GodMachine is a sci-fi short film about a computer virus that allows an android to channel the frequency of the Big Bang, bringing herself to life and threatening the balance of power between man and machine forever. It stars Robert Leeshock and Von Flores (both from Gene Rodenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict). The short film is a promotional piece for a larger feature film the makers are hoping to develop using the characters, themes, and setting of the GodMachine universe.

Warning: NSFW for language.

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In the Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle novel Footfall, as it is clear that the aliens are coming, the U.S. Government whisks away a bunch of fantasy and SF writers to an undisclosed location to wargame and plot out strategies and ideas about what the aliens are like, what they want and how the Earth should deal with them.

I’ve always thought that was a brilliant conceit, and so my question for this week’s panelists is this:

Clearly we need to have China Miéville on the first contact team, because he has shown a knack for imagining strange and improbable monsters and aliens. If the aliens intend to graft us onto household machinery as fascistic punishment for expressing our innate political freedoms, China’s got us covered.

We need Harrison Ford, because the aliens will recognize that he will shoot first. (You hear me, George Lucas? Even aliens from another galaxy know that HAN SHOT FIRST.)

We need Christopher Priest, since his recent rants have demonstrated that he will be immune to any rectal probes that the aliens will attempt to deploy on us.

We need Tom Cruise, because he already knows all about the Emperor Xenu and his plans for intergalactic conquest. You can’t get anything past those Scientologists.

We need Joss Whedon, because aliens will need to be put at ease with snappy human dialogue.

We need Nick Sagan, because the aliens will have already heard his voice from the Voyager spacecraft.

We need Cory Doctorow, in case the aliens have come to impose their draconian copyright laws and restrictive DRM software on us.

We need Sigourney Weaver in one of those walking cargo loader things, because the aliens will clearly recognize that you do not fuck with Sigourney Weaver in a walking cargo loader thing.

We need Stan Lee. because he is Stan Lee.

We need Ursula le Guin, because in addition to being a brilliant SF/F novelist with an unparalleled imagination and empathy for the human condition, she is actually an android/wizard/vampire/ninja capable of firing laser beams from her eyeballs, shooting acid from her fingertips and decapitating aliens at thirty paces by throwing pencils, which are not actually pencils but special CIA-designed precision-guided exploding ninja stars.

And we need Newt Gingrich, because the aliens will instantly recognize him as one of their own. And hopefully they’ll want him back.

When and if extraterrestrials first make contact with us, I would expect communication to be extremely difficult. It’s not just that we would have to learn each other’s language, but effective communication requires being able to understand the aliens’ world view. Considering that we humans have difficulty communicating with each other across languages and cultures, that would not be a simple task.

But many science fiction authors have already thought about such issues. I like the idea that in the event of first contact with extraterrestrials science fiction authors would be included among the various experts trying to communicate.

Here’s who I’d suggest should be included:

Suzette Haden Elgin, who is a linguist and an expert in science fictional constructed languages. In her Native Tongue series of novels set in a future dystopian America where linguists communicate with aliens. In the novels women who have been stripped of their civil rights construct a new language of their own.

Greg Bear, whose novels often look at the interplay between scientific advances and the development of human culture. His novel The Forge of God is about alien contact that goes very wrong for humanity and the Earth. I’d expect Bear to view any alien gifts or promises warily.

Gregory Benford, who is an astrophysicist with an interest in advanced biology. He has though and written about whether aliens will be “knowable” in any meaningful sense.

Finally, I’d suggest Julie Czerneda, since there should be at least one SF writer with a background in the biological sciences on the team. Her Species Imperative trilogy of novels is set in a future where aliens arrive on Earth, and humans are caught up in an interstellar interspecies conflict.

To: The Secretary General of the U.N.

Greetings, Gentlemen & Ladies;

In order to properly envision a First Contact scenario, Sirs, you must understand that it must be scenarios, plural. These scenarios should be divided down into several main categories, and further divided into sub-categories. The first division must be into three possibilities: Friendly Encounters, Neutral Encounters, and Hostile Encounters. Authors and artists who support all three categories must be included.

Friendly Encounters would include the likes of scriptwriters for most Disney children’s movies such as the Witch Mountain series, and so forth, as their portrayal of aliens have been on the whole more friendly and cooperative than invasive or dangerous. Pixar Studios and Dreamworks Entertainment would also supply a great deal of assistance for this end of the spectrum, and Studio Foglio’s portrayal of alien races in their Buck Godot comic series also shows a great deal of optimism.

Hostile Encounters should include the creative teams behind the Alien movie franchises, the movie Battle: Los Angeles, and of course the V series, to name just a few. Possibly also the creator of the Saw movie franchise, though it is deeply hoped that any aliens we make contact with would be far less horrifically creative than that when making contact with us humans. Still, while we can hope for the best, we should prepare for the worst, just in case.

