Grasping for the Wind

Video: Stephanie Meyer on Twilight the movie, the soundtrack and more books

Hobbits Are Tolkien Minorities

Mental_floss is one of my favorite blogs and magazines. They are as geeky as me, as evidenced by the picture below. They are having a sale on t-shirts this week, one of which has the slogan below. I recommend them, my Pluto: Revolve in Peace shirt has sparked many a conversation. Personally I would love to have the one below in my dresser drawer.

@Jim C. Hines: If Writing Were Like an RPG

This kind of humor is exactly why I like reading Jim C. Hines so much.

Game Master: Your character is a level one writer. You've got 7 ego points (EP), and you put your skills into . . . wait, why did you put all of these points into Psychology?

Jim: I kind of changed my mind mid-way through the character creation process. Now I want to be a Writer.

GM: Fair enough. Writers are good for multi-classing. The adventure begins in a library. The year is 1995. You're alone in the stacks. Cramped shelves block most of the light, save for the flickering fluorescents directly overhead. The air smells musty.

Jim: I make a search check. [Rolls a 17]

GM: Not bad. You find an old tome marked "Writers Marketplace" from 1992.

And it continues: http://jimhines.livejournal.com/410030.html

Sara Douglass diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer

If you are a fan of Sara Douglass (personally, I've only read one of her books, the first one in the Wayfarer Redemption, a long time ago) you should know that she has been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Read her announcement through the link. Jennifer Fallon has asked for people who can to help Douglass.

I hope that fans and others can do as they did for the late Robert Jordan and are doing for Terry Pratchett and pull together to help by giving money and time to organizations such as the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. And of course, buy her books so that she will have money to spend on her treatments.

Thanks to Mulluane for letting me know about this.

Brian Francis Slattery reads from Liberation

SLY GROOVE:

ANTHEM:

@ Dragon: Game Shame

If you have ever played D&D, you have to read this funny apologetic.

I have this friend we'll call Nate.

Nate is a successful attorney who owns a home with a view of Puget Sound, has a cute girlfriend, two dogs, and volunteers for the organization Big Brothers Big Sisters. But Nate keeps a dark, ugly secret. He's been playing D&D for years...

What would happen if I did all my normal activities and frequented my usual haunts while bringing my not-so-secret pastime to the people? Unlock your character sheets and dice, Nates of the world! Quit hiding in your bunkers of self-imposed shame! I will make the world a safer place for you!

I gathered up all the D&D gear I could find around the office and prepared to spend the next month literally wearing my hobby on my sleeve.

Read the rest of this fantastic article.

For more articles by this author click here.

Brandon Sanderson, Comedian

Great post with video at Tor.com that shows the comedic side of Brandon Sanderson. Lots of fun. Be sure to read the extras that didn't make it into the video at the post.

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=9065

Today's Worthwhile Linkages (So far)

Tobias Buckell is in the hospital.

Check Joe Abercrombie's cover for the UK edition of Best Served Cold. Joe, it better look this good when it hits US shelves, or I will find you!

Also, read Joe Abercrombie's six reasons for reading Joe Abercrombie. The above cover should be number seven. And go to his blog to read about how the look of the sword came to fruition, and how this author who didn't like maps for his last series came to have one in his newest novel.

Laugh at the ridonkulousness of Uncyclopedia's entry on The Sword of Truth. [Via Pat's Fantasy Hotlist]

John Joseph Adams shares a new book trailer for The Living Dead along with a lot more free fiction from the anthology.

Here's an interview I did a while back with Pamela Freeman, whose second adult novel, Deep Water just came out. (I'm reading it right now.)

The mating rituals of Star Wars geeks.

Pat Rothfuss continues to raise funds for charity. (and gives out cool stuff in return.)

Here's a Quantum of Solace / The Incredibles mash-up. [Via Bill]

@ B&N Review: Anne Rice and more

Anne Rice is appearing at Barnes and Noble's Center Stage this week. Center Stage is place where you can ask her questions in a forum format about her novels and in particular her memoir about her return to a Catholic faith.

Also on Barnes and Noble Review, the guest books section has favorite book selections from Stephen King, William Gibson, Anne Rice, Gregory Maguire and Charlaine Harris plus many other authors, including Richard Belzer! (I am a die hard Law and Order fan - all versions - if you didn't know.)

