I’ve been checking Centipede Press’s web page often, and today discovered the first mention of the new Michael Shea collection, along with the title. No price yet, but I’m sure I will need to start saving early. (This Shea is not related to the other Michael Shea in an earlier post below.) Shea is my favorite horror/dark fantasy writer for his powerful stories and baroque language.
Author: Anders Monsen (Page 55 of 82)
Sometimes I feel like I live under the proverbial rock. I just discovered Melinda Snodgrass’s wonderful blog today via Victor Milan’s own blog. She’s a superb writer, known for her sf and fantasy books, her work in the Wild Card series, and also from Hollywood. The only Star Trek video that I own is an episode from The Next Generation, called “Measure of a Man,” written by Snodgrass for the show in 1989. One thing missing from her website is a bibliography, but perhaps I just didn’t see it out there. I would like to know more about those EDGE books she occasionally refers to…
A few nights ago I stumbled upon a PBS show, an episode in a vast series on the Inquisition. This episode focused on the Cathars, and the total and brutal suppression of this ‘heresy’ in the early fourteenth century by the Catholic church. Having read about this moment in history many years ago, I remained on the channel, and then one word fired off a strong association. The word “light” was mentioned as part of the Cathar belief system, and I remembered Robert Shea’s novel All Things Are Lights. Immediately after the show I looked up Shea on Wikipedia, and sure enough that book did deal with the Cathars and Inquisition. (It’s bad when you know it’s faster to look up the book on the internet rather than search through your own shelves for your copy.) Lo and behold there’s a link to an official Robert Shea web page.
Shea, which died in 1994, wrote my favorite historical novel, Shike. The external page on Shea is managed by his son, Michael, who’s written fiction himself. If you haven’t read Shea’s hard to find historical fiction, the text for All Things Are Lights has been made available online at that web site, as well as an outline to the planned sequel to Shaman.
The Spring issue of Prometheus is out the door, one month behind schedule, and on the last day before the monopoly raises postage rates. Of course, all the press stories all focus on how the poor Post Office is force to raise rates to compete. Apparently every other business model out there follows the same process, and all succeed in our landy of milk and honey. Nevermind.
This issue was on many levels frustrating, but in the end hopefully rewarding. When I started planning the issue some months ago, I sat staring at a dozen blank pages. I outlined what would be required to fill those pages, and started reading. I hoped that I would receive submissions from other individuals, plus I went out and sought a reprint. In the end, I wrote ten reviews and a couple of news items, which is far more than I wanted, but virtually in line with what I had planned. And all the work on Prometheus takes place late at night during a brief hour or so window in my day. Tough noogies, right?
Huge thanks go out to the other individuals who contributed to the issue, which let me push out at least four of my reviews to the Summer issue. I already have a few pages laid out for that issue, with the tables of contents planned and big goals in sight. As always, if you read this and wuld like to write reviews or articles for Prometheus, feel free to contact me — editor@lfs.org. The newsletter appears quarterly, but I always wish it were less of a struggle to fill all the pages. I constantly marvel at The New York Review of Science Fiction which has been around ten few years than Prometheus, yet appears monthly with 24 pages per issue, and has produced over twice the number of issues than the LFs newsletter in that time.
Lists always create controversy, and this one from Entertainment Weekly is no exception. The new Battlestar Gallactica at number 2? WTF? No Star Wars except for the decent (yet Samurai Jack inspired Clone Wars), not even The Empire Strikes Back? and where is Babylon 5 or Alien Nation? Most of the shows listed are fairly recent, except for weird selection of V: The Miniseries. Whatever happened to Logan’s Run or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Or even The Incredible Hulk. And Lost? Another popular yet faddish choice. In a few years that show will have drifted off into obscurity, just like the show it mirrors, Twin Peaks: nice first season, then fell over the cliff and impaled itself on its own incoherence. I do agree with the number one choice, and still have vivid memories of the first time I saw The Matrix. Too bad the producers of that movie didn’t stop there.