Neutral Encounters should include creators whose work includes not just ambiguities in alien-human interactions, such as the creative geniuses who worked on the Babylon 5 series and the Star Trek franchises, but also authors whose careers have ranged the whole gamut, such as Alan Dean Foster, who has portrayed various aliens from the comically friendly to the terrifyingly dangerous. C.J. Cherryh has also portrayed a wide range of aliens and alien viewpoints. I would place myself in this category as well, as the aliens in my own series come in different flavors of friendliness versus hostility.

The Neutral category should also include those who portray humanity as the biggest source of misunderstandings and foul-ups, such as Joss Whedon and his teams of scriptwriters. Whether it’s vampire-like killers or chemically-altered feral humans, our own side of the equation must be taken into consideration. As the first Jurassic Park movie showed, one of our own fellow humans could easily foul up everything in an attempt to betray the rest of humanity for fame, fortune, or who knows what reason–we must remember that, to extraterrestrial intelligences, we might be viewed as the terrifying aliens who might end up destroying them, whoever “they” are.

Once these three groups of think-tank specialists have been gathered, we need to present them with a list of questions. The first and foremost questions to be answered must be, “Why would aliens come to Earth? What do we have to draw their interest in us?” This line of approach, the motive approach, will help give each attendee a launching point to start springboarding ideas. Encourage each of the three groups to consider the full spectrum of possibilities. At one end would be topics such as Alliance Against A Mutual Enemy or Trade For Valuable Resources at the Friendly end of the spectrum, to Simple Curiosity or Scientific Exploration in the Neutral middle, all the way over to Exploitation/Theft of Resources, Fear/Hatred Of Our Differences, and the ever-fun-yet-deadly There Can Be Only One Sophontic Species And So You Earthlings Must Die all the way out there in the Hostile end of the column.

The reason why each of these three categories of creative speculatists must consider each of these three ends of the spectrum is because each group will bring a different point of view to the situations being spotlighted. The creator of Lilo & Stitch is going to look at the situation of Exploitation/Theft of Resources in a different way than the creator of the V series–we already know what the V series creator will think of that scenario, because in V, the reptilian aliens came to Earth to steal our clean air, clean water, and clean humans for food consumption. In Lilo & Stitch, the various alien races were more concerned about leaving the humans and their resources alone for ecological impact reasons, i.e. mosquitoes.

…It is to be noted that, for all we know, alien races just might actually sympathize with the plight of the common mosquito, and choose to limit their contact with our world so as not to disrupt its human-hemoglobin slurping reproductive cycle. Or they may think mosquitos sucking blood from humans is funny, and have set up secret recording devices to watch everyone who ever ventures outdoors in a damp, temperate-to-warm climate.

To date, there is no evidence for either extreme on the spectrum, neither a Star Trek-ish optimism that most alien races will get along just fine with humans, nor a V-viewed pessimism that any such alien contact will begin with deception and treachery, and end in tragedy. What we currently know from anecdotes regarding UFO encounters fits mostly into the Neutral middle of the spectrum, where Simple Curiosity and Scientific Experimentation tend to sit. As it has often been said, we hope for the best, plan for the worst, and usually come out somewhere in the middle.

For my part, my foremost recommendation will be to figure out how we can establish communication with these incoming aliens. I would like to caution the governments and the militaries of the world of a very poignant statement from one of C.J. Cherryh’s novels in the Chanur science fiction series: The last thing you will want to do when encountering an alien race is try to pick a fight with someone you cannot even communicate with. Only an idiot does that.

Sincerely,
Jean Johnson

P.S. You might get even more cooperation–nay, outright enthusiasm–out of all these creative geniuses if you pay us to attend this symposium. Most writers don’t earn a great deal of money and so our own motivation must be taken into account, as well as any alien motivations. Just a thought to consider!

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[via Nerdist]

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• @AE: “Like Any Other Star” by Rich Larson [Science Fiction]
• @Daily Science Fiction: “One Childhood of Many” by Andrew S. Fuller [Fantasy]
• @Daily Science Fiction: “The Rush of the Wind and the Roar of the Engines, and the Call of the Open Road” by Lavie Tidhar [Science Fiction]
• @International Speculative Fiction: “Space Oddity” by Regina Catarino [Science Fiction]
• @International Speculative Fiction: “Butterfly, Falling at Dawn” by Aliette de Bodard [Science Fiction]
  