It is interesting to see what popular authors themselves are reading. Charlaine Harris' recommendation of World War Z by Max Brooks makes me want to read it, even though I am generally not a fan of zombie fiction. She also mentions books by Charlie Huston and Sarah Monette, two writers I have heard of but not read. They are higher on my list now. Stephen King's recommendation of Lord of the Flies says a lot about him as a writer and person, and Gibson's choice of an Ian Sinclair novel (with Dave McKean) is interesting to note.

Free Fiction and more: Book View Cafe

From the site's about us:

Book View Cafe is a new approach to publishing made possible by the Internet. While most of the fiction on the site is free, authors will also be offering expanded work, additional content, print versions, or subscriptions for a fee. Our authors are all professionals with publishing credits in the print world. The Internet is giving us an opportunity to make their out-of-print, experimental, or otherwise unavailable work to you.

Every day, new content available nowhere else will be served up on Book View Cafe: short stories, flash fiction, poetry, episodes of serialized novels, and maybe even a podcast now and then. The content will be archived and available after the posting date by visiting the author's bookshelf.

Sounds awesome!

Current authors are:

Maya Kaathryn Bahnhoff
Brenda Clough
Katie Daniel
Laura Anne Gilman
Christie Golden
Anne Harris
Sylvia Kelso
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Sue Lange
Ursula K. Le Guin
Rebecca Lickiss
Vonda N. McIntyre
Nancy Jane Moore
Pati Nagle
Darcy Pattison
Irene Radford
Madeleine Robins
Amy Sterling
Jennifer Stevenson
Susan Wright
Sarah Zettel

There is also a blog.

[Via SF Signal]

Public Service Announcement: SF Crowsnest Facebook Group Hijacked!

Stephen Hunt sent me this email requesting my help. Though I don't normally post emails from authors or publishers, I felt this one was needed, considering all the Facebookers I know. Hunt is a good guy and I love his novels. He doesn't deserve this. What follows is his email to me and other Crowsnest fans.

Emergency announcement from SFcrowsnest.com: please help

Hi all,

Stephen here, in the rather ridiculous situation of having to write to you and all of SFcrowsnest.com's others readers to ask for your help.

Yesterday afternoon, a minute after posting an update to the two FaceBook groups I founded, the SFcrowsnest.com Magazine FaceBook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21093694832 (for the magazine), and the Rule Jackelia FaceBook group (for readers of my novels) at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34257537930, FaceBook sent me an automated message to say this was spamming and immediately cancelled my account.

An hour after that I started being flooded by personal complaints from members of the SFcrowsnest.com Magazine FaceBook group saying that the group now had someone called 'Tore Heimstad' installed as administrator (not appointed as admin by me, I assure you!) who was using the SFcrowsnest.com Magazine FaceBook group' admin 'message all' function to send out a spam via FaceBook to our sci-fi magazine's thousands of readers that began 'Hey guys. if u think that u look good and if u have CONFIDENCE, then join our pageant group on eupee .' (don't ask, groan).

I can only presume that this breech of our FaceBook group is a major hack of the recently upgraded FaceBook system, but I am currently in the ridiculous situation of not even being able to contact my own FaceBook friends to inform them of this terrible situation, with my account now being cancelled.

I have repeatedly been contacting FaceBook's staff e-mails since yesterday (Friday 15th November 2008) and as of twelve hours later have received nothing but canned autoresponders in return.

HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP...

If you are a FaceBook user, please note, the SFcrowsnest.com Magazine FaceBook group has been hijacked. As of yesterday, any messages sent by it are NOT from SFcrowsnest.com staff or myself and should be treated as hostile - e.g. potentially containing or leading to scams, malware, compromised web pages and the like.

Please post news of this on your FaceBook profile and let all of your own FaceBook friends know as a matter of urgency.

Secondly, if you run a blog or zine, please spread news that the SFcrowsnest.com Magazine FaceBook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21093694832 has been hijacked by hostiles and refer them to this warning which is now prominently linked from our own home page and can be found at http://www.SFcrowsnest.com/facebookhijack.php - I will keep this page updated with developments and any explanation/apology from FaceBook as and when (or if) I get it.

So far only the SFcrowsnest.com Magazine FaceBook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21093694832 has been hijacked, but seeing it was myself that was singled out by FaceBook hackers, I would suggest also treating any messages from my Rule Jackelia FaceBook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34257537930 and my personal Stephen Hunt FaceBook account at http://www.facebook.com/people/Stephen_Hunt/1321736585 as being fatally compromised, as I'm certainly not in control of these two accounts either anymore.

