• Alastair Reynolds is blogging: Teahouse on the Tracks.
• John Clute reviews The SFWA European Hall of Fame. (Far be it from me to criticise Clute, but I can’t help thinking it would have been nice if he’d talked about the stories a bit more …)
• Farah Mendlesohn reviews Life as we Knew It by Susan Beth Pffefer
• Two reviews of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union from the Guardian (well, one from The Guardian and one from the Observer); Scott Westerfeld takes issue with the latter.
• Graham Sleight on Isaac Asimov.
• Reactions to Saturday’s Doctor Who: one, two, three, four, five. I liked it, but I’m not as rapturous as everyone else.
• Henry Farrell reviews Ian McDonald’s Brasyl.
• Benjamin Rosenbaum has sold a short story collection to Small Beer Press.
• Listen Again (until Sunday) to Weird Tales: The Strange Life of HP Lovecraft, with contributions from Kelly Link, China Mieville, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman and others.
• In other news, it’s the end of the world.

I am now back in the UK. While I was away, I accumulated quite a lot of links. Here’s a selection, bearing in mind that some of them will be old news:

• John Scalzi is revising his “top 50 personal sf/f blogs” list again, and wants to know if your Technorati ranking is above 50,000. (Every time I check, this place is hovering between 50,000 and 60,000, so no luck for me.) This time round he’s adding a section for group blogs.
• Campbell Award finalists. A good list, but it’s usually a good list with an utterly boneheaded choice for winner; given that I’m expecting Ben Bova to take it.
• Sturgeon Award finalists. A really good list (especially pleased to see a nod for M. Rickert’s “You Have Never Been Here”, which seems to have been overlooked by every Year’s Best anthology).
• Fahrenheit 451 “is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.” Says Ray Bradbury.
• This year’s Readercon programme.
• Locus reviews: Graham Sleight on Endless Things by John Crowley, Gary K. Wolfe on The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod. You can post comments there, you know. Also from Locus, a discussion of horror.
• Paul Witcover interviews Brian Aldiss about his new novel HARM; note that since the interview was conducted the book has found a UK publisher, Duckworth, and will be out over here in August.
• An interview with Iain Banks; on his next sf novel, Matter: ‘”It’s a real shelf-breaker,” he says enthusiastically. “It’s 204,000 words long and the last 4,000 consist of appendices and glossaries. It’s so complicated that even in its complexity it’s complex. I’m not sure the publishers will go for the appendices, but readers will need them.”‘
• Big changes at Bertelsmann’s Book Clubs, including the SF Book Club; see posts by Jonathan Strahan here, here and here.
• Warren Ellis on reviews. (“Sorry about all the italics: I feel like I’m turning into John Clute — a writer I hate for the way he tortures language, like a man trying to dry a wet dog by frying it on the stove.”)
• The Ratbastards will be publishing novellas.
• Joe Hill reviews Chuck Palahniuk’s latest, Rant.
• John Crowley reviews The Pesthouse by Jim Crace.
• Jan Morris reviews Owen Sheers’ debut novel, Resistance.
• John Clute reviews The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.
• Colin Greenland reviews Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan.
• On fantasy: one, two. See also.
• Kit Whitfield on that list of books for boys.
• And last but not least, new fiction by David Mitchell: “Denouement.”

• Aqueduct Press has a new blog (lj feed); posts so far include Nancy Jane Moore on the resurgence of feminist science fiction, conversations with Nisi Shawl and Lesley Hall, and a heads-up that L. Timmel Duchamp will (probably) be discussing Karen Koy Fowler’s story “Always” (April/May Asimov’s) in the near-ish future.
• Lots of good stuff over at the Litblog Co-op this week, including Alan DeNiro on why he writes about spaceships, and Matt Cheney on several of the stories in Skinny-Dipping in the Lake of the Dead: “If I Leap“, “Child Assassin“, and the title story
• Maureen McHugh’s plea for strangeness in sf
• Mely’s belated thoughts on the cultural appropriation panel from Wiscon 30
• “In this blizzard of commentary, from blogosphere to talk radio, it’s odd to discover that literary prizes now stand out as a surprisingly reliable guide“
• The genesis of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. And I think this review even beats out that piece on Jim Crace for OTT as-others-see-us-ness: “Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.”
• The birth of the fantastic
• Reviews in The Guardian: M. John Harrison on Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant; Carrie O’Grady on Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World; Kamila Shamsie on Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House; and Josh Lacey on China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun (“for science-fiction fans who don’t mind the lack of characterisation, Un Lun Dun should provide lots of fun”)
• Speaking of Lionel Shriver, here she is writing about reviewing. Or perhaps, more accurately, angsting about reviewing
• Why are most artists liberal?
• And finally: how to (not) talk to girls on buses

Back from Barcelona, cleaning out the links:

• The Eve’s Alexandrians have been continuing their Clarke reading with gusto: here are Nic and Victoria on Gradisil (which they liked), Hav (which they really liked), and End of the World Blues (which they disagreed on, Nic being somewhat more positive than Victoria). For other (quite different) opinions see here.
• An interview with Richard Morgan. There’s been a bit of debate in the comments to Martin Lewis’ review of Morgan’s Black Man. (Other good stuff at Strange Horizons reviews this week: William Mingin on Kipling, and Adam Roberts on Sunshine.)
• Gwyneth Jones in The Guardian on reality catching up with sf, and on her blog on Joan Slonczewski’s A Door into Ocean.
• Reviews from Locus: Gary Wolfe on In War Times by Katheleen Ann Goonan and Faren Miller on Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages.
• Compare and contrast: Abigail Nussbaum on the Hugo-nominated short stories, novellettes and novella list, versus SF Signal on all of them in one post. They don’t have opposite views about every story …
• The paintings of Alice B. Sheldon.
• An interesting discussion developed on the De Lint on Mieville post, if you missed that.
• Kelly Link has a young adult collection coming out next year.
• An interesting response to my review of Specimen Days.
• The May/June 2008 Interzone will be a Mundane SF special, guest-edited by Geoff Ryman, Julian Todd and Trent Walters.
• Farah Mendlesohn on Myth, Symbol and Meaning in Mary Poppins and Mary Poppins, She Wrote: the Life of P.L. Travers.
• Martin McGrath on Ascent by Jed Mercurio.
• Jonathan McCalmont on new mass-market sf magazine SciFiNow.
• The Winter Rose and The Snow Queen.
• Richard Larson on The Crying of Lot 49 and paranoia.
• The Locus Award Finalists and Paul’s comments.
• A recent talk by Ken MacLeod.
• And: this review of The Children of Hurin was actually doing ok until the last paragraph.

• Lists of novels and short fiction by women that have been shortlisted by awards other than the Hugo (or made the Locus Recommended Reading list). In an entirely unrelated story, voting for the Locus Poll, in which anyone can vote, closes tomorrow. (And apparently there’s some YA you should be considering, too.)
• Eastercon reports: one, two, three. And Paul Raven has put up his recording of the reviews panel.
• Everyone’s seen Jonathan Lethem’s essay, “The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction“, right? You may not have seen this exchange of emails between Lethem and Ray Davis, originally published in NYRSF.
• Paul Di Filippo remembers SF Eye. Gabe Chouinard points to the new Scalpel Magazine, launching in May.
• The nature of consolation and comfort in reading and writing: Christopher Barzak and Matt Cheney.
• Abigail Nussbaum on the Hugo novellette shortlist and on the Life on Mars finale. Other Life on Mars reactions: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. See also this interview with Matthew Graham, which includes information about the sequel series Ashes to Ashes.
• Pete Young on Sunshine. And two reviews in the Guardian.
• What would a history of seventies sf look like?
• Programmes for Alt.Fiction 2007 (28th April, Derby) and Sci-Fi London (2nd to 6th May).
• Recommend some action-adventure science fiction page-turners.
• And finally: the funniest review of His Majesty’s Dragon you will see for a while. (Key quotes: “I actually suspending reading Schismatrix to read this, if you can believe it”; “Honestly, this isn’t really a fantasy book. It’s an alternative history novel”; “I can see why the voters nominated it for a Hugo after all.”)

• Pirates are out, Fauns are in: Pan’s Labyrinth replaces The Pirates of the Caribbean 2 on the Hugo ballot
• Two views of The Road at Strange Horizons, by Victoria Hoyle and Paul Kincaid. And a third, dissenting view by Levi Asher (via)
• Not unrelatedly, “In my eyes, the [Clarke Award has lost its] credibility this year, and I would encourage those interested to boycott the award“. Martin asks if Oprah now has more credibility than the Clarke. Tony has another response.
• Nic reviews River of Gods and inadvertently starts a slapfight about Ian McDonald’s portrayal of India
• Abigail on the Battlestar Galactica season finale (which I haven’t seen yet)
• Nicholas Whyte rounds up reactions to the first episode of Doctor Who‘s third season
• Faren Miller on The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• Scott Esposito on The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and other Jewish alternate histories (via)
• An early review of Sunshine in The Scotsman
• Jeff VanderMeer interviews Jonathan Strahan
• And I’m not going to claim it’s the best April’s Fool I saw yesterday, but as an old Angel fan, this gave me a nostalgic glow. (via)

(One day there will be substantive content here again. But probably not this week, alas.)

