• The discussion about the non-fiction category rumbles on, with a couple of offshoots elsewhere. I’m not sure we’re actually any nearer a solution, but lots of interesting things have been said. Of course, more opinions (even of the “me too” variety) are always welcome.
• Two great posts about The Prestige: Abigail Nussbaum on the film and Nic Clarke on the book.
• Two new websites: one for Farah Mendlesohn’s forthcoming anthology Glorifying Terrorism, and one for The Arthurc C. Clarke Award.
• UK magazine Dreamwatch is ceasing publication; however, as of the 25th January it will continue in an online incarnation at www.dwscifi.com.
• Jeff VanderMeer on some common flaws in the stories he’s been reading for Best American Fantasy.
• The Litblog Co-Op’s latest selection is Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
• A short article on Thomas Pynchon by Gregory Feeley.
• Elizabeth Hand starts a thread about why she doesn’t blog and ends up talking about a group blog with folks like Paul Witcover and Lucius Shepard.
• Dan Martin in The Guardian on Battlestar Galactica season 3. (For a different take on the season from a different Dan, see Strange Horizons tomorrow.)
• I really don’t know what to make of this, except to say that abbreviating “fantasy fiction” to “fanfic” strikes me as having the potential to make parts of the internet implode.
• And finally: the true extent of Vector‘s operations revealed.

(I owe a number of people email. Unfortunately, this situation is not likely to change in the next few days. Sorry, all.)

• Strange Horizons now has a weekly podcast! Get it through iTunes here, or subscribe manually to http://www.strangehorizons.com/podcast.xml.
• The Nebula preliminary ballot. Who knows which items will make the final cut, but I’m glad to see nods for David Marusek’s Counting Heads, Daryl Gregory’s “Second Person, Present Tense”, M. Rickert’s “Anyway” and Theodora Goss’ “Pip and the Fairies“. The novella category looks a bit half-hearted, although it occurs to me that if the jury added “Map of Dreams”, M. Rickert could potentially sweep the short fiction categories. And the oldest item still eligible under the wacky Nebula rules this time? “Little Faces” by Vonda McIntyre, from February 2005.
• There’s a new Internet Review of SF out, although inexplicably the article on worst SF TV episodes ever neglects to mention Torchwood.
• Victoria Hoyle on The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.
• Jeff Vandermeer offers twelve overlooked books of 2006.
• The dumbest article I’ve seen at Bookslut in a while.
• Jonathan Strahan interviewed about editing and Australian sf.
• The Ninth Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy.
• A website for The No Shows, aka the band from Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity novel. Complete with hit single, would you believe.
• And finally: the deadline for nominations for the BSFA Awards draws ever closer. Send your votes to BSFA.Awards@gmail.com by midnight tomorrow. You can count on there being another post to remind you before then.

• For those who might be interested (say, those looking for things to nominate for the BSFA Best Artwork Award — one week to the deadline!), the Locus Online Directory of 2006 cover art.
• I am told that this link points to an announcement about an anthology of the short-short Futures from Nature. However, since I don’t have a subscription to Nature, I can’t personally confirm that that is where the link points.
• The ISFDB is now user-editable.
• The first issue of Farrago’s Wainscot is live: fiction from Forest Aguirre, Jay Lake, Nisi Shawl, various other bits and pieces.
• A tourist map of Gotham
• Fictional ruins from fictional worlds.
• Maureen McHugh on the Tiptree biography.
• Michael Moorcock on Against the Day; and more Pynchon discussion at Ed Champion‘s place. And here‘s Michael Wood’s LRB review.
• Jonathan McCalmont on Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box.
• Israeli science fiction is dead!
• What I did over New Year. Mmm, books.
• And finally, here‘s the schedule for BSFA London meetings for 2007:
  

  *24 January: Paul Cornell interviewed by Graham Sleight
  28 February: Robert Holdstock interviewed by Paul Kincaid
  *28-Mar: Hal Duncan interviewed by Tony Keen
  25-Apr: Jon George interviewed by Paul Kincaid
  23-May: Stephen Hunt interviewed by Tom Hunter
  27-Jun: Brian Stableford interviewed by Edward James
  25-Jul: Anne Sudworth, interviewer tba
  *22 August: TBA
  26-Sep: Juliet McKenna interviewed by Pat McMurray
  *24 October: John Clute interviewed by Andrew McKie
  28-Nov Iain M. Banks interviewed by Farah Mendlesohn

  A * means there are five Wednesdays in the month, and reminds you that the meeting is on the fourth Wednesday, not the last Wednesday.

