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Novels and stories about all things faerie have become extremely popular in the past few years, rather notably in young adult fiction. So we asked this week’s panelists…

Here’s what they said…

Faeries have always fascinated me. I love creepy tales and stories about things that go bump in the night, and I love the idea that there is this whole other world that exists right alongside ours, we just don’t see it. I think this is exactly why audiences are fascinated with the fey. They’re beautiful, seductive, mysterious, dangerous, and alluring, and we can’t help but be drawn to that.

For me, writing about the fey is like being turned loose in a fantasy playground. There are so many types of fey, so many myths and stories and legends. Nearly anything is possible when you venture into the faery world; not only do you have the denizens of Faery–goblins and piskies and kelpies and trolls–the very land can surprise you with how beautiful and dangerous it is. Trees are more than they appear. Flowers could very well be carnivorous. That bright red strawberry might turn you into a rabbit if you eat it, or put you to sleep for centuries. Nothing is safe, and anything can happen when you’re dealing with the fey. Creating the land of Faery, called The Nevernever in my books, was one of my favorite parts when writing The Iron Fey series.

My other favorite part was the cast of characters. From tiny brownies to deadly beautiful fey princes, to talking cats and faery queens, to bloodthirsty redcaps and brilliant faery tricksters, the world and legends of Faery has everything a fantasy lover could want. For authors and readers alike. They might be dangerous, they might be infuriating, seductive, devious and amoral, but when dealing with faeries, one thing is for certain. You might be eaten, seduced, made to dance forever or turned into a hedgehog for all time, but you will never be bored.
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Edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen, Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond brings together leading fantasy writers such as Jane Yolen, Tad Williams and Seanan McGuire to create the ultimate anthology for Oz fans—and, really, any reader with an appetite for richly imagined worlds.

Here is the book’s description:

When L. Frank Baum introduced Dorothy and friends to the American public in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became an instant, bestselling hit. Today the whimsical tale remains a cultural phenomenon that continues to spawn wildly popular books, movies, and musicals.

We asked a few of the authors a couple of questions…

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Edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen, Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond brings together leading fantasy writers such as Jane Yolen, Tad Williams and Seanan McGuire to create the ultimate anthology for Oz fans—and, really, any reader with an appetite for richly imagined worlds.

Here is the book’s description:

When L. Frank Baum introduced Dorothy and friends to the American public in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became an instant, bestselling hit. Today the whimsical tale remains a cultural phenomenon that continues to spawn wildly popular books, movies, and musicals.

We asked a few of the authors a couple of questions…

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Edited by John Joseph Adams and published by TOR, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination features all original, all nefarious, all conquering tales from the megalomaniacal pens of Diana Gabaldon, Austin Grossman, Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Daniel H. Wilson and 17 OTHER EVIL GENIUSES.

The book description is this:

Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy or otherwise dominate the world as we know it.

We asked a few of the authors a couple of questions…

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Edited by John Joseph Adams and published by TOR, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination features all original, all nefarious, all conquering tales from the megalomaniacal pens of Diana Gabaldon, Austin Grossman, Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Daniel H. Wilson and 17 OTHER EVIL GENIUSES.

The book description is this:

Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy or otherwise dominate the world as we know it.

We asked a few of the authors a couple of questions…

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In episode 174 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester chats with author Seanan McGuire.

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[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

Here’s what they said…

This seems like an awfully long way to go to find a controversy. There is no moral aspect to re-reading over reading something new; both are perfectly valid uses of one’s leisure time.

For writers, of course, keeping up with an at least cursory overview of what’s new in one’s field is a professional obligation, and its good to have a founding in the classics. And research often requires reading an awful lot of nonfiction–but reading for pleasure or comfort? I’d say read whatever makes you happy. You’ll get different things out of a book each time you read it–and rereading is certainly a primal human drive. Otherwise, kids wouldn’t want The Little Engine That Could twice a night every night until it becomes engraved on their DNA.

We learn and internalize via repetition, after all–and narrative are the mechanism our minds use to organize information in a crowded, chaotic, and unknowable universe.

