Category: SF Links

Going Linker

I’ve been quiet over the holiday period (hope everyone had a good one), but there’s been plenty to read elsewhere:

Now That’s What I Call A Book Log

Here is what Joe Bernstein read, or at least skimmed, this year:

Via. It adds up to more than 100,000 words, if you’re wondering. I am boggled, approaching staggered.

For reference, here’s last year; a measly 70k.

Empire in Links and Gold

Speaking To The Mysterious Fears Of Our Nature

Earlier in the autumn, the Bodleian Library hosted a one day event to mark the publication of The Original Frankenstein:

… a ground-breaking new edition of the first and most popular work of science fiction, allowing Mary Shelley’s pure authorial voice to be heard for the first time since 1817, when the book was initially written. The Bodleian publication uses the unique handwritten draft of 1816-17, held at the Library, to distinguish Mary’s own words from the additions written in by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I didn’t manage to make it to the event, but thanks to Vulpes Libris I (and you) can now read Brian Aldiss’ closing speech:

A teenager! She was a teenager, you know?! Not the sort of female teenager today’s newspapers would have us believe in. Mary came from a civilized — a crowded but civilized — home. Literature, science and politics were regularly discussed there; Coleridge read his poetry there. (To see and to hear Samuel Taylor belting out ‘The Ancient Mariner’ might not have been to everyone’s taste — a bit like early Dr Who — but it is something to have a living poet rampant in the parlour, even if aided and abetted, I might say, by ‘a substance’ …) Anyway, Mary would have been aware that new things had developed and that the world was opening up, in the same way that we’re aware now that we’re closing down the shop — victims of our own cult of greed.

(There’s more substantive stuff about Shelley’s writing and significance, too.)

Special Linkanomics

It’s a while since the last link-dump, so some of these are a little stale now, but since this is as much for my future reference as your benefit:

Links Shake the World

I’m in Glasgow for most of this week, for work-related reasons, so posting is likely to be light; but I can at least catch up on my linking.

EDIT: I knew I’d forget something. Can anyone work out, based on these reviews, whether 2666 is a work of the fantastic?

The Gone Away Links

And now, to Wales!

Which is to say that having finished inflicting 12,000 words about various fantasy novels on you (and sent all the content for the next issue of Vector off to be laid out), I’m going to spend a week in a house near here with a bunch of friends, reading books, eating large meals, and going for the occasional walk. Liz is one of said friends, so it’s going to be pretty quiet around here for the next seven days. Hence: some links.

First, things that have been posted here recently, for ease of reference:

And now, things of interest elsewhere:

When I return: a review of The Knife of Never Letting Go, a discussion about The Ant King and Other Stories, and quite possibly some polls. Have a fun week, everyone!

The Links of Never Letting Go

The Quiet Links