• @Lightspeed: “The Cross-Time Accountants Fail To Kill Hitler Because Chuck Berry Does The Twist” by C.C. Finlay [Science Fiction] (also available in audio)
• @Lightspeed: “The Ruby Incomparable” by Kage Baker [Fantasy]
• @Mad Scientist Journal: “Losing It” by Davin Ireland [Science Fiction]
• @Short-Story.me: “How Exactly Do I Get Out Of Here?” by John Lasanich [Fantasy]
• @Something Wicked: “The Time Hangs Heavy” by Angel Propps [Horror]
• Strange Horizons – May 14, 2012:
  • “Beside Calais” by Samantha Henderson [Flying Machines]
• @Subterranean: “HERE and THERE” by Neal Barrett, Jr. [Fantasy]

Written – Serialized

• @Philipine Genre Stories: “Less Talk, Less Mistake (Part 1)” by Xin Mei [Horror]
• @Author’s Site: “Grim Tides (21. Captivities)” by T.A. Pratt [Urban Fantasy]

Audio

• Beware the Hairy Mango #112 – Breakwinder [MuchoMangoMayo]
• Beware the Hairy Mango #113 – What’s the Matter with Calves Today? [MuchoMangoMayo]
• Beware the Hairy Mango #114 – No More Doggie Style [MuchoMangoMayo]
• Beware the Hairy Mango #115 – It’s Snot Love [MuchoMangoMayo]
• @Clarkesworld: “Synch Me, Kiss Me, Drop” by Suzanne Church [Science Fiction]
• Drabblecast #242 – “Transfer of Ownership” by Christie Yant [Science Fiction]
• @Lightspeed: “The Cross-Time Accountants Fail To Kill Hitler Because Chuck Berry Does The Twist” by C.C. Finlay [Science Fiction]
• Tales To Terrify #18 – John Shirley [Horror]

Audio – Serialized

• @ARTC’s Podcast: “All You Zombies… part 1 of 3″ by Robert A. Heinlein, adapted by Victor Koman [Science Fiction]
• @ARTC’s Podcast: “All You Zombies… part 2 of 3″ by Robert A. Heinlein, adapted by Victor Koman [Science Fiction]
• Radio Drama Revival #278 – “Ruby and the Zoots, Part 6″ [Science Fiction]

Free eBooks (at time of listing)

• @Amazon:
  • Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell [Horror]
  • Breath of Air (The Dryad Quartet) by Katie Jennings [Contemporary Fantasy Novel - First of Four in Series]
  • “Chems” by Ann Swann [YA Zombie Short Story]
  • Graveyard Blues (Night Blues) by Reina Salt [Horror Novel]
  • Kill Me by Alex Owens [Vampire Novel]
  • Let It Bleed by S.L. Schmitz [Horror Novel]
  • Marked: A Two Halves Novella by Marta Szemik [Fantasy Novella]
  • Rock of Aeons (Free from May 17th to May 19th) by Lawrence Kapture [Urban Fantasy Novel]
  • “Tales of Dog Island: Betrayal” by J. W. Summers [Ghost Pirate Short Story]
  • Turning by Melinda Chapman [Zombie Novella]
• @Project Gutenberg:
  • Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space by Jules Verne [Science Fiction Novel]

Novel Excerpts

• @Gollancz Blog: “Chapter Two: The Peacemaker” from The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie [Fantasy]
• @Gollancz Blog: “Chapter Three: The Best of Us” from The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie [Fantasy]
• @Tor: Excerpt from The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis [Fantasy]
• @Tor: Excerpt from Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston [Science Fiction]

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Watch closely for Steven Brust at 1m 48s and 2m 14s and others I should recognize, but don’t.

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• Lightspeed (Jennifer Konieczny) interviews Kage Baker.
• Lightspeed (Robyn Lupo) interviews C.C. Finlay.
• Prime Books (Molly Tanzer) interviews Adam Callaway.
• John Scalzi’s The Big Idea: Garth Nix.
• World SF Non-Western SF Roundtable (Part 2).
• The Functional Nerds interviews Jeff Patterson and Paul Weimer (podcast).
• The Skiffy and Fantasy Show interviews Pavarti K. Tyler (podcast).
• Sword and Laser episode 100 (podcast).
• Horror Writers Association Blog interviews Megan Hart.
• Barnes & Noble interviews S.E. Hinton.
• Functioanl Nerds interviews Jeff Patterson and Paul Weimer.
• The Contextual Life interviews Chuck Wendig.
• @Disinformation: Matt Staggs interviews Warren Ellis. (podcast)

News

• Jay Kay Klein (1931-2012).
• Strange Chemistry Signs Martha Wells in Two-Book Deal.
• The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings presents Charlie Jane Anders Brian Francis Slattery.
• Small Beer Press: New Catalog, New Titles: Le Guin, Dickinson, Gorodischer, More.
• Happy Birthday Clockwork Orange!

Events

• May 17th: Mongoliad Signing with Greg Bear in Seattle.