THE APOLOGIES

On a personal note, this is grief I really don't need at the moment.

I'm in the midst of finishing my fourth fantasy novel for HarperCollins, provisionally entitled The Fires of Jago, and am also working furiously with HarperCollins on the February 2009 launch of my third title in the Jackelian sequence, The Rise of the Iron Moon. These are both big calls on my time, and I could do without crisis management of someone else's technical failings - something that was only intended to provide a bit of extra community for my loyal readers.

As fans of my novels know, I came to the social networking 'revolution' a good few years after everyone else, taking the rather curmudgeonly view that it was all a big time-suck and could only be a distraction to my writing. And hey, I was one of pioneers of the Internet, and all this new-fangled web 2.0 stuff was just a cunning ploy to squeeze more money out of gullible venture capitalists etc, right? After being barraged by requests to join various social networks by readers of my novels and friends, however, I belatedly decided to bow to the inevitable and signed up with FaceBook.

I did this in the face of strong and continual opposition from my dear friend and SFcrowsnest.com's own editor, Geoff Willmetts, who has always refused to join social networks, citing all the usual security concerns you hear trumpeted in the media - they're a den of identity thieves, you'll find yourself ripped off, mortgages being taken out in your name by ID creeps etc.

I wrote those views off as being unduly influenced by media hysteria and joined FaceBook anyway. So here my first apology - to Geoff. You were right, old chum. I was wrong. Humble pie eaten. I'll be sticking to the first rule of web-mastering that has always stood me in good stead with SFcrowsnest.com - if you don't code it yourself, don't trust it (it's a variation on the old adage: if you want something done properly, do it yourself). No more FaceBook for me.

My second apology is to the members of the SFcrowsnest.com Magazine FaceBook group - you should really be getting it from the staff at FaceBook, but I suspect we'll all be waiting a long time for that one. Sorry for you getting rubbish e-mails from the mysterious FaceBook group hijacker, Tore Heimstad. And Tore, or whoever you really are, all I have to pass onto you is an old Circlist saying much favoured in the Kingdom of Jackals - what goes around, comes around. Sooner or later, Tore, you'll be getting yours.

And lastly, a word to the ghosts of my fellow fantasy authors at HarperCollins, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, in whose shadow I always inexpertly stumble; guys, you don't know how lucky you were to have been writing your novels in an age when Bebo was a sound you would only hear gurgled from inside a pram, and a FaceBook was a school jotter that someone had inked with 'Kilroy Was Here'.

Yours, deeply frustrated and angry

Stephen

www.StephenHunt.net
www.SFcrowsnest.com

Video: Orson Scott Card Discusses Ender In Exile

This one is waiting for me in Atlanta. I go home tomorrow. Yay!

Ender in Exile is the direct sequel to Ender's Game. Awesomeness, here we come!

Coraline Video / Gaiman Interview

Once again, nuff said.

Piratical Readings from Fast Ships, Black Sails edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer

This one is high up on my list of must reads.

Tor the Libertarian

Fascinating article on world-renowned publisher Tor books. Gives a little bit of history (I didn't know that Jim Baen worked there at one time!) and talks a lot about Tor's relationship to libertarianism. Though Tor is not tied to any ideologogy the aticle's autjhor would have you think they are all libertarians.

Money Quote:

Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the goateed and bespectacled Tor eminence who edited two of the house's Prometheus finalists this year, draws a direct line between youthfulness and openness to libertarian ideas. "Young people read fiction to figure out how the world works," he says, "and science fiction is an extremely effective, quick way of testing your views of how the world works."

Best Quote by the Article Author:

Tor's success suggests that science fiction's commitment to meditations on the importance of human freedom remains strong, as mainstream writers borrow more freely from the once-ghettoized genre, indulging in science fiction-style hypotheticals that probe both the outer limits of and existential threats to liberty.

Go Team SF!

This article is worth a read.

[Via The Swivet]

"Science fiction has always been dying. That's how it reinvents itself. "

Or so says Paul Kincaid in this excellent article at Bookslut.

If I understand the article correctly, then Kincaid is saying that our ever repeating discussions about the death and/or rebirth of sf has more to do with our own human nature, than with anything wrong in the genre.

That is very sf.

