In 2001, When Jack Skillingstead entered Stephen King’s “On Writing” competition, King selected Jack’s entry as one of five winners. In 2003 Asimov’s published Jack’s first professional sale. “Dead Worlds” was a finalist for the Sturgeon Award and was reprinted in two Year’s Best anthologies. Since then Jack has sold more than thirty stories to professional markets. Golden Gryphon Press issued a archival quality hardcover collection of his stories in 2009. Also in 2009 Fairwood Press published Harbinger, a science fiction novel. Both books were nominated for Locus Awards.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jack recently…

Kristin Centorcelli: Jack, your brand new novel, Life on the Preservation, will be out at the end of May! Will you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Jack Skillingstead: Yes, May 28 is the pub date. Life on the Preservation is my third book (I’ve been publishing in professional markets since 2003), though it’s the first that will receive wide distribution. Of course, I’ve wanted to write since an early age. I remember thinking about it in a very conscious way when I was about twelve years old. It seemed like the only option, and it still seems that way. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a writer — you know, the guy with his byline in a magazine or on the cover of a book. I wanted to be able to do it. Find the good stuff, if there was any, and present my unique vision. I thought it would take a long time, and it did. I was raised in a working class environment, and that sort of defined my prospects in the mundane world. While my siblings were taking out loans and working jobs to pay for college degrees I was exclusively focused on writing and reading. What made it harder was that, despite all my efforts, I was a terrible writer in those days. But there was a spark. I came very close to selling my early efforts. In retrospect, thank God I didn’t. It would have ruined me. I wasn’t ready.
Read the rest of this entry

Here is the cover art and synopsis of the upcoming novel Life on the Preservation by Jack Skillingstead.

Here’s the synopsis:

Inside the Seattle Preservation Dome it’s always the Fifth of October, the city caught in an endless time loop. “Reformed” graffiti artist Ian Palmer is the only one who knows the truth, and he is desperate to wake up the rest of the city before the alien Curator of this human museum erases Ian’s identity forever.

Outside the Dome the world lies in apocalyptic ruin. Small town teenager Kylie is the only survivor to escape both the initial shock wave and the effects of the poison rains that follow. Now she must make her way across the blasted lands pursued by a mad priest and menaced by skin-and-bone things that might once have been human. Her destination is the Preservation, and her mission is to destroy it. But once inside, she meets Ian, and together they discover that Preservation reality is even stranger than it already appears.  Discover the reality bending SF of this new author in this astonishing story.

Book info as per Amazon US [Also available via Amazon UK]:

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Solaris (May 28, 2013)
• ISBN-10: 1781081174
• ISBN-13: 978-1781081174

“Best of the Year” lists start appearing as early as November, so we are perhaps a little late in asking folks around the community:

[Also added was this note: They don't have to have been released in 2009. Feel free to choose any combination of genres (science fiction/fantasy/horror) and media (books/movies/shows) you wish to include.]

Read on to see their picks (and also check out Part 1)…

Books I most enjoyed:

• WWW:Wake, Robert Sawyer
• Mars Life, Ben Bova
• Plague Zone, Jeff Carlson
• Overthrowing Heaven, Mark Van Name
• Rift in the Sky, Julie Czerneda

I’ve just started Galileo’s Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Am hooked already.

We haven’t seen any SF films I can recall. A TV series that stands out: FlashForward.

Read the rest of this entry

We always remember our first. (Yes, I’m talking about reading!) We asked this week’s panelists:

Check below to see their responses. And tell us what book got you started!

Back when I was 9 or 10 years old, I was reading one of the EC horror comics, and my mother chanced to look over my shoulder, and it must have been a typically gruesome EC panel that she saw, because she ripped it out of my hands and took it away from me.

I argued that this was censorship, which she had always told me she was against, and she, dancing on the head of a pin, explained that it wasn’t censorship because the pictures would give me nightmares, and that she would never think of censoring my reading, just my looking (which, she pointed out, Hollywood’s code did all the time and no adults objected, or at least not any she knew of), and I could buy any horror book I wanted, just no more horror comics.

I went right out to the bookstore with a quarter clutched in my outraged little hand. I’m sure she thought I’d pick up something like Frankenstein, which is all but unreadable to the average ten-year- old…but instead I bought the first “horror” title I came across, which was the Groff Conklin anthology, Science Fiction Terror Tales. I still remember the first three stories: Ray Bradbury’s “Punishment Without Crime”; Fred Brown’s “Arena”; and Bob Sheckley’s “The Leech”. By the time I had read them, I was hooked on science fiction — and I remain hooked to this very day.

So I am now 58 novels, 14 collections, 236 stories, 2 screenplays, 1 comic book, 163 articles and essays, and 47 edited anthologies into my science fiction career, all thanks an unread horror comic and a read-again-and-again-and-again science fiction anthology.

Read the rest of this entry

• John Picacio shows off his awesome cover art for Are You There and Other Stories by Jack Skillingstead. (Also at Missions Unknown)
• Pyr SF shows off the full jacket design for Paul McAuley’s The Quiet War. Meanwhile Paul McAuley pimps his own covers for his numerous current reprints.
• Great news of the Week: Solaris Books has been picked up by Rebellion and will continue to produce great science fiction and fantasy.
• Interviews & Profiles:
  • @Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf: Mark Teppo (Lightbreaker).
  • Over at Joseph Mallozzi’s blog, Jasper Fforde answers reader questions. (And a reminder for those folowing in his book club: discussion starts soon on the next book, Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover.)
  • Agony Column continues with part 2 of their podcast interviews celebrating Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine’s 60 Years, featuring Jeffrey Ford, John Kessel and Delia Sherman
  • Ideology of Madness interviews Matt Sturges.
  • @The British Science Fiction Association: Andy Remic
  • Genreville TV interviewed Kaaron Warren and Robert Freeman Wexler at KGB Fantastic Fiction.
• Jess Nevins on The Zeppelin Pulps.
• Scott Edelman shares another installment of the 2000 Nebula Awards Weekend.
• Hal Duncan has a new BSC column. In the first installment, he talks about the definition of science fiction.
• NK Jemisin asks Who’s Afraid of Urban Fantasy? [via Bibliophile Stalker]
• Serialized Excerpts:
  • Sciencefictionandfantasy.co.uk is is serializing the first 5 chapters of Kells Legend by Andy Remic.
  • Barbara Martin is is serializing the first 5 chapters of Angel of Death by J. Robert King.
• Cheryl Morgan has posted her thoughts on Thoughts on Hugo Nominations.
• Norilana Books announces that Warrior Wisewoman 3 edited by Roby James, their annual anthology of science fiction featuring powerful and remarkable women, is now open to submissions.
• Empire Online asks: Is sci-fi better when it’s low budget? [via Whedonesque]
• Tom Baker says…er…I mean stars in Doctor Who: Hornet’s Nest, a five-part adventure series for BBC audio dramas. [via Big Dumb Object via Wired]
• Dave Franzese has posted a fun set of ray gun drawings. [via Drawn!]
• Blow Your Circuits With AMC’s SciFi Robots Quiz.
• Lists:
  • @SFX: The Top 10 Greatest Superheroes Ever Revealed. (Realted: The Daily P.O.P. looks at Captain Britain.)
  • @ScifiSquad: The Top Ten Sci-Fi Mind Control Movies.
  • Mike Brotherton lists The Ten Scariest Science Fiction Movies.
  • @Movie Moron: Top 10 Best Graphic Novels – Being Turned Into Movies. [via Raymond Thornton, an excellent illustrator.]