reasons for Submission Guidelines.
• Jim C. Hines on Writing Terms Defined.
• Alexandra Sokoloff on How to Start a Novel.
• Michael A. Burstein on Crossing Genres Part 2: Elements of Genre.
• Pimp My Novel on Piraten!
• Gary McMahon on Birth of a Novel: Part 1.
• Nancy Kress on Going Backward.
• Jonathan McCalmont On the Continued Relevance of Pulp Racism.
• Screen rant on Cool Retro Movie Posters from Brandon Schaefer.
• Fantasy Magazine lists 10 Fantasy Sidekicks Who Could Do Better.

This week’s Mind Meld topic was suggested by John Klima. We asked this week’s panelists (including John):

Here’s what they said…

Gene Wolfe’s Wizard-Knight. As far as I am concerned this was like reading C.S.Lewis writing Conan the Barbarian. I was mostly repulsed by the ethics, and while I quite understand that this was meant to be a juvenile wet dream of muscular morality, that doesn’t mean I need to read it. The frightening thing was that when I presented this analysis to several well known critics, they agreed with me, and then went on to explain why it was a work of genius.

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The Suvudu Free Book Library has been updated with a new title: Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: Paragon by John Jackson Miller available in ePub/Stanza, Mobi/Palm/Kindle, and RTF formats.

Here’s the book description:

The ruthless cunning of the Sith Order has served the shipwrecked crew of the Omen well on the alien planet Kesh. Subjugating the superstitious Keshiri race by posing as its fabled overlords has ensured the Sith’s survival — while they struggle in secret to return to the stars. But after fifteen years on their adopted world, some among the lost tribe have grown restless and fearful that assimilation will consume their Sith heritage. Now, as rival factions begin to appear, a shocking disaster throws into doubt the Sith’s future on Kesh.

In the distant city of Tetsubal, the entire native populace is suddenly wiped out by a grisly plague of unknown origin. With terrifying speed, more cities succumb to the mysterious contagion. Only the Sith remain unharmed — so far. And as Sith commander Yaru Korsin grapples with the looming loss of the paradise he rules and the race his people have come to depend upon, he must confront the dark possibility that the catastrophe may not be cruel fate but insidious sabotage.

[via Robots and Vamps]

Interviews/Profiles

• Omnivoracious profiles Margaret Atwood.
• The Agony Column interviews Jedediah Berry (podcast).
• The Interstitial Arts interviews Connie Toebe.
• Marvel interviews Marjorie Liu.
• Wicked Little Pixie interviews Anton Strout.
• Locus interviews Jo Walton.

News

• RIP Jim Harmon.
• The Speculative Ramayana Anthology: Call For Submissions.
• Jason Sanford reminds folksthat these are the final days to nominate stories for the Million Writers Award.
• The Matt Smith era of Doctor Who begins April 3rd in the UK. 
• EVENT: Alastair Reynolds signing at Forbidden Planet, Saturday 13 March 13:00 – 14:00.
• John Scalzi continues his role as Creative Consultant for season 2 of Stargate Universe.
• Columbia Pictures is bringing the pulp-era Doc Savage series to life on the big screen.

Articles

• Nick Mamatas on Things sure are better in the slums, said the queen!
• Rich Horton’s Summary: Chapbook Anthologies, 2009.
• SFWA on How to Kill Your Imaginary Friends: Joss Whedon, I’m calling you out.
• Dr. Kirtland C. Peterson on A “Fantasy Matters” Follow-Up: How “Real” is Hogwarts?
• Pam Jenoff on The Publicity Paradox.
• Alethea Kontis on Dear HWA.
• Cheryl Morgan on Part of Which Community?
• T.J. McIntyre on Ten Rules for Writing (…at least for this week).
• Charles Stross on Common Misconceptions About Publishing: #1.
• Varian Johnson on Battling Time Suck.
• David B. Coe on How I Know I’m a Writer.
• Mark C. Newton on Fund Your Own Writing Project.
• Pimp My Novel on Websites Wednesday.
• The Intern on In Defense of Book-Thieving: A Confession, and a Request.
• Here’s an interesting O’Reilly video about how the future of publishing lives on and around the web.
• Great Scott! Action Comics No. 1 sells for $1 million.
• The Crotchety Old Fan on Philip Jose Farmer’s definition of science fiction.  See also, our Meld Melds where Today’s SF Authors Define Science Fiction (Part 1 and Part 2).
• Deborah J. Ross on Writing a Star Wars story.
• @The Guardian, rules for writing fiction according to writers such as Neil Gaiman, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood; and Michael Moorcock, Jeanette Winterson, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith, Ian Rankin and others. [via Stephen Dedman]
• Here’s the [PDF] List Authors Who Who opted out of the Google Book settlement. [via io9]
• SciFi Wire lists 16 bizarre sci-fi episodes of classic TV sitcoms.
• Jeff VanderMeer asks: What’re Your Top Five Under-rated Short Stories of All Time?
• Jonathan Strahan says Jack Vance for the Hugo!
• @SuperPunch: A Star Wars-themed used car dealership.