After all, we always say that sf is written to understand the human nature. In the introduction to Fantasy: Best of the Year 2008, editor Rich Horton proposes two kinds of sf, one which looks outward and one inward. The details are what make us think there are more than that. For Kincaid to argue that sf, in its criticism, is not doing enough looking inward is to say that its very devotees are not understanding it well enough. Or rather, are only using one aspect, the external environment to try and understand it, when what a reader or critic brings to it is just as important.

[Via G. B. H. Hornswoggler]

George R. R. Martin's ASOIF Pilot Greenlighted

He announces it at his blog HERE.

James Hibberd (The Hollywood Reporter) discusses it HERE.

A little extra info at Mania.com.

Another announcement at /film.

No official press release as yet. Someone let me know when HBO releases it, would ya?

@SciFiGuy.ca: Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Book Cover Video

ScifiGuy went to a lot of trouble to make this video illustrating trending in paranormal romance book covers. It has pretty decent music to.

Thanks to Lisa for the head's up.

@JJA: 21 Blogs Writers Should Be Reading

John Joseph Adams provides an article reprint that is another must read for all potential writers. Keep your blog reading focused, so you have more time to write by subscribing to the blogs that JJA recommends.

@SF Signal: Lawrence Watt-Evans Answers Your Questions about Discworld

The always awesome SFSignal (you must subscribe to them, I command you!) held a contest wherein questions were submitted to Lawrence Watt-Evans about his new book The Turtle Moves! Discworld's Story Unauthorized, a reader's guide to Terry Pratchett's Discworld. The interview is now posted.

I submitted this (rather basic) query:

SFSR: For a newcomer to Discworld, which book should they read first?

LWE: If I really had to just pick one, I'd say Guards! Guards! But in some cases, if I knew a particular reader's tastes, I might suggest Wyrd Sisters instead, especially if that reader's less of a fantasy fan.

Still, I found it useful, especially since I would have picked Men At Arms or maybe Mort. The difference of opinion was enlightening.

You can and should read the relatively short interview HERE.

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson on Paul of Dune

Authors@Google invites Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson to speak.

John Joseph Adams makes manuscript submissions a whole lot easier

For aspiring writers, the following link to the page of John Joseph Adams-Slush God is a must. In it, he interviews Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction, and Susan Marie Groppi, editor of Strange Horizons, about what, as editors, they are looking for from manuscripts and the writers who write them.

http://www.johnjosephadams.com/?p=1689

This article originally appeared in 2009 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, but it is now online for your reading enjoyment and as a help to your professional writing career.

Cover Art: John Marco's Starfinder

I found this to be quite a beautiful piece of cover art by Tom Kidd.

It is from John Marco's new book Starfinder, which is due to be released in May 2009.

Starfinder is shaping up to be a Steampunk/Epic Fantasy mixture of a novel. Says Marco of the plot,

"Not only is it a story of coming of age for the two main protagonists, Moth and his friend Fiona, but it's also about mankind's coming of age. The world of Starfinder is very much like our own at the turn of the last century, with steam trains and electricity and budding technologies. And thanks to the inventive genius of Fiona's grandfather Rendor, humans have finally taken to the sky, not only in giant airships but in small, ornithopter contraptions called dragonflies as well.

Not everyone is happy to see mankind's progress, however. For thousands of years, the mysterious and powerful race known as the Skylords have jealously guarded their heavenly domain. In all this time, an uneasy peace has existed between humans and Skylords, but Moth and Fiona are about to breach the magical boundary between the two worlds."

Count me in!

John Marco is known for his epic fantasy works, one of which, The Eyes of God is high up on my TBR pile. Look for the review soon.

You can follow John Marco's updates on Starfinder and other works at his blog, The Bastion.

Old Man's War: The Title Sequence

If you don't read John Scalzi's blog Whatever, you need to. But for now, click over and watch this awesome piece of fan video art that is an opening title sequence for an Old Man's War TV show.

John Klima on the magazine production process

If you have any interest in writing fiction a magazine, or have ever thought about starting your own e-zine or print magazine, Klima's thoughts are worth a look.

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=6649

Patrick Rothfuss discuss the alignment of his characters

Prepare to geek out completely.

http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2008/09/iaq-kvothes-alignment.html

I'm Quoted in Rogue Blades Entertainment's Book Trailer

A little while back, I wrote a review of The Return of the Sword, a collection of sword and sorcery tales like Robert E. Howard's Conan and the stuff Black Gate publishes. The publisher has renamed itself Rogue Blades Entertainment and has published promo trailer for itself that I am in. Check out the quote at 1:54.