Articles

• Janice Hardy on Forge Ahead: Ways to be a More Productive Writer, Part 4.
• Chuck Wendig on 25 Ways To Earn Your Audience.
• Lisa L. Hannett (Peter M. Ball) on Know Your Rights.
• Meilin Miranda (Cecilia Tan) on Long-term Relationships: Web serials and love.
• Book Life Now (Robert J. Bennett) on So what the hell is Urban Fantasy, anyway?
• Weird Fiction Review (Nancy Hightower) on When the Dead Speak, You Had Better Listen.
• Locus (Bryan Thao Worra) on Asian American SF Poetry.
• Fantasy Cafe on Women in SF&F Month: In Conclusion.
• All Things From My Brain (Patrick Hester) on 2012 Hugo Nominee Packet and Supporting Memberships.
• Book View Cafe Blog (Sue Lange) on Weird Science: Parasitic Mind Control.
• Bookworm Blues (Erin Hill-Dowdle) on Special Needs in Strange Worlds.
• Guardian (Alison Flood) on Influence of classic literature on writers declining, study claims.
• James Wallace Harris on The Origins of Higher Intelligence in Science Fiction.
• Slate Magazine on Space program's future and landing on the moon: How nostalgia for the Apollo program doesn't. [via Paul Di Filippo]
• Suvudu on Dear Reader: A Letter from Kevin Hearne.
• Smart Pop Books (David H. Rakison) on Evolution, Development, and the Magic of Harry Potter.
• Warren Ellis asks Whatever Happened To “Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds”?.
• The Barnes & Noble Review reviews Death Sentences by Kawamata Chiaki.
• Roger Ebert on The rise and decline of the superhero.
• ShortList Magazine lists 30 Pieces Of Wisdom From Stephen King Novels.
• Forbidden Planet on The 50 SF Books You Must Read.
• Wired.com’s GeekDad lists 100 Geeks You Should Be Following on Twitter.

Art

• 35+ Mindblowing Examples of Sci-fi Digital Art Characters.
• @Minimal Movie Posters: Star Wars trilogy x Mad Men by Travis English.
• Minimalist Posters for Hayao Miyazaki Movies.

More Fun Stuff

• If Star Wars Had Cell Phones.
• Beware the Hairy Mango #115 – “It’s Snot Love” by Matthew Sanborn Smith.
• Infographic: How a book is born. [via OpenRoadMedia]

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Here are the details…

Geek Love: An Anthology of Full Frontal Nerdity
Edited by Shanna Germain and Janine Ashbless
Cover art by Lee Moyer
An anthology of geeky erotic art and fiction, coming in November, 2012

Do you have the hots for that uber-sexy IT chick who knows exactly how to turn your computer on? Do you find a mad scientist’s lab a sexier setting than the bridal suite at the Ritz? Do you take tours through the natural history museum just so you can watch the tour guide talk about the hardness of perfectly preserved dino bones? Know how to twiddle a game controller with the best of them? Then you’ll love Geek Love. Geek Love will be a collection that celebrates geekdom in all its erotic, smart, hot-as-an-exploding-chem-lab ways. Think smart and sexy, girls with glasses, boys with brains, computers with all the right hardware.

We have a kick-ass team putting this collection together, full of skilled editors, planning gurus, artists and promotional rockstars, including Lee Moyer, Jaym Gates, Janine Ashbless, Adam Israel and Shanna Germain.

This will be a Kickstarter Project, and the funds will be used to pay the writers and artists, to produce the full-color ebook, and to promote the collection. If we receive additional funds (and we absolutely believe we will), that money will be used to offer a print version of the collection.

The Kickstarter will launch in September, after we have assembled a tentative table of contents. The invitations are out now, and we are already hearing from a number of fantastic authors and artists. We are working on reward tiers and expansion packages while we wait for the submissions to roll in.

In the meantime, we’d love some feedback from you! What sort of rewards would tempt you? What kind of geeky erotica have you always wanted, but never been able to find? Let us know!

Do you have a sexy, geeky story to tell? We’ll have an open submission period in August. Give us characters who are smart, nerdy and wordy — whether they’re playing Doctor or petting Schrödinger’s pussy! Bring us your mad (and sane) scientists, your grammar nerds and your nerdy grandmas, your role players and cos-players, your freaks and geeks, your goggles and gears.

We would also like to put together a street team of people who would be willing to take flyers highlighting the project to their local cons and comic book shops. The street team will get a limited-edition reward not offered to any Kickstarter backers.

The team can be reached at geekloveanthology@gmail.com, or found on Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/geekloveantho/ or Twitter @GeekLoveAntho. For submission info, see the website: http://geekloveanthology.wordpress.com/

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MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Nimea and the surrounding nations are threatened by a faceless threat from the north. Standing against this threat are a young Empress, a tortured swordsman, and a boy struggling with fears of cowardice.

