- Reviews of Anathem: Michael Dirda in the Washington Post (grumpy), The Complete Review (snobby), Laura Miller in the LA Times; Paul Witcover in Locus; Martin Lewis at Strange Horizons; Jeff VanderMeer at Barnes & Noble review.
- Abigail Nussbaum on William Gibson’s Spook Country and Ian McDonald’s Brasyl: “Much as I enjoyed the substance of Brasyl, the experience of reading it was marked by an ever-increasing sense of unease at McDonald’s treatment of the real country in which his story is grounded.”
- Gardner Dozois will be reviewing short fiction for Locus; some discussion here.
- Jonathan Strahan announces the final contents for Eclipse Two … including new stories by Margo Lanagan and Ted Chiang!
- Adam Roberts reviews Peter Ackroyd’s Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. Three times.
- Roz Kaveney reviews The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson in The Independent: “Though completely crackers, this is a powerful and engaging book”. Tim Martin in the Indie on Sunday is less keen.
- Rick Moody reviews Victor Pelevin’s lates novel
- Dustin Kurtz reviews Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams
- Graham Joyce is a finalist for the O Henry Award, for a story which became this book.
- Jonathan McCalmont writes about the uncanny valley of near-future sf.
- Paul Kincaid’s latest “science fiction skeptic” column plays with the idea of sf awards as a “rolling canon”; though I can’t help pointing out that the most immediate reason Kathleen Goonan’s In War Times wasn’t shortlisted for the Clarke Award is that it hasn’t been published in the UK.
- Time machine time: Ellen Datlow’s year in horror summation, 1987.
- Tor UK have a couple of sales on: 20% off these titles, and 3-for-2 on these e-books until the end of December.
- Dirk Maggs will unfortunately not be attending LX
- And Lou Anders has details of a new sf imprint: “Angry Robot’s first titles will be published in July 2009 … Michaels told The Bookseller that it would be a completely different model to HC’s existing Voyager imprint. ‘We really see Voyager as the gold standard for science fiction,’ he said. ‘They take big name authors like Robin Hobb or Terry Goodkind. At Angry Robot we will be building the next wave of authors, people like Cory Doctorow or Fiona McIntosh who are on their first books with us at Voyager.’”
Your link re discussion of Dozois doesn’t seem to work, at least for me. (“Topic not found”)
Fixed now.
Maybe I have totally missed the point of ebooks, since I don’t have an ebook reader, but surely they should be cheaper than a paper copy?
Liz, I agree. I don’t have a reader either, but if an ebook is not significantly cheaper than a paper copy there is no chance I would ever purchase one. Assuming, of course, I had a reader.
No one has said it, but
Would you buy a book from an Angry Robot? (with no Will Smith protection).
The imprint will target early adopters of science fiction, who begin reading the genre between the ages of 14 and 16
Those don’t sound like very early early adopters.
It is an interesting decision to splint their imprints like this. I guess it is because Voyager is seen as a fantasy imprint regardless of the odd claim that “we really see Voyager as the gold standard for science fiction”. I can’t actually remember seeing any interesting science fiction from Voyager recently so I went to check their website. Oh dear. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how Angry Robot turns out because Solaris had an interestign – albeit not very good – list.
PS The actual press release seems a bit different to the one Anders posted.
I would totally buy a book from an Angry Robot, even though I am not in their group of “massively aggressive” consumers.
As a heads up, I will mention that I’ve read ECLIPSE TWO, and the Ted Chiang story is, well, Ted Chiang. It took my breath away. (Which is a pun as you will see when you read the story.)
(Very fine book overall, I will add.)
I’m sure we all appreciate the heads-up, Rich, and aren’t the least bit jealous. ;-)
Re Angry Robot press releases – Lou’s note was derived from a piece in The Bookseller (journal of the UK booktrade). It’s… well… yeah. Let’s just say that perhaps the reporter’s shorthand failed him on the day. The real pr linked to above, at the HC site, is the right one.