Return of the Sword is being republished under the new publishing company, and with a new cover, or so editor Jason Waltz told me at Dragon Con this year. So go pick up a copy if you are a fan of adventure or heroic fiction.

Dragon Illusion

This is kind of freaky. I wouldn't want to have a dragon follow my every move. Think there is a story in this?

Feature: 42Blips

I have updated this site to allow you to add content to the new 42Blips.com. 42Blips is like StumbleUpon or Delicious for SF readers. It focuses solely on SF content, and uses RSS Feeds and votes to get you the very best information in the SF world.

Anywhere you see the blue "up arrow" just click on it to add a particular post of mine to 42blips. I appreciate all the positive votes you give!

Some stuff ye can do for International Talk Like Pirate Day

Read some free fiction by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette titled "Boojum".

Read Facebook in Pirate Speak.

Read Shimmer's Pirate Issue, edited by John Joseph Adams, for free today only. Read my review of the magazine and interview with the editor.

Translate your story, novel, or random thoughts/blog posts into pirate speak. Or enter your URL to read a translated version of your webpage.

Enjoy a very piratical bit of music.

Be sure and visit the primary site for the celebration.

Watch some pirate movies. Forget Pirates of the Caribbean and watch some older stuff with Erroll Flynn, or Disney's The Swiss Family Robinson from 1960.

Go HERE for lots more ideas.

Why You Are Better than Most

I was reading this article on 8 movies that were successful despite gaping plot holes, and I noticed that 6 of the 8 were sci-fi/fantasy stories, and one of those The Lion King was an anthropomorphic personification of African animals.

This fact got me thinking. I mean, I know this list is far from comprehensive, but the first thing that occurred to me was that the very reason that so many of these stories with gaping plot holes were successful was not because of their content, but becasue of a unique ability of science fiction/fantasy readers and viewers.

That ability is a two-parter of imagination and willing suspension of disbelief.

Spec-fic readers and viewers (plus their kin the gamers) have the most developed imaginations of anyone. You are able to imagine entire universes for goodness sake! And then, when you get there, you are able to believe in such things as FTL drive, a concept that breaks currently understood physics.

Or you can believe in magic. (All right, get that 80's era jingle out of your head), You are able to imagine, and even believe possible, at least for a time in the ability of one character, by force of will only, to create a ball of energy that can be hurled at another character, causing damage. I mean, nothing in the physical laws says this should be possible. Not just by force of will. Yet you believe it can happen, if only for the span of a story.

In order to enjoy these stories you, as a reader or viewer, must allow yourself to forget what the world says is possible, and drift off dreamily into things that should not be possible, at least not yet.

So is it a personal flaw when we fail to see a plot hole in a story - no matter how gaping? No. It is a result of a highly developed imagination and the unique ability to turn disbelief on/off like a light switch that makes you more of a higher order thinker than those other folks stuck in their utter pragmatism. They can only see where things fail, whereas you can see that, and dismiss it as well.

So pat yourself on the back higher-order thinker, your entertainment makes you better than most.

10 Great Fantasy Book Series (and why you'll hate this list)

This list includes David Eddings, Piers Anthony, and Raymond Feist. I do believe there are a lot of folks out there who might take issue with the list found HERE. And of course, Lewis and Tolkien are there. But the one inclusion that I vehemently disagree with is Modesitt. His stuff is crap. It's great, sure, as in great for propping up wobbly tables, or give your dog something to chew on. See my review of one of his works for more on why.

Top Shelf Productions $3 Sale!

Top Shelf is an excellent producer of graphic novels (not Superhero Collections) with original stories and excellent art. Normally I don't reproduce announcements like this, but this deal is just too good not to share. I highly recommend you take advantage of this once every two years event.

To celebrate The Surrogates movie wrapping principal photography, surviving San Diego, and all the cool new summer and fall releases, for the next ten days -- thru Friday September 12th -- Top Shelf is having a giant $3 graphic novel web sale. When you visit the site, you'll find over 125 graphic novels and comics on sale -- with 90 titles marked down to just $3 (!) and a slew of other key titles just slashed!