REVIEW
PROS: Well-plotted with a steady pace and good character development.
CONS: Drags just a little in the middle.
BOTTOM LINE: Readers expecting the quick-read sword and sorcery will probably be stymied by the bones of epic fantasy Sprunk uses to flesh out the story. For epic fantasy fans looking to expand their libraries with faster-paced work, this is a good place to start.

Shadow’s Lure is the second book in Jon Sprunk’s epic fantasy series. I accidentally read this and the third book (Shadow’s Master) without having read the first one (Shadow’s Son). However, I was able to pick up the story without much issue, but also without feeling like Sprunk was info-dumping on the reader. The two books are each a cohesive adventure within a larger arc, so they read less like a trilogy and more like independent books in a series.

Shadow’s Lure, which opens with a bit of treachery, is the slowest book in the trilogy since it focuses on showing the transition of the characters as they come into their own. Sprunk takes the time to explore and develop his characters and the relationships between them. The result is a depth of character that is often missing in Sword and Sorcery:

• Keegan has gone with his chieftain to witness the peace-meet, where the tribes are meeting to discuss the threat of the Eveskines and their Northmen. Their worries will not last long, however: the Northmen crash the party and wipe out the chieftains in one stroke. Only Keegan escapes, ordered by his chieftain to get away and alert the rest of their people. Feeling a coward, he flees from the carnage.
• Josey has recently lost her father and become the Empress of Nimea. Facing an impoverished, war-torn nation only recently liberated from the tyranny of the Church, surrounded by traitors and ladder-climbers, separated from everyone she knows, the young Empress fights for survival and reconstruction. Her efforts are hampered by the sabotage of the Church, by political upheaval, her own inexperience, a secret, and, if things weren’t rough enough, an unkillable assassin. This assassin can take anyone’s body, and the best soldiers in Nimea can barely wound it. As war threatens from all sides, Josey has to take the reins and become the strong Empress her nation needs.
• Caim is a killer. His parents were murdered in front of his eyes. He knows he is not an acceptable match for Josey. He’s fled Nimea, traveling north on the rumors of mad, dead churchmen and his own dark dreams.
• Kit is not human, but she likes humans, and travels with Caim, helping him when she feels like it. She is the weakest of the characters, but since the real strength of the series lies in the incredible humanness of the characters, it perhaps throws Kit’s lesser development into an unfairly stark contrast.

Shadow’s Master is a powerful ending to the trilogy. Violence and death are common, but not cheap, in these books. The trials and pain of a long, icy-cold journey are clearly portrayed, and the characters suffer mightily. The main characters aren’t the only ones with stakes, and the secondary characters aren’t the only ones to suffer. The action picks up and all of the loose threads start coming together to be tied off handily. The secondary characters are not left two-dimensional in favor of the major players.

The series is dark, very dark, but it is not Grim!Dark, and this is a pleasant change from the latest trend. There is lightness, humor, and genuine emotion, and that is all too rare.

Readers expecting the quick-read sword and sorcery will probably be stymied by the bones of epic fantasy Sprunk uses to flesh out the story. For epic fantasy fans looking to expand their libraries with faster-paced work, this is a good place to start.

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Edited by Joe Gentile, Win Scott Eckert, and Matthew Baugh, this third anthology featuring the 1960s Green Hornet, based on the television program starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee, follows The Green Hornet Chronicles and The Green Hornet Casefiles, and will ship in two editions. The softcover trade paperback features a cover by Douglas Klauba, while the limited edition hardcover boasts a cover by Ruben Procopio. The limited edition hardcover will also feature “The Green Hornet Timeline” (a chronology of the Moonstone stories from the three anthologies, fit into the timeline of the original television episodes, by Win Scott Eckert) and “The Green Hornet Meets The Avenger” by Michael Uslan (a bonus story featuring the 1930s-40s Green Hornet from the radio show and serials).

And here’s the table of contents:

• “Hero” by S.J. Rozan
• “The Black Torpedo” by Will Murray
• “The World Will End in Fire” by Richard Dean Starr
• “The Man Inside” by Matthew Baugh
• “Death from Beyond” by Ron Fortier
• “Play the Game” by Thom Brannan
• “The Gauntlet” by Bobby Nash
• “Chaos and the Year of the Dog” by Bobbie Metevier
• “Axford’s Sting” by Dan Wickline
• “Revenge of the Yellowjacket” by Howard Hopkins
• “The Man in the Picture” by Patricia Weakley
• “Masks” by C.J. Henderson
• “Bad Man’s Blunder” by John Allen Small
• “Losers, Weepers” by Rich Harvey
• “Stormfront” by Greg Gick
• “The Night I Met The Hornet” by Mel Odom
• “Progress” by Win Scott Eckert

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Robert McCammon: Sub Press has published the third book in the Matthew Corbett series, Mister Slaughter, and they did a super job with it. The bottom line is, they produce beautiful books. I’m fully on board with them and I hope they want to publish the rest of the series!