Great news via Mark Kelly:

We’re doing something a bit new here at Locus Online (and Locus Magazine), for which I’ve created a new Blogger blog for ‘Locus Online Features’, and have re-posted the Graham Sleight retrospective review of Arthur C. Clarke and George R. Stewart using that function with a new URL. The point is to more easily enable commenting from readers, which will appear almost-automatically (I did enable comment moderation, which means the comments you post are sent to me via email first, for my approval or rejection, as a means of blocking spam).

Gary Westfahl’s review of Children of Men has been posted the same way.

More sample reviews from Locus Magazine are on the way — Graham Sleight’s columns, as well as one or two reviews from each issue by Gary Wolfe, Faren Miller, and the others. The idea is to drum up interest in subscribing to the magazine! Of course surely anyone reading this blog is already a subscriber.

Whether or not you’re a subscriber, the RSS feed for the Locus Online site, which (it seems) will include new Features posts in the same way it always has, is here (or, on livejournal, here, though I’m not sure that feed’s quite got with the programme yet).

• Dave Itzkoff’s latest target is John Scalzi, who rounds up discussion of the piece here, including his thoughts and Sarah Monette on mainstream reviewing of sf
• Nic on Magic for Beginners
• Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Graham Sleight on Arthur C. Clarke and George R. Stewart
• Ed Champion on Rudy Rucker
• An interview with Peter Watts
• Benjamin Rosenbaum’s original opening to his story “The House Beyond Your Sky“
• Alternate Earths
• The most blatant As Others See Us Moment I’ve come across for a while:
  

  “The Children of Men” is not another of Ms. James’s famed detective novels, and it is not, as it has sometimes sloppily been described, science fiction. It is a trenchant analysis of politics and power that speaks urgently to this social moment

• And on an admin note, thanks largely to a heroic effort by Tony, Vector 250 went to the printers just before Christmas, so the V250/Matrix 182 mailing should be out in mid-to-late January

Ursula Le Guin on why adults should read children’s fantasy.

Also in the New Statesman, Philip Pullman (and a couple of others) on William Blake.

Now All Year’s Bests Until The End, courtesy of Jed Hartman.

Elizabeth Bear objects to her latest novel being described as slash. Sarah Monette queries current usage of the term more generally. Extensive discussion ensues.

Karl Schroeder interviewed at Velcro City.

Matt Cheney interviews Juliet Ulman.

Jonathan Strahan presents the Coode Street Awards.

Not SF, but Making Light links to all of Eddie Izzard’s Mongrel Nation.

You’d think the internet would slow down a bit this close to Christmas, but I seem to have stacked up enough links for another roundup already, so …

• The big news, if you haven’t seen it: Peter Watts has made Blindsight available under Creative Commons (html; pdf).
• Top 51 Personal Blogs in SF/F, December 2006 Editon
• Nic on Veniss Underground.
• The problem with Torchwood
• For those who subscribe to Foundation, a response to Elizabeth Rosen’s essay on Watchmen.
• Transhumanists critique Accelerando.
• A new issue of The Internet Review of SF, featuring among other things a piece on Gattaca by Dan Kimmel, and one on Yume No Hon by Bill Mingin.
• John Joseph Adams interviews M. Rickert.
• Pretty Much Every ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity’ Webcomic Reference Ever (We Think)
• A story-by-story review of Rich Horton’s Fantasy: the best of 2005.
• And finally, the cover of Glorifying Terrorism, edited by Farah Mendlesohn, coming January 2007.

• Some reactions to this week’s Heroes: one, two, three, four, five.
• Speaking of superheroes, Ed Champion on the re-edited Superman 2.
• Nic on Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay.
• Abigail on Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks. Yes, yes, I know I have to read it.
• David Soyka reviews Fantasy, Realms of Fantasy and Heliotrope at Black Gate.
• “Hollywood Eats Sci-Fi’s Brains“; Lou Anders comments.
• John Scalzi wants to know where to go for sf snark.
• Qualities of experience or logical consistency?
• Graham wins at sorted books.

• More discussion of The Prestige: one, two, three, four.
• Paul Kincaid follows up his review of the Hartwell/Cramer year’s best fantasy with a review of Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels.
• Meanwhile, Jonathan Strahan has been putting together an imaginary best short fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson. Next up (I hope), the imaginary best of Geoff Ryman?
• Ben Peek on George Turner and The Sea and Summer: one, two.
• David Moles takes on the SFBC most significant books meme.
• Some post-World Fantasy Con discussion at the Lotus Lyceum.
• Sarah Monette on Fight Club.
• The Top Ten SF Titles of 2006, according to Waterstones’ sf buyer.
• The very last Emerald City.
• Orbital (the 2008 Eastercon) has released its first progress report.
• And on the Sutherland/Pack/reviewing/blogging front: further to this comes this. Which seems just a tad unprofessional, doesn’t it?