To go directly to the list of items on sale, just click here:
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/specialdeals

But here are a few sample sale items:
-- $3 Books: Comic Book Artist, I Am Going To Be Small,
Lower Regions, Regards from Serbia, That Salty Air,
-- $3 Books: Alec - After the Snooter, The Mirror of Love,
The King, Fox Bunny Funny, plus 90 more!
-- Slashed Prices: From Hell Hardcover, Lost Girls, Blankets,
Too Cool To Be Forgotten, Owly, Korgi, and more!
-- Slashed Prices: Super Spy, Essex County Trilogy,
Incredible Change-Bots, The Surrogates, and more!
-- Freebies with every order: Yearbook Stories,
The 2008 Top Shelf Sampler, and Owly & Friends!

Please note that Top Shelf now accepts PayPal (as well as Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Discover -- all secure), and that this sale is good for "direct market" retailers as well (and comic
book shops will get their wholesale discount on top of these sale prices).

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/specialdeals

Jim C. Hines The Stepsister Scheme first chapter available

The Goblin Books were awesome, now see what Jim C. Hines does with his brand of wit and humor to the traditional fairy-tale princess. Sure to be good for a lot of laughs.

Lou Anders opens a Can of Worms

At his blog, Bowing to the Future, Pyr editor Lou Anders opens up a real can of worms. Building off a comment made in a review of The Martian General's Daughter he takes issue with people who accuse authors of propagandizing when they are simply writing from their perspective. He states,

"Now, I am neither a Marxist nor a Christian, and I'm no fan of propaganda in fiction whether I'm a fan of it's object or not, but there's a difference between propaganda and an author writing from out of his/her own perspective. I don't have to share an author's belief system to enjoy their craft, any more than I have to endorse human sacrifice to admire the construction of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán (and that would be an extreme example.)"

And goes on to say,

"I've always loved science fiction for its extreme wealth of ideas of every size and stripe, and don't feel the genre - which is ultimately a set of tools, not a school of thought - should be limited only to a liberal/socialist world view, even if I happened to share that world view."

I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I review Christian SF&F, paranormal romance, hard SF, Space Operas, Epic Fantasy, etc. To ignore the wealth of spec fic, and its myriad of viewpoints, is to demean yourself.

I highly recommend you read Lou's entire thought HERE. And be sure to comment.

'Mr. Punch' and Rogue Artists Ensemble

What happens when the classic Punch and Judy show ends up in the hands of Neil Gaiman? You get a graphic novel that is visually stunning and cleverly written. What happens when that same graphic novel ends up in the hands of a group of dramatists called the Rouge Artists Ensemble? You get THIS.

See more HERE.

This is Genius Book Marketing

According to the Guardian, Charlie Hidgson, author of the "Young Bond" books for young adults, has created a computer game that ties into his books. Kids are not just encouraged, but are forced to read his books in order to play the game. Says Hidgson in his defense of this idea ""Kids can get as engrossed in a football magazine as they can in a history book or novel. We shouldn't be dismissive of other forms of literature - I used to read tons of comic books when I was a kid."

Good point, and genius marketing.

After all, if the old Wheel of Time video game had integrated better with the books, building on knowledge gleaned from reading them rather than being a separate story, they would have been much better. What if the popular Lord of the Rings games from Electronic Arts had not just let you play through the story, but had in fact used facts that could only be gotten from reading the books to help you solve puzzles in that world?

I always liked the old school Nintendo games that required you to read the "spoken" words of the characters. Early Final Fantasy, King's Quest, Legaia, and Wild Arms all required this. I was reading, and doing all the thinking about intent and tone, etc that goes along with it. Today's video games don't require reading much becasue the technology has progressed far enough to allow voices. You have to turn on closed captioning to read the words of the characters.

But beyond it having a positive effect, it also is genius marketing. Book sellers and publishers have been bemoaning for years the loss of readers to video games and their kin. Well, Hidgson looks to be taking the best of both worlds and combining them. This way, he gets kids to buy his books (with a character lots of boys are interested in, and some older men). This guy should make money hand over fist.

The game, called Shadow War, is available for free online play at www.youngbond.com until October 8,"when Higson will take part in a live event during which players will be able to influence the end of the game."

And I say, more power to him. I like both mediums, so a combination thereof, I am all for!

Convention Going Advice Needed

To be honest, I am a total convention noob. I've never been to an SF Con and have no idea what to expect.

A week from today, I will be heading to Dragon*Con, the Southeast's biggest convention.

