SF/F/H Link Post for 2015-2-23

Interviews & Profiles

• Buzzfeed interviews Laurie Halse Anderson, author of The Impossible Knife of Memory. She says adults should read YA: “It can also give them insight into some of their own stuff, some of their own sadness and sorrows, and shine a light on maybe some work that they need to do emotionally, which is very helpful. And also, the writing’s amazing.”
• My Bookish Ways interviews Terry Newman, author of Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf. (Also read his recent guest post.)
• Scott Sigler interviews Pierce Brown, author of Red Rising.
• Straylight Literary Magazine interviews Greg Bear, author of War Dogs.
• Suvudu interviews Graeme Davis, author of Werewolves: A Hunter’s Guide.
• Suvudu interviews Randy Henderson, author of Finn Fancy Necromancy.
• Wastelands 2 interviews Maureen F. McHugh, author of “After the Apocalypse.”

News

• 2014 Nebula Awards Nominees Announced, with Free Fiction links
• AMC To Bring New Sci-Fi Series Humans To Cable Television in 2015
• David Brin to AAAS: please, let’s not beam signals to aliens.

Events & Event News

• Artist Sean Gordon Murphy will appear at Midtown Comics Downtown in NYC on Thursday, March 19th at 6:30 pm for a signing of Chrononauts #1! RSVP on Facebook
• Neil Gaiman will appear on Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. at the Eccles Center Main Stage in Park City, Utah! RSVP on Facebook Tickets available online

Crowd Funding

• Annals of the Keepers: Rage (Book 3 in the Gashnee Saga) – Sci-fi adventure of Mankind’s struggle against an enemy who hides behind an ancient galactic secret.
• Far Out vol.2 – the second volume of our Far Out sci-fi western series!

Articles

• 10 sci-fi novel opening lines that’ll take your breath away, according to Ink Tank
• B&N recommends 5 New Books that Show the Future of Military Sci-Fi
• BoingBoing discusses Johnny Mnemonic and the perfect cyberpunk movie it wasn’t
• Chuck Wendig takes aim at the concept of “strong female characters,” and discusses ways that perceptions of “strong” can fail women, too.
• Crashed Saucers and Contactees: UFOs and the Secret Origin of the Green Lantern
• Critics React to Neill Blomkamp Directing the New Alien Sequel
• Daily Life’s Jane Gilmore names The best ’70s sci-fi books by misandrists.
• At Diversity in YA, Malinda Lo combined her four-part Tumblr series on perceptions of diversity in books reviews. Lo says that, in reading hundreds of trade reviews of YA books, some consistent issues were found: reviewers saying diversity felt “contrived,”that books deal with “too many issues,” and some calls for a glossary to “decode” the text.
• Doctor Who series 9: What do we know so far?
• Dreaming About Other Worlds considers the question of Gender and the Hugo Awards.
• Everyone should take it easy on the robot paranoia for a while. “There’s been a small, but influential, hysteria surrounding the idea is that a huge wave of automation, technology and skills have lead to a massive structural change in the economy since 2010. The implicit argument here is that robots and machines have both made traditional demand-side policies irrelevant or naïve, and been a major driver of wage stagnation and inequality.” David Autor and Larry Summers tear apart the idea that a Machine Age is responsible for our economic plight. … but how awesome is it to live at a point in history where we need to talk about the politics of robots?
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Interstellar at The Motherboard Podcast
• The Fight for Masculinity in Science Fiction: “…from one Manly-man to another (who’s not looking quite as manly as he should), here are a few rules and suggestions. Fear is not manly. Stop being afraid of women. Really. Be nice to them and they won’t bite you.”
• The Glass Arrow Is This Generation’s YA The Handmaid’s Tale We All Needed
• Kameron Hurley reacted poorly to Neil Gaiman’s decision to name a short story collection, “Trigger Warnings.” “[W]what you do when you title a rather typical short story collection “Trigger Warning” is that your work becomes part of the problem of breaking it down into meaninglessness and slapping it on any old thing as a marketing gimmick,” she writes. “You co-opt a term used in feminist spaces, and you use it for shock value, to be edgy and subversive, instead of acting like an ally who has empathy and understanding of the term for its intended use.”
• LoreKings picks the Top 5 TV Space Operas
• Lose Some, Win Some: GRR Martin talks about winning a Stabby
• Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains. Say it ain’t so!
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, the last optimistic sci-fi series, is the Future We Deserve.
• Why Reading On A Screen Is Bad For Critical Thinking

Art

• Check out this amazing Indiana Jones Cake by Mother and Me Creative Cakes
• Kick Ass Custom Boba Fett Motorcycle Helmets

More Fun Stuff

• Canadian musician Danny Michel buys Star Trek boogie van
• Exclusive Cover Reveal: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
• Listen to “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar” read by Neil Gaiman. A Young American on a walking tour of the British coastline stumbles into the town of Innsmout where Acolytes of Cthulhu teach him about life, Lovecraft, death and unspeakable horror.”
• One Cast to Rule Them All: A Diverse, Gender-Swapped LOTR Recast
• Pulp Crazy discusses French Proto Science Fiction and Popular Literature
• Read the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story a Historian Just Found in His Attic
• This 43-Second Short May Be the First Sci-Fi Film. It’s a single-reel film about a box that turns pigs into pork products. Turns out, early sci-fi ever predicted factory farming.
• Watch a trailer for Beyond The Wave, starring Casper Van Dien and produced by luxury pleasure brand LELO – whatever that means.
• Watch a trailer for the short film “The Writer.”
• Watch a trailer for Wayward Pines, the new television series from M. Night Shyamalan. That’s right, the network that couldn’t be convinced to leave Firefly on the air is giving the director of such bombs as Lady in the Water and Signs a whole new medium in which to bore audiences. I’m not sure whether this is poetic justice or cruel irony, but know this – know this! Should Wayward Pines somehow receive a longer run than Firefly, I may yet restrain myself from bloodshed, but my Tweets shall be very sharply-worded indeed.