[Jonathan McCalmont is a London-based critic whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, SF Site, The New York Review Of Science Fiction and The Escapist. In addition to writing about genre books and films he occasionally writes about music, video games and art house cinema before dutifully posting the links to his blog Ruthless Culture.]

MY RATING:

If you imagine Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror as three siblings then Fantasy is the popular one, Science Fiction is the brainy one and Horror is the one that never gets invited to parties. This was not always the case. Back in the 1980s, the Horror genre lived high on the hog as its titles filled shelves and minds across the globe. But then came the crash. Some say that in a desperate rush to satisfy the market, publishers put out too much bad stuff. Others say that certain demographic changes shifted the balance of power away from angst and viscera towards scratching the mythopoeic urge to immerse oneself in a fantasy landscape. Either way, the up-shot was that Horror became the unloved step-child of the genre family and despite the creation of the paranormal romance genre and the recent reinvigoration of Dark Fantasy and Horror as a whole, that taint remains. Great Horror authors go unpublished and great Horror novels go undiscussed. It simply is not right.

However, TTA Press – the publishers of Interzone – have made an attempt to redress this injustice in the form of Black Static. Now on its fifteenth issue, Black Static sticks quite closely to the Interzone formula : Every issue comes with a series of short stories, each accompanied by some specially-commissioned art work and separated by columns and reviews by regular contributors.

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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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As is usual around awards-time, there is much discussion about the usefulness of awards, the books that made the list of finalists, and what the Best Novel shortlist says about the field. With the Hugo awards coming up, we thought it timely to ask this week’s panelists a series of Hugo-related questions:

Read on to see their answers…

1. How would you rate the track record of the Hugo Awards at directing readers to the best that the genre has to offer?

I wouldn’t. The Hugos are a popular vote award. The books that win are generally good books, but it would be silly to suggest that they are representative of some ideal of literary quality (always assuming you agree that such a thing exists in the first place). Furthermore, Hugo winners are always books of their time, voted on very quickly after they are published. It is entirely possible that deserving works get missed because they are not as widely available as books offered by the major US publishers. Also books do sometimes fail the test of time. What I will say is that the Hugos have a good track record of rewarding books that are good examples of the sort of science fiction that was popular in the year they were voted upon. It is probably better to look at the full nomination slate than just the winner, but I think very few Hugo winners have been bad books (except in the eyes of those who feel that any book that doesn’t meet their exacting standards is, de facto, BAD!!!).

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