What I need from you all is advice on what I should do to prepare for the convention, what types of events you think are more worthwhile (i.e. Readings vs. Panels, etc.) and general con going advice. I have a schedule, and I have checked some of the author's sites for their scheduled appearances, but other than that, I'm at a loss.

Wacky Sci-Fi "Laws"

So do you agree with the writer? Are the scifi laws listed in this POST, "wacky"? Or prophetic and wise?

Meme: Top 48 Scifi Films Based on Books - Read or Not?

Rob dun tagged me for this meme, so here goes.

From Box Office Mojo's list of Top 48 Sci-Fi Films Based on a Book (or Story) (1980- present).

Here are the rules.

* Copy the list below.
* Mark in bold the movie titles for which you read the book.
* Italicize the movie titles for which you started the book but didn't finish it.
* Tag 5 people to perpetuate the meme. (You may of course play along anyway.)

And now, the list...
1. Jurassic Park
2. War of the Worlds
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
4. I, Robot
5. Contact
6. Congo (Anyone sensing a Michael Crichton theme here?)
7. Cocoon
8. The Stepford Wives
9. The Time Machine
10. Starship Troopers
11. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
12. K-PAX
13. 2010
14. The Running Man
15. Sphere (Crichton again, dagnabbit)
16. The Mothman Prophecies
17. Dreamcatcher
18. Blade Runner(Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
19. Dune
20. The Island of Dr. Moreau
21. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
22. The Iron Giant(The Iron Man)
23. Battlefield Earth
24. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
25. Fire in the Sky
26. Altered States
27. Timeline
28. The Postman
29. Freejack(Immortality, Inc.)
30. Solaris
31. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
32. The Thing(Who Goes There?)
33. The Thirteenth Floor
34. Lifeforce(Space Vampires)
35. Deadly Friend
36. The Puppet Masters
37. 1984
38. A Scanner Darkly
39. Creator
40. Monkey Shines
41. Solo(Weapon)
42. The Handmaid's Tale
43. Communion
44. Carnosaur
45. From Beyond
46. Nightflyers
47. Watchers
48. Body Snatchers

I tag:
Dark Wolf
Anyone at Realms of Speculative Fiction
SMD
Chris, The Book Swede (who is running for President, btw)
Joe Abercrombie (you never know)

John Joseph Adams' Seeds of Change Website

John Joseph Adams' most recent anthology of fiction, Seeds of Change now has its own website. Yours truly gets quoted on the site. You can read my full review HERE.

Be sure to look at the site too, becasue "It's got three free stories (with excerpts of the rest), as well as interviews, author bios, and a book trailer featuring dramatized excerpts of each story and an original musical score." says Adams.

Watch the book trailer (which is AWESOME!) for a preview, then go look at all the great stuff at the website.

15 Memorable Alien Races in Science Fiction

Great post at the List Universe about 15 Memorable Alien Races in Science Fiction. It is entirely books based, ignoring the movies and TV shows for now.

August Shadowrealm Snippet

Forgotten Realms author Paul S. Kemp teases us with some more Shadowrealm snippets. Shadowrealm is slated for publication in December 2008.

2008 Hugos and Campbell Announced

The votes are cast and the awards given. Read the official balloting numbers in pdf format HERE. The Campbell was a surprise in a field that also had Abercrombie, Lynch, Durham, and Edelman, but the others came mostly as predicted.

NOVEL

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins; Fourth Estate)

NOVELLA

"All Seated on the Ground", Connie Willis (Asimov's Dec 2007; Subterranean Press)

NOVELETTE

"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", Ted Chiang (F&SF Sep 2007)

SHORT STORY

"Tideline", Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Jun 2007)

RELATED BOOK

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press)

DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: LONG FORM

Stardust (Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman. Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Paramount Pictures)

DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: SHORT FORM

Doctor Who: "Blink" (Written by Stephen Moffat. Directed by Hettie Macdonald. BBC)

EDITOR, SHORT FORM

Gordon Van Gelder

EDITOR, LONG FORM

David G. Hartwell

PROFESSIONAL ARTIST

Stephan Martiniere

SEMIPROZINE

Locus, Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong & Liza Groen Trombi

FANZINE

File 770, Mike Glyer

FAN WRITER

John Scalzi

FAN ARTIST

Brad Foster

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Not a Hugo)

Mary Robinette Kowal

Flash Fiction: Paul S. Kemp

Paul S. Kemp has posted a great piece of flash fiction over at his Livejournal. Read, read I say!