Also, sometimes we just don’t want to be surprised. Although the best books are unavoidably surprising; they surprise us every time.
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Urban Fantasy remains as a strong and vibrant subgenre of Fantasy. Like any subgenres, over the last few years, new authors, new ideas and new motifs have often radically reshaped a genre once known for “supernaturals in the night” into a much broader category. We asked this week’s panelists:

This is what they had to say…

The problem with knowing where a genre is going starts with defining the genre itself. What exactly is “Urban Fantasy”? There’s always been a category of work in what was then just called “Science Fiction” that fits this bill, from Bradbury’s October Country stuff to Sturgeon and Leiber and many others, including myself and many contemporaries. (I’d love to know what my book War of the Flowers was if it wasn’t urban fantasy.) But these days it’s also a consumer category — that is, it’s meant to narrowcast to people who apparently like fantasy stories that don’t take place in the traditional epic-fantasy environments of imaginary pasts. At the moment that means lots of fairies, vampires, werewolves, and zombies, most of which used to be thought of as components of “Horror”. So it’s hard to say. The trendy stuff — hello, bloodsuckers! — will peak and dwindle, just like serial killer novels did, but there will always be stories that can rightly be called Urban Fantasy. So I suspect it’s not a question of whether the waves will still come in — they will — but what kind of surfers will be on them. Memes will rise and decay (mostly through incestuous overuse) but as long as people stay interested in what lies behind ordinary life, I suspect the genre, at least the part that is about storytelling, will stay strong.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: A fast-paced neo-fairy crime adventure with only a few storytelling speed bumps.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW
PROS: The characters were comfortably familiar, the story had plenty of emotional moments, and some long-held romantic feelings get acted on.
CONS: A very minor one – the main character, Toby, was supposed to be acting crazier than usual in this novel, and with good reason, but it wasn’t obvious that her actions were more than the slightly-broken outcast changeling rebellions she always did.
BOTTOM LINE: If you liked any of the other books in the series, you’ll want to pick this one up right away.

While you could pick up Ashes of Honor if you hadn’t read the first five books in the series, I don’t recommend it. Not only are the other books excellent, but this one in particular deals with plot points based in earlier stories, and won’t have the same impact on a new reader.

In her latest adventure, half-human half-faerie private investigator Toby Daye is asked to find a missing changing child. Who’s asking, and why no one knew about an entire teenager before now, are part of what makes this mystery more trouble than usual. Toby can’t give away someone else’s secrets, and she can’t let the kid stay missing – the changeling’s magic is untempered by pure faerie blood, and either she comes back, or the world falls apart.

Literally.

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SYNOPSIS:Verity Price fits in her family’s dealings and study of “cryptids” in between her dreams of being a ballroom dancer. Too bad the monsters and a monster hunter have other ideas for Verity’s aspirations…

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW
PROS: Strong and clear first-person narration by an interesting character.
CONS: The Cryptid universe feels a tad crowded in ecological terms; a couple of plot beats, especially at the beginning, feel off; unsure about the leading male counterpart character to Verity.
VERDICT: McGuire starts yet another interesting urban fantasy series.

Non-human sentients and nonsentient ‘monsters’ (Cryptids) stalk the streets of the Big Apple, New York City. Verity Price wants to mainly engage in her dance career but the family business of dealing with cryptids leads her to discover that the population of Cryptids, especially young female ones, is being thinned out. Is it the agent of the self-professed monster hunting Covenant that Verity’s family broke away from years ago? Or is it something much, much worse, something that might threaten cryptids and humans alike? Something thought extinct?

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REVIEW SUMMARY: With cutting wit and sharp dialogue, this book of the living dead explodes with life.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In the world of tomorrow, every man, woman and child is infected with the potential to rise from the dead, but it is still a world ruled by political agenda that will stop at nothing. A sister and brother blogging team seek the truth and a little zombie action, in an ever-descending downward spiral.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Snarky and cutting wit; excellent future prognosis in a well realized zombie world.

CONS: First-person narrative lacked some of the descriptive exposition to better reveal the physical world; main antagonist is revealed a little late and is a tad obvious.

BOTTOM LINE: With a narrative that speaks to the reader you are drawn into a world of the future that seems so plausible it may have you looking up Doctor Kellis and checking the existence of the filovirus Marburg EX19, just to make sure you don’t need to stock up on ammo and blood testing units. It’s zombies, bloggers, politics, technology and medical revolutions all mixed into a bloody cocktail and poured for your enjoyment. Beware of snarky dialogue that will make you smirk.

