When Brandon Sanderson’s debut novel, Elantris first appeared on store shelves, I was tempted to buy it. It had a lot of things going for it: good review quotes, a striking cover, an interesting description, and it’s published by Tor, who are usually pretty reliable. I couldn’t quite figure out, though, whether it was the […]
Category: SF
Visiting Japan on the Cheap
Next year’s World Science Fiction Convention is being held in Yokohama, Japan, the first time a Worldcon has ever been held in Japan. With this year’s Worldcon out of the way, we’re starting to see some discussion of who’s going, and whether various US-based fans will make the trip or not. If I pass my […]
Hugo Awards 2006
This year’s Hugo Awards (either the Oscars of the Golden Globes of the science fiction/ fantasy field, depending on who you ask) were announced last night at the Worldcon in LA. Pleasant surprises abound: 1) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson won the Best Novel Hugo. As I’ve said before, I think it was far and […]
Genre Follow-Up
Technorati reveals a bunch of responses to my weekend post on genre fiction, and I wanted to at least note a few of them here. Over at Brad DeLong’s, he highlights my comments about story pacing, which sparked some interesting comments. A number of people object that books and movies are too long these days, […]
Total Eclipse of Futurism
Over at Making Light, the Nielsen Haydens stumbled upon a video of the Hurra Torpedo version of the Bonnie Tyler/ Jim Steinman kitsch masterpiece “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which absolutely boggles the mind. Of course, the weird thing is that their re-invention isn’t actually any weirder than the original video, which Teresa also attempts […]
The Sorry State of Genre Fiction
Yesterday saw the posting (or at least the arrival on my RSS reader) of two different discussions of the current state of genre fiction. I have issues with both discussions, but reading them together makes for an interesting effect. First, there’s Charlie Stross complaining about the state of SF, and once again lamenting the lack […]
Handicapping the Hugos
There’s a comment to the most recent Open Thread at Making Light asking why there isn’t more handicapping of the Hugo Awards. The commenter, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, makes reference to a comment on John Scalzi’s “Please Vote” thread, that suggested there was a clear favorite in the balloting: There is a certain book on the […]
Less Dorky Poll: Karaoke Supernova
So, here’s a different sort of scenario for an audience-participation post: Imagine that you are in a weirdly well-stocked karaoke bar, and you have to sing a song. There’s no way out of it– if you don’t you’ll lose your job, rabid squid will eat your family, deranged America-hating terrorists will kill a puppy, whatever. […]
Classic Edition: Stronger Than Old Hapless Gods
I was scheduled for a deeply unpleasant medical test yesterday, which I thought was going to leave me lots of time for blogging. yesterday afternoon and this morning. The preliminary test turned out to be so unpleasant (if anybody ever offers to stick a tube through your nose into your stomach, decline politely) that I […]
Readercon: Social Class and Speculative Fiction
Having spent the weekend at Readercon, I feel like I should talk about it a little. For those who have never been to a SF convention, it’s not all people dressing up like space aliens and fairy princesses– in fact, the cons Kate and I go to tend not to have all that much of […]