CT: There’s a lot of influences in The Providence Writer. How would you describe it?

RM: Well…yes, there are a lot of influences. I would describe it as an “adventure novel” first of all, and secondly as an “historical novel.” It was always my intention to make these books interesting and entertaining, with elements of mystery, action, adventure, suspense, sex, wickedness, humor…a little of everything, I suppose. I don’t think I could count all the influences in The Providence Rider. Certainly the James Bond books are in there…a little Hammer Films…a little Hawthorne and Poe and…a lot of what I grew up enjoying.

CT: What was the genesis of characters like Matthew and Professor Fell?

RM: Matthew is the earnest young man who battles Fate, and Professor Fell in a way is the embodiment of Fate. The professor wishes to remold Matthew, to distort and control him, and Matthew is fighting that influence. Their battle will go on.

CT: As part of a series, The Providence Rider felt like it could stand on its own, without prior knowledge of the series. Was this intentional? What writing considerations did you take into account?

RM: I would like for readers to read the first three books, to get the grounding…but it would be great if The Providence Rider could stand alone. But I do think you would get more out of it by reading the books in sequence. It’s a challenge to bring readers “up to speed” at the beginning of every book and not be bogging things down. A lot has happened so far in Matthew’s young life. I do try to explain what has gone before, and really every book sort of merges into the next one. They are set in a time sequence only a few months or so apart. In the case of The Providence Rider and the new Matthew book I’m working on now, they’re set only a few weeks apart.

CT: Do you everything in the series plotted out, or are you more of a “discovery” writer (or some combination of the two)?

RM: Some things are “thought out” far in advance, but many more events and plot turns take place from discovery. Each book has a personality, and reveals itself slowly even to me. I know this sounds “mystic” or whatever, but it is true that everything comes to life and seems to “create” itself. I always say that after the first hundred pages, a Matthew book will write itself. (But I do have to do the typing!)

CT: What kind of research did you have to do for the book?

RM: Lots of research on every subject under the sun. I have to know much more about a subject than I put into a book. Again, I don’t want to bog the reader or the story down…but I’ve got to be convincing when I describe something of that period, so I’m going to have to know more than I need to write.

CT: What was the most challenging aspect when it comes to writing the novel?

RM: The speaking language. Making that sound authentic while being readable. Now it comes naturally to me, but “hearing” that language and making it sound “real” was a challenge.

CT: You’ve had a long career writing fiction. How has your writing evolved over the decades? What makes you keep coming back to the novel format?

RM: Oh, I hope I’ve become a better writer just because I’ve done so much of it. I have done a lot of Chapter Ones and Page Ones! I enjoy stretching out in the novel format, being able to go long if I want to. (And for some reason my novels do seem to run long, either because the plot calls for the length or because I’m long-winded!)

CT: What projects are you currently working on? Or anything else you want to plug?

RM: I’m working on the next Matthew Corbett book. Then doing an interesting and different novella and then into a big contemporary novel I’ve been planning for some time. Thankfully, I have a lot ahead of me!

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Disney is previewing the first episode (“Beck’s Beginning”) of their new animated seroes, Tron: Uprising, which features the voice talents of Elisjah Wood, Bruce Boxleitner, Mandy Moore, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nate Corddry, Lance Henriksen, Reginald Veljohnson and…Paul Reubens(!).

Tron: Uprising premieres Thursday June 7th on The Disney Channel.

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Fiction:

• “Beasts” by Elizabeth Bourne
• “The Indignity of Rain” by Lavie Tidhar
• “Seeking Captain Random” by Vylar Kaftan
• “Bloodcloth” by Ray Cluley
• “A Body Without Fur” by Tracie Welser

Features:

• Ansible Link by David Langford – news and obituaries
• Book Zone by Jim Steel, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Stephen Theaker, Paul F. Cockburn, Elaine Gallagher, Ian Hunter, Jack Deighton, John Howard – book reviews
• Mutant Popcorn by Nick Lowe – film reviews
• Laser Fodder by Tony Lee – DVD and Blu-ray reviews

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1. TOC: Interzone #239
2. TOC: Interzone #238
3. TOC: Interzone #217

[Thanks, Andrew!]