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• Interviews & Profiles:
  • John Scalzi turns the Whatever mike over to Malinda Lo, author of Ash.
  • Agony Column podcast-interviews Peter S. Beagle, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Swanwick, and M. Rickert.
  • War Rocket Ajax podcast-interviews Jess Nevins.
  • The latest BookBanter podcast features Seanan McGuire (Rosemary and Rue).
• AWARDS NEWS: Pawel Dembowski writes in to tell us that the Polish Janusz A. Zajdel Award for 2008 was awarded on Saturday at Polcon in Lodz. The winners are: Kameleon (Chameleon) by Rafal Kosik (novel), and “Swiaty Dantego” (“Dante’s Worlds”) by Anna Kantoch (Short story).
• Over at Dear Author, Heather Massey makes the case for Steampunk Romance.
• Wired: Why E-Books Look So Ugly. [via MobileRead Forums]
• @Centauri Dreams: Science Fiction and Interstellar Thinking: “…science fiction’s clout doesn’t come so much from prediction as much as from the ability to try out new ideas by remodeling the world so as to accommodate them.”
• David Langford has posted Ansible 266 for September 2009.
• Lena Headey (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) lands the last major part in HBO’s Game of Thrones pilot.
• Nicole at Geekend is on a quest for the ultimate geek movie.
• Stan Lee (and … Jack Kirby?) on the Marvel/Disney deal.
• Real Science: Mike Brotherton is Rethinking Pluto.
• Not Real Science: New Species Of Lobster May Have Come From Outer Space.
• Look at This has a handy graphic on how to tell the difference between swine flu, bird flu…and zombie flu.
• A Venn Diagram of Mythical Creatures. [via MonkeyFilter and Cynical-C Blog]
• It’s back to school time. And what better way to celebrate your inner geekness than with these Star Wars Text Book Covers. Of course, doing so means it’s no longer “inner” but “outer” which may subject you to extended periods of time inside a locker. Cover you books at your own risk!
• Cyberpunk Review lists Cyberpunk Movies by Decade. (Old list but still useful.)
• @Magical Words, Misty Massey lists 5 Things You Ought To Know About Writers.
• @SciFi Scanner: The 10 Most Dastardly Supervillain Quotes.

• The controversy over Justine Larbalestier’s cover for Liar results in a new cover. [via Bibliophile Stalker]
• RainTaxi interviews Catherynne M. Valente.
• Fantasy Book Critic interviews: Jennifer Fallon.
• As of today, urban fantasy author, Seanan McGuire (Rosemary and Rue), joins Book View Cafe.
• For the next two weeks Karen Miller will be guest-posting at the Babel Clash blog. [via Orbit]
• Adam Roberts wants you to pick the best cover for Jack Vance’s Lyonesse. [via Pyr-o-mania]
• John Clute reviews George Zebrowski’s Empties. [via Locus Online]
• Omnivoracious looks at a few Young Adult titles.
• There’s an interesting discussion going on at Asimov’s forums about SF Masterpieces Ruined by the Ending.
• Norilana Books has acquired the Jane Austen mashup Mansfield Mark and Mummies by by Jane Austen and Vera Nazarian.
• Locus Online has posted the contents of the August 2009 issue, which features the obituary of the Magazines longtime Editor-in-Chief, Charles N. Brown.
• File 770 #156 has been posted at eFanzines.
• @TeleRead: Why print books are like zombies.
• John Anealio posts his latest Sci-Fi Song regarding the recent flap over George R.R. Martin getting fan backlash over his Game of Thrones delays.
• John Scalzi talks about the chances of this year’s Hugo nominees making it to the big screen.
• Terry Gilliam wants to adapt Philip K. Dick’s The World Jones Made.
• Can someone explain to me why Ridley Scott, the man who said SciFi film is dead, is not only directing an Alien prequel, but no an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World? What, is he done with Monopoly already?
• Wikipedia features this handy List of science fiction film and television series by lengths.
• Geekend asks: Which characters do you want to see in the Star Trek sequel? I think seeing Chief Wiggum would be cool, but only if it could realistically explained by a wormhole to another dimension where people are yellow.
• Mary Robinette Kowal lists Iconic Fantasy Weapons. Bouns points for including Jackie Chan. (Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.)
• In response to the table of contents of The Mammoth book of Mindblowing SF, Marooned has posted the TOC for the imaginary The Mammoth e-Book of Mindblowing Mars SF.