Finally, a new James P. Blaylock novel! The agony is that I will have to wait until December 2008, but Blaylock has been a personal favorite writer of mine since 1988, when I read The Disappearing Dwarf and The Elfin Ship, two of his earliest novels. To think it’s been nine years since his last novel was published is just unreal.
Category: Uncategorized (Page 3 of 35)
SF blogsite io9 has an interesting post about two forthcoming projects, including a TV miniseries called The Last Enemy coming to the US. The second project stars Hugh Jackman, and I expect now we’ll soon see a slew of films about the new crackdown on civil liberties.
Read Prometheus Award finalist Tobias S. Buckell’s novel Crystal Rain over at TOR Books. Free only for a limited time. This is not the Prometheus Award finalist novel (that would be Ragamuffin), but might give readers a taste of Buckell’s fiction.
Well, I’m not even sure the second word in the title comes close to accuracy. Locus Online posted the notice about the Prometheus Award finalists today. In the sentence about the Classic Novel category they editorialize with the following snarky comment – “finalists for classic fiction (which can be and are nominated year after year until they win).” Personally I have grumbled about some of the repetitiveness about the nominees, but I have rarely seen Locus Online editorialize about any other science fiction award, so this behavior is questionable at best, and simply bad form. Nor is it entirely accurate. The same nominees do not show up year after year (go check the past list of nominees at www.lfs.com), though as of late this seems to have been the case. Some years ago I compiled a list of the most nominated books in the Classic category (or as it originally was called, the Hall of Fame). Several books dominated this list, while others appeared regularly but sporadically. But it just the fact such a comment was made that bothers me, not so much having to pull the facts to dispute it. I gave up pushing a couple of Jack Vance novels that I thought deserved the award, as he never got enough votes to make the second round, and I fear too few people read Vance, and his older books now are rarely reprinted and thus inaccessible.
The press release went out today, and news should be posted at LFS.com fairly soon. I have not yet read any of the finalists (I am not part of the selection committee), but I’ll need to read them all soon before the voting deadline in July. I’m a little disappointed that two of the books I nominated did not make the final cut, but so it goes. From the release:
* Ragamuffin, by Tobias S. Buckell (TOR Books), set in the same world as Crystal Rain, focuses on a struggle for power that leads to total war for humanity’s right to live free from alien rulers.
* The Execution Channel, by Ken MacLeod (TOR), imagines a post-9/11 era of terrorism, paranoia, espionage in an environment of media spin, disinformation and a rogue media outlet that broadcasts murders and executions.
* Fleet of Worlds, by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner (TOR), is a prequel to Niven’s classic Ringworld that dramatizes the deception and dominations of alien Puppeteers over enslaved descendants of a human colony ship.
* The Gladiator, by Harry Turtledove (TOR) , a Crosstime Traffic story about a future where the Soviet Union won the Cold War but curious teenagers rediscover capitalism.
* Ha’penny, by Jo Walton (TOR), an alternate-history sequel to Farthing, portrays a convincing surrender of freedom for illusory safety in a 1940s-fascist Great Britain.
This is the ninth nomination for MacLeod, who has won three times (The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal, and Learning the World); the third nomination (all as collaborations) for Niven, who won in 1992 for Fallen Angels (with Michael Flynn and Jerry Pournelle).
Turtledove has been nominated once before; this is the first nomination for Buckell and Walton. Special congratulations to TOR Books, for its grand slam of all five finalist slots for the second time in this category’s three-decade history.
The Best Novel finalist-judging committee read more than 15 novels this past year as awards possibilities, including nine official nominees. Here are the other nominees: The Guardener’s Tale, by Bruce Boston (Sam’s Dot Publishing); Echoes of an Alien Sky, by James Hogan (Baen Books); Gradisil, by Adam Roberts (Prometheus Books’ Pyr); and Off Armageddon Reef, by David Webber (TOR).
The new proprietors at Laissez Faire Books continue highlighting great fiction for kids in their last two posts. Here is an interesting take by Dr. Seuss.
“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare” says the judge who wrote an opinion on Californians’ lack of any right to homeschool their children. Chilling.
When news circulated a few months ago that Laissez Faire Books was closing its doors, I was frankly shocked but not too surprised. Thirty or twenty years ago, or even ten years ago, the catalog model was quite viable for a niche market. Searching for libertarian books back then almost always meant picking up the LFB catalog. Then came the internet, and Amazon.com, the equivalent of Wal-Mart for something like LFB. However, there’s still life left in the business, and after dropping the www.lfb.com domain, Laissez Faire Books now marches onward under the auspices of the International Society for Individual Liberty, and with a new domain and blog. Recently they posted a long essay on fiction for kids, starting with the Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix. For now I have not been able to locate an online catalog, but they are posting reviews and mentions of all their title in stock.
Robert Shea was the co-author of the Illuminatus! trilogy (with Robert Anton Wilson), plus a great solo author who wrote many a historical novel. Now, one of his older short stories is available free online, originally published in 1957. In related new, his son Mike Shea, is trying to sustain and build up interest in Robert Shea’s fiction. He manages a web site about his father, and recently posted news about Shike, a fantastic novel about Japan from a few years back. This book now is available in a free online edition. Mike Shea also links to a fan-made comic book adaptation of this story.
Wendy McElroy has some good news about a libertarian themed movie with newly rediscovered DVDs at a warehouse, now available at Laissez Faire Books.