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1. Tuesday Tune: ‘I’ve got a Rocketship’ by Jesse Tidd
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3. Tuesday Tune: ‘Chase The Devil’ by N.A.S.A

• Jim C. Hines interviews Karen Lord.
• World SF Blog Roundtable with Aliette de Bodard, Joyce Chng, Requires Hate, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, and Ekaterina Sedia.
• Sword and Laser interviews Lev Grossman (video).
• Alma Katsu interviews Alethea Kontis.
• Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews interviews Chris F. Holm.
• Prime Books (Erin Stocks) interviews Maureen McHugh.
• SF Squeecast Episode 12 (podcast).
• I Should Be Writing interviews Peter V. Brett (podcast).
• Erin Underwood interviews Melinda Snodgrass.
• Dark Wolf interviews Chris F. Holm.
• Sense of Wonder (Cristina Jurado) interviews Gavin Rothery.

News

• Ramsey Campbell – First Guest of Honor Confirmed for Bram Stoker Awards™ Weekend 2013.
• Angry Robot Now Recruiting – US-based Sales & Marketing Manager.
• 20th Century Fox Options Self-Published Novel.
• Charlaine Harris to End Sookie Stackhouse Series Next May.
• Get Rowena Cory Daniells' King Rolen's Kin trilogy as DRM-free ebook for just £3 each!.
• Twitfic, a Twitter Fiction Anthology by Adam Callaway is A 99 cent Kindle eBook. (Also on B&N and Smashwords.)
• Weird Lovecraft Conference Calls for Papers.
• "Green Arrow" Gets a CW Series.
• Bus-Size Asteroid Zips by Earth Inside Moon's Orbit.
• Cory Doctorow’ next YA novel: Pirate Cinema.
• Congratulation to SciFi Songster John Anealio, who’s opening for Paul & Storm at Nerdtacular in Salt Lake City, Utah!
• This year’s Hugo Voter packet will be available between Wednesday May 16, 2012 and the close of the Final Ballot on July 31, 2012.

Events

• Thursday, May 17 at 6pm CS: Live video chat authors of The Mongoliad: Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, E.D. deBirmingham, Mark Teppo, Joseph Brassey, Erik Bear, and Cooper Moo.

Articles

• Kate Elliott (Rochita Loenen-Ruiz) on Decolonizing as an SF Writer.
• Genreville (Rose Fox) on Crowdsourcing Recommended Reading (Asian-American literature).
• Cheryl Morgan on Coode Street, Campbell & Gender.
• International Speculative Fiction (Aleksandar Žiljak) on Science Fiction in Croatia.
• Book View Cafe (Ursula K. Le Guin) on The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum.
• Chuck Wendig On The Privilege Of Being A Writer.
• Inkpunks (Wendy Wagner) on Add a little … character.
• Biyuti on Diaspora and the loss of language.
• Damien G. Walter on The Unspecified Reader.
• Bookworm Blues (Bryan Thomas Schmidt) on Special Needs in Strange Worlds.
• Bryan Thomas Schmidt on Outlining From A Finished Draft For Pantsers (How I Do It).
• Juliette Wade on When do you give up or start over?
• Book Life Now (Cassie Alexander) on How To Find An Agent or Editor Without Making Yourself Insane.
• Omnivoracious (Susan J. Morris) on The Rule of Threes: Expressive Character Design.
• Bleeding Cool on Celebrating Ray Bradbury At San Diego With Neil Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, Joe Hill, Dave Eggers And More. [via Paul Di Filippo]
• A Dribble of Ink (John H. Stevens) on Genre Predispositions and The Weird.
• Jason Sanford on Today in SF History: Theodore Sturgeon rewrites an already published story.
• Keith Brooke on A novel, by any other name.
• Boing Boing (Mark Frauenfelder) on Frazetta swiped from the best.
• Tor.com (Zack Parsons) on Unexplored Dystopias.
• Guardian (Cory Doctorow) on The problem with nerd politics.
• The Millions (Chris Barsanti) on Worlds Beyond Your Ken: A Guide to the Nebula Awards.
• Catherynne Valente on Announcements Concerning Prester John and Night Shade Books. [via James Nicoll]
• SFScope on Mayday! NYRSF Readings Present John Shirley and Michael Cisco.
• Barebones e-zine on Batman in the 1970s Part 18: May and June 1972.
• Boston.com on Waltham steampunk festival 2012. [via Andrew Porter]
• Guardian (Anthony Horowitz) asks Who's helping who in the cover blurb game? [via Paul Di Filippo]
• The Barnes & Noble Review Jeff VanderMeer reviews The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi.
• Functional Nerds (Paul Weimer) reviews on Anne Lyle’s Alchemist of Souls.
• Technology Review on Joi Ito's Near-Perfect Explanation of the Next 100 Years.
• Universe Today on Engineer Thinks We Could Build a Real Starship Enterprise in 20 Years.
• ManMetLife on Paolozzi: Art meets Science Fiction. [via Andrew Porter]
• Forbes on HBO Has Only Itself To Blame For Record 'Game Of Thrones' Piracy.
• The Onion on 'Game Of Thrones' Running Out Of Unkempt Old Men To Cast.
• The Verge on Steve Jobs wanted publishers to 'throw in with Apple' to create '$12.99 and $14.99' ebook market. [via eoghann]
• Amazon's Next Kindle Will Be Front-Lit and Its Next Kindle Fire Will Be Bigger.
• ePublish a Book on Paper Book vs. Digital Book – Who reads which, where and why? Useful statistics.
• The Guardian (Cory Doctorow) on Why the death of DRM would be good news for readers, writers and publishers.
• Paperback Writer (Lynn Viehl) on Build Your World Ten.
• Buzzfeed lists The 10 Worst Special Effects Ever In Movies. [via Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine]
• Topless Robot lists 10 High-Risk Sci-Fi/Fantasy Careers.