REVIEW SUMMARY: Dennis Lehane’s Gothic novel gets a solid, though by no means perfect, adaptation to film from director Martin Scorcese.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A federal marshal with a haunted past must track down an escaped patient on an island-bound mental hospital where nothing is as it seems.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Strong performances by a solid cast; interesting directorial choices by Scorcese and rich camerawork and music make hackneyed material into a genuinely scary viewing experience.

CONS: Fantasy sequences go on a little too long; the parts, when put together, don’t quite add up to a sensible whole; and even casual genre fans might see the ending pretty early.

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MY RATING:

Interzone offers, as usual, a variety of fiction in issue #226. Inside you’ll find a woman whose skin predicts the name of dead sailors, a post-nuclear London, a tale of revenge on Triton, asteroid miners who discover something unexpected, a brief glimpse into the future of parenthood, and the fate of warring space colonists. Despite this variety — which odds would dictate encountering something unpalatable – every story in this issue was quite enjoyable, though naturally to varying degrees. There were two standout stories in this issue: Mercurio D. Rivera’s “In the Harsh Glow of its Incandescent Beauty” and Rachel Swirsky’s “Again and Again and Again”.

Following are my reviewlettes of the stories contained in this issue…which also contains several other non-fiction articles, reviews, artwork and other features to fill its glossy color pages.

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Jeff VanderMeer has posted the table of contents to his upcoming story collection The Third Bear:

1. “The Third Bear”
2. “The Quickening”
3. “Finding Sonoria”
4. “Lost”
5. “The Situation”
6. “Predecessor”
7. “Fixing Hanover”
8. “Shark God Versus Octopus God”
9. “Errata”
10. “The Goat Variations”
11. “Three Days in a Border Town”
12. “The Secret Life of Shane Hamill”
13. “The Surgeon’s Tale” (with Cat Rambo)
14. “Appoggiatura”

Interviews/Profiles

• The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast interviews Blake Charlton.
• New Statesman interviews Jonathan Lethem. (via Charlie Jane Anders)
• Tech 4 Thought interviews Charles Stross, Ethan Gilsdorf, Priscilla Olson and Vernor Vinge (video).
• John Scalzi’s The Big Idea: Robert McCammon.
• Suvudu on Nebula Awards & Christopher Barzak.
• Strange Horizons profiles Ricardo Pinto.
• PBS talks to Ursula K. LeGuin about the Google Book Settlement.
• Transmissions From Beyond interviews Chris Roberson (video).
• SFX Needs Your Questions For Sir Terry Pratchett!

News

• Book View Café welcomes new member Steven Popkes!
• 2009 PEARL Finalists.
• Lois Tilton reviews short fiction for Locus.
• Jessica Bendinger Kicks of ‘Kid Faves’ at BSCkids!
• Small Beer Press Catalog.
• Read a free sample of Mansfield Park and Mummies.
• Tor is offering Chapter previews from some of our upcoming March releases.
• EVENT: On March 2nd, Tobias Buckell and L.A. Banks will be reading at the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings.

Articles

• Blake Charlton on How Playing Dungeons & Dragons Will Prepare YOU for Medical School.
• The Comics Journal on A Tale of Two Conventions.
• Victoria Strauss on Beware of Fake Awards.
• Jim C. Hines on Author Entitlement.
• The Rumpus on Who is an average reader and what role does a reviewer play. (via Matt Staggs)
• The Guardian on Ten of the Best Monsters in Literature and Ten rules for writing fiction.
• Eric Raab on The Present of Genius.
• Neil Gaiman admits “I’m mostly your fault, Michael Moorcock.”
• John Klima on Internet Review of Science Fiction Closing and Some Short Fiction Thoughts.
• Steven Harper Piziks on Writing Nowadays: The Manuscript.
• Rachelle Gardner on Communicating with Your Agent.
• Juliette Wade on Language Pride/Language Control.
• Janice Hardy on Trust Me, I’m a Reader.
• John Scalzi on One Star Reviews Revisited.
• Andrew Liptak on God Speed, John Glenn.
• io9 lists 15 Upcoming TV Shows That Could Save Small-Screen Scifi.
• Finding Free eBooks on Choosing A Handheld eBook Reader.
• Guardian lists 10 of the best monsters in literature. [via LitLists]
• Guardian on The joys of bookshop browsing.
• Steampunk Costume on How to Make a Steampunk Segway.