• Andrew Mckie (among other things, sf reviewer for the Telegraph, interviewer of Ken Macleod and Gary Wolfe at past BSFA meetings, and introduction-writer for Glorifying Terrorism) has a blog.
• So do Elizabeth Hand, Lucius Shepard, Paul Witcover and Paul di Filippo.
• John Clute reviews Matthew Sharpe’s Jamestown.
• Where’s the YA sf? (via)
• The contents for the first Best American Fantasy, and Matt Cheney’s preface.
• M. John Harrison describes the M1 then uses it as an example of writing about landscape.
• Early word on Red Seas Under Red Skies is positive, but not unreservedly so.
• SF on film (via).
• Draft programme for the 2007 Science & the Public conference (more info), on May 19th.
• And in July there’s a conference on short stories that’s calling for papers.
• And to finish, another iteration of “what is the minimum one should reasonably be able to expect from a reviewer?“

• “At the risk of sounding like a nerd, I’m beginning to think science fiction’s actually quite good“
• David Langford has put an essay by David Masson online: Some Thoughts on Language in Science Fiction.
• New fiction by David Marusek: “Osama Phone Home“
• Greg Egan posts to usenet, spawns giant thread; the original post points to a FAQ for Permutation City
• Nic Clarke on Yvgeny Zamyatin’s We
• Abigail Nussbaum on the Nebula short story ballot
• Paul Kincaid on Un Lun Dun
• The latest issue of The Internet Review of SF has an interview with Elizabeth Bear and a review of her latest novel, Carnival, among other things. Elsewhere, Jonathan wonders what’s wrong with IROSF.
• Jeff Vandermeer is unimpressed by Terence Rafferty’s review of The Terror
• An interview with Richard Morgan about his new novel Black Man (which, I have to say, despite not getting on with Morgan’s fiction in the past, sounds promising)
• Neal Stephenson’s inexplicable defence of The 300
• John Scalzi is running for SFWA president as a write-in candidate. More discussion here.
• And Paolo Bacigalupi on futurizing:
  

  Futurizing: The process of adding kick-ass gadgets, tools, and extrapolations to a sci-fi story to make it feel more futuristic so that it can fit more comfortably in the sci-fi genre. Closely related to Sense-of-Wonder Interior Designing.

• Paul Raven started a debate about publishing online: sf magazines don’t have to die. One of the things that fed into it was Jason Stoddard’s thoughts on new marketing 101 for sf publishers and writers, which he subsequently followed up with a second post (which takes us back in the direction of the author-reader relationship again). Meanwhile, Big Dumb Object remembers Bruce Sterling’s talk at the last BSFA/SFF AGM event, and Gordon van Gelder responded to Paul’s original post on the Nightshade forums, sparking another thread of discussion (telling quote from Daryl Gregory: “It’s interesting that people here see techies as natural screen readers, but not SF fans. Everybody outside the ghetto would assume that SF folks would be first in line. I mean, online.”)
• Speaking of content from print magazines online, F&SF has essays on Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman, Michael Swanwick, and Michael Andrei-Driussi. While the Matrix team have put up Tom Hunter’s interview with Josh Conviser, and Martin McGrath’s review of Children of Men.
• And a new online magazine: Darker Matter. Which, among other things, appears to have unearthed a Douglas Adams interview from 1979
• Adam Roberts on Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future.
• Nic Clarke on Mary Gentle’s Ilario.
• James Wood comprehensively not getting Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day; a partial response.
• Michel Faber on Jed Mercurio’s Ascent, which looks fascinating.
• Kim Stanley Robinson has been verging on ubiquitous this week, which has the effect of making me want to read Sixty Days of Counting even more than I already did. There are brief pieces at Salon and in the UCSD Guardian, an interview at Sci-Fi Weekly, and sundry radio and podcast appearances.
• Bookslut interviews Scarlett Thomas (whose The End of Mr Y I also want to read; hurry up, UK publication).
• And finally, for those going to Contemplation, a more-or-less final programme is online.

• Excerpts from Samuel Delany’s interview of Joanna Russ at last year’s Wiscon:
  

  SD: [Asks about the “double bind situation” — the economic realities of a writer trying to make a living writing.]

  JR: Yes, that’s awful. It’s not the writers’ fault. It’s the economics of publishing now. What I’ve seen again and again is that a writer will do very fine early stuff — really good stuff — and say, “Okay, I can make a living writing.” But they then find themselves having to work too fast. Words should not only be thought, they should be felt through, and there just isn’t enough time. People in that bind never do great stuff again. And if you don’t do that, if you say, “Okay, I will keep my day job (as they used to say in the theater), and I will just write what I damn well please,” you end up working too hard.

• Vote for the genre cover of the month
• In the Guardian, Audrey Niffenegger reviews Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners (in some ways I can’t help wishing they’d got someone British to write that review), and Gwyneth Jones reviews Hal Duncan’s Ink
• Fiction: 23 small disasters by Benjamin Rosenbaum, Christopher Barzak, Greg van Eekhout, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Meghan McCarron, Tim Pratt, and Elad Haber
• Audio fiction: a new Susanna Clarke short story, “The Dweller in High Places”
• Ain’t It Cool News has an sf book reviewer
• Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Philip K. Dick
• Maureen Kincaid Speller on Ian McDonald
• Abigail Nussbaum is reviewing the Nebula-nominated short fiction again: she’s started with the novelettes
• Kit Whitfield on inventing slang
• Escapism and the end of Pan’s Labyrinth. Posts I will write when I have time: a comparison of the endings of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Science of Sleep.