- Chris Mckitterick wants suggestions:
[James Gunn] and I are working on updating the SF Institute novel reading list for next summer. Specifically, we want to add more modern works – and I would like to see more female authors represented on the list.
Requirements:
1) The works must be seminal (hardee har har, I hear you thinking) – that is, they had a major influence on the SF that followed.
2) They represent movements in the genre that are not already represented in the current list.
3) They are by authors we don’t already have on the list (preferably newer authors).We’re planning to cut about five novels, so we’re looking to add five modern novels. Ideas, please!
- Adam Roberts on Doris Lessing, particularly her sf.
- And Victoria Hoyle on two novels by Adam Roberts
- Nic Clarke on Air by Geoff Ryman
- John Clute reviews Axis by Robert Charles Wilson
- Abigail Nussbaum’s thoughts on the new TV season. It’s slim pickings, this year.
- A discussion about Guy Gavriel Guy’s Ysabel
- Andrew Holgate reviews The Stone Gods in The Times: “Winterson may dislike science fiction, but it clearly offers her the elbowroom she needs.”
- James Patrick Kelly interviews William Gibson to mark the publication of Rewired: the post-cyberpunk anthology
- Paul Kincaid’s latest Bookslut column, on short stories: “What Won’t Sell“. Also at Bookslut, reviews of Zeroville by Steve Erickson and Ha’Penny by Jo Walton
- Jed Hartman on Who S3 in general, and Martha’s role in particular
- Dan Green responds to “John Harrison” via Matt Cheney
- Matt Cheney on the final final cut of Blade Runner. And another view.
- Australian Speculative Fiction: A Rant
- And finally, announcements I should have linked by now: Fantasy Magazine is moving online; TTA Press is relaunching The Fix, online; and Aqueduct Press wants submissions for the second volume of the Wiscon Chronicles
Zeroville is a great read.
I recently conducted an in depth interview with Erickson, which is now live on http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net.
That discussion on Ysabel almost persuaded me to consider rereading the book. It’s as if they read an entirely different object since for me the book had a whole lot of nothing going on. (Or rather a continuing exploration of themes Kay has covered in a superior fashion in earlier novels.) I don’t get the YA label though, and I live for YA (fantasy).
Imani — interesting. Did you blog about the book at all?
It turns out that I did: Reading Report. (I appear to have knowledge of Kay’s thoughts when doing so and so because I went to one of his readings.) On rereading it after having read that discussion I can only surmise that I found the book’s plot so boring that I couldn’t garner any excitement for his themes.
Pardon me, that link does not seem to work: http://imani.wordpress.com/2007/04/02/reading-report/
Never mind coding then.
Something seems to be screwy in the link to my first TV roundup.