Prometheus Award-winning writer Victor Milan has a new blog.
Brief interview over at Sci-Fi.com with F. Paul Wilson, discussing his novel Harbingers and a forthcoming YA series about a teenage Repairman Jack. Harry Potter sure opened up some new markets, and we’re all better off as a result, if that means we get more FPW stories.
Nice story over at Yahoo (a reprint from 2001, the year Anderson died) about sf writer and multiple Prometheus Award winner Poul Anderson. One very typical quote from Anderson in this story:
“If I preach at all, it’s probably in the direction of individual liberty, which is a theme that looms large in my work.”
I did not know that Anderson didn’t allow phone calls until after 6:30pm. One time in 1995, I actually called him up, having been given his number by another writer who knew him personally. Anderson that year had won both Prometheus Awards, and I was looking for some comment from him for the newsletter and award ceremony. I can’t remember the gist of the conversation, or what time I called, but he of course had no clue who I was at the time, though he was quite cordial. I regret never having met him in person.
I’m hoping to review Bruce Boston’s new novel, The Guardeners Tale for the Summer issue of Prometheus. One blurb opens like this “Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451. THX 1138. A Scanner Darkly. Bruce Boston’s new novel, The Guardener’s Tale, assumes its rightful place in this noble lineage of anti-authoritarian fables.” Boston in an interview a few years ago said, ” I am not a libertarian or an anarchist, but I do see government as it has existed as a necessary evil.” He also views himself as somewhat left of center, but anti-authoritarian views come in many packages, and cares little for left or right. Read more about Boston at his website.
Now that I’ve completed the Spring issue of Prometheus, after a couple of delays caused by what my optician called a “corneal ulcer” in my right eye that made any bright light unbearable and migrane inducing, I have a little time for my irregular blogging. I’m getting ready to read through all the finalists for this year’s Prometheus Awards. I read F. Paul Wilson’s Harbingers when it appeared as the limited edition from Gauntlet Press, and am awaiting his latest Repairman Jack novel due out from that publisher next month. While I’m an FPW fan and like the RJ story and books, I don’t see any libertarianism in Harbingers. I enjoyed Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End but not nearly as much as his two previous sf novels. Certain ideas and trends raised by Vinge are sobering, and I see his “You Gotta Believe Me” meme cropping up in another book, Justina Robson’s excellent Mappa Mundi (not one of the finalists, but the US edition appeared in 2006, while the original UK edition was ahead of Vinge, in 2001). So maybe it’s not Vinge’s meme after all…
I have not yet read the other three books, but Charles Stross’ Glasshouse is next on the list. I like Stross’ work, and have read all his other novels published to date save the latest Clan Corporate novel. I haven’t read anything from Orson Scott Card in many years, and nothing by John Scalzi, so those books will be interesting.
Sometimes I’m right there on the edge of new sf, but sometimes I’m way behind the times, staring over the fence at non-sf books. Currently I’m trying to finish Mark Shorer’s biography, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. I started the book last November, but set it aside to read a dozen sf books and review most of them. I’m also in the middle of The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Varlam Shamlov’s Kolyma Tales (one of the many frightening results of Stalin’s gulags), Nora May French’s Poems, and Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism (which, for some reason, I feel as if I’ve already read, since I followed almost the same path 20 years ago when reading as much as I could about the history of libertarianism). I am compiling a list of fiction and non-fiction written under totalitarianism, especially the Soviet Union, possibly towards a long essay on the subject. Lest they are forgotten, writers are imprisoned and exiled for their work even now, in such countries as Vietnam, China, Cuba, Turkey and elsewhere.
Best book I’ve read so far this year: Adam Roberts’ Gradisil. I have to inquire about the current Prometheus Award rules, since the UK edition appeared in 2006, but if the 2007 US edition is eligible, I’d say at this point that Roberts’ novel is a shoo-in for the 2008 Prometheus Award. No freakin’ contest.