Art

• Jason Chan Book Covers Update.
• 25 Awesome Robot 3D Art Concepts.
• Alternative Doctor Who Posters.
• Best Covers: DC Comics solicitations for August 2012.
• Concept ships be DeeGS.
• @CoolVibe: “Hound of Griselbrand” by Svetlin Velinov.
• @CoolVibe: “Cable” by Mike Capprotti.

More Fun Stuff

• Excerpt: The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, Chapter 3.
• Book Depository Live: Amazing Map Shows Book Buying Around The World.
• How to shrink an actor for Snow White and the Huntsman.
• Russian satellite's 121-megapixel image of Earth is most detailed yet.
• DIY Tesla gun is real and very dangerous. [via Paul Di Filippo]
• Adventures of the League of STEAM – “Bitter Gnomes and Gardens”.
• VIDEO: Why the "Star Trek" Universe is Secretly Horrifying.
• Beware the Hairy Mango #114 – “No More Doggie Style” by Matthew Sanborn Smith.

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Congratulations to: Ria B. from New Brunswick, Canda!

You will be receiving your book soon!

Thanks to everyone who entered.

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Why is its history troubled?

When this anthology was first published in the U.S. in 1974, the publisher (Carol Rinzler at Charterhouse) rewrote and edited stories without the consent of the book’s attributed editors. Penguin published the book a year later (with the more bizarre cover you see here) in its intended form.

Bud Webster has a more complete explanation with copious amounts of name-dropping.

Here’s the table of contents, as per isfdb:

1. “We Purchased People” by Frederik Pohl
2. “The Voortrekkers” by Poul Anderson
3. “Great Escape Tours, Inc.” • shortstory by Kit Reed
4. “Diagrams For Three (Enigmatic) Stories: (“The Girl in the Tau-Dream” ; “The Immobility Crew” ; “A Cultural Side-Effect”) by Brian W. Aldiss
5. “That Thou Art Mindful of Him!” by Isaac Asimov
6. “We Three” by Dean R. Koontz
7. “An Old-Fashioned Girl” by Joanna Russ
8. “Catman” by Harlan Ellison
9. “Space Rats of the CCC” by Harry Harrison
10. “Trips” by Robert Silverberg
11. “The Wonderful, All-Purpose Transmogrifier” by Barry N. Malzberg
12. “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” by James Tiptree, Jr.
13. “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts” by Philip K. Dick

[via Good Show Sir]

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[via Giant Freakin Robot]

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From Robert Silverberg’s introduction:

The stories collected here, written between August of 1987 and May of 1990, demonstrate that I still believe in the classical unities. Of course, what seems to us a unity now might not have appeared that way when H.G. Wells was writing his wonderful stories in the nineteenth century. Wells might have argued that my “To the Promised Land” is built around two speculative fantastic assumptions, one that the Biblical Exodus from Egypt never happened, the other that it is possible to send rocketships to other worlds. But in fact we’ve sent plenty of rocketships to other worlds by now, so only my story’s alternative-world speculation remains fantasy today. Technically speaking the space-travel element of the plot has become part of the given; it’s the other big assumption that forms the central matter of the story.

The table of contents is as follows…

1. “The Dead Man’s Eyes”
2. “Enter A Soldier. Later: Enter Another”
3. “To The Promised Land”
4. “Chip Runner”
5. “A Sleep And A Forgetting”
6. “In Another Country”
7. “The Asenion Solution”
8. “We Are For The Dark”
9. “Lion Time In Timbuctoo”
10. “A Tip On A Turtle”

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The year is 2512. The human species has survived nuclear amargeddon – sort of. The survivors on a small Pacific island have rebuilt civilization the best they could. An oligargy of ruling intellectuals control the hearts and minds of the population in order to guide it into the future. Everything seems peaceful in this island paradise. But are the citizens as happy as they seem to be? Or are there darker forces at work….

Here’s the trailer:

Islands will be performed May 17 – June 2 at the Theatre Centre in Toronto.

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