MultiReal First Drafts

For those who still live in a dream world where they believe their writing will come out fully formed and ready for publication, not understanding why they get so many rejection letters, there is a reality check. David Louis Edelman has posted the first drafts of Chapter 1 of MultiReal for you to learn from. Writing is a hard business, and these excerpts show it in ways that description never can.

The Orcs are Coming!

To highlight the Orbit edition of Stan Nichols Orcs, Orbit has put together something called Orc Mail, where you can have text you type sent and said in Orcish. Kinda fun.

Jeff Carlson's Plague War Book Trailer

This is one of the best live action book trailers I have ever seen. It's entitled 4 Minutes Above 10,000 Feet and is for Jeff Carlson's Plague War a new release from Ace Books. The ending is especially frightening.

Lean more about Jeff Carlson (or watch a much better flash version of the trailer) and his apocalyptic trilogy at jverse.com.

Hivemind

I've joined up on Hivemind, the new social network (a la Facebook) designed just for fantasy and scifi fans. Don't hesitate to friend me.See you there.

Free Fiction: Black Gate Issue 12

Black Gate, the one an only SF/F magazine I currently subscribe to, is making their latest issue available for free download for a limited time! Hurry and get your pdf HERE!

David Louis Edelman Author Chat on Librarything

I'm back, and feeling really great. For my first post on returning from my 12-day vacation (!), I thought I would point out that all Librarything members ought to participate in an author chat with David Louis Edelman over at that book cataloging site. If you aren't a member of Librarything, you should be, even if you aren't cataloging all your books, as they have all kinds of great features. The discussion ends August 1st, so hurry over.

Stay tuned for my thoughts on my Western Mediterranean trip, including thoughts on dancing, reading while at sea, and strange encounters of the Italian kind.

Okay, Maybe One More: Iain M. Banks on practicing SF

Though I haven't read any of his works, I know Iain M. Banks is rather a popular SF author, so I thought I might share THIS ARTICLE at The Guardian with you where Banks writes about practicing with SF and gives a partial history of his successes and failures in writing.

Orbit US Titles - Fall/Winter 08

Orbit has posted their list of 2008 Fall and Winter titles being released in the US. Looks like a great line-up. (And for those who don't know, K.E. Mills is Karen Miller going incognito.) Check it out HERE.

Rick Berry

Does anybody else think that Rick Berry's cover art (downloadable for free) for The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure by Storm Constantine looks like Cate Blanchett?

My First Blurb!

I received a copy of my very first book blurb today. It appears in MultiReal, by David Louis Edelman, and is excerpted from my review of Infoquake, the first novel in the Jump 225 trilogy.

Edelman has succeeded in making the world of the corporate boardroom into an adventure filled narrative. What John Grisham has done with the legal thriller, Edelman has done with business...The climax is fulfilling and exciting, yet it is only a speech, and a marketing one at that. Edelman has so well woven the elements of his plot together that Natch's simple speech has a much power and excitement to it as another science fiction story's destruction of a spaceship or a fantasy's evil overlord dying hideously at the hands of a hero. That takes skill to write, and Edelman has it in spades. I highly recommend this novel.

It appears on page 8 in the Praise for Infoquake section at the beginning of the book. Go take a look at it in your local bookstore and marvel. Better yet, buy MultiReal and Infoquake, and give a good author a boost to his ego, and some cash in his wallet.

Thank you to Pyr for blurbing me and for being one of the best publishers of science fiction there is. Young as you are, your books make reviewing a joy!

Translated

It's always weird to see your work translated into a foreign tongue. Apparently, the French are really enjoying Karen Miller, author of the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology (called Kingdom of Lur over there) and the Godspeaker trilogy, so they translated parts of my two interviews with her into French. How neat it is to see such a thing.

http://www.elbakin.net/fantasy/news/Deux-interviews-de-Karen-Miller

The LOST Book Club

Are you a fan of the TV show LOST? Do you like to read? Then you might be interested in the Lost Book Club. Members of the club discuss the books that have been referenced on the show, such as Philip K. Dick's Valis, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, as well as Charles Dickens, Stephen Hawking, Vladimir Nabokov, and many others. It is a very broad cross section of literature and non-fiction, and includes many SF classics like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. The website has an easy