The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Vol. 6

And a special thanks for tonight’s award announcement. Any anthology is only as good as the stories it contains.  The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six is a combination of some wonderful work by Stephen Baxter, Peter S. Beagle, Libba Bray, Cory Doctorow, Jeffrey Ford, Karen Joy Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Dylan Horrocks, Kij Johnson, Caitlín R Kiernan, Ellen Klages, Margo Lanagan, Kelly Link, Ken Liu, Paul McAuley, Ian McDonald, Maureen F. McHugh, Nnedi Okorafor, An Owomoyela, K. J. Parker, Hannu Rajaniemi, Robert Reed, M Rickert, Geoff Ryman, Robert Shearman, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, Catherynne M. Valente, Peter Watts, and E. Lily Yu. I would like to thank each and every one of them for letting me feature their stories in my book. This Aurealis Award is every bit as much their award as it is mine.

Thank you so much. If James Bradley is reading these words to you, which I promise I will keep brief as absent winners should, then it means my anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six has won the Aurealis Award. It is a great honour and I wish I was there in the Independent Theatre in Sydney, and not sitting in Perth following this on Twitter, so that you all could see just how thrilled I am.

I would sincerely like to thank the judges Kathleen Stubbs, Matt Chrulew and Sarah Fletcher for their hard work (and commend them on their excellent taste), and I also want to thank awards administrator Tehani Wesley and the AA team for their hard work. It is an honour to be nominated alongside my editorial colleagues Liz Gryb, Talie Helene, and Amanda Pillar and the great team at my dear friend Russell Farr’s Ticonderoga, and I extend my congratulations to them as well.

Editing The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year series has defined the past seven years of my life. It’s a strange, wonderful experience, and I am deeply proud of the books I’ve been able to produce with the Night Shade team. I would especially like to thank Ross Lockhart and Marty Halpern at Night Shade Books for the care and attention they gave to this book, and for their work on the rest of the series. They are my unsung collaborators and deserve your congratulations as much as I do.

Finally, and most importantly, I would like to acknowledge the efforts of my spectacular agent Howard Morhaim, and the tireless support of my family Marianne, Jessica and Sophie who give me time to do this strange editing thing that I love doing so much.

Thank you all very much! Have a great night! I’m going to turn Twitter off now and go have a glass of champagne (or at least get the kids dinner on).

Invisible Kingdoms, Steven Utley

Steven Utley started publishing back in the 1970s.  He wrote smart and strange stories, stories occasionally set in the far future, but mostly set in the deep past.  He was part of the Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, which also included Bruce Sterling, Lisa Tuttle, Lewis Shiner, and Howard Waldrop.  And he was best known for a group of stories known as his “Silurian Tales”, which he started publishing in 1993 and kept writing until his sad death earlier this year.

Somewhere back in the ’90s he connected with local Perth publisher Ticonderoga, who put out Ghost Seas, a collection of his stories.  The book did well and everyone was happy, and fifteen years slipped slowly past (as they are wont to do).  Then last last year they reconnected and Ticondergo published The 400 Million Year Itch, the first of a two volume set of Utley’s collected “Silurian Tales”. The book was well received and now the second volume, Invisible Kingdoms is about to his the shelves.

It’s a cool book and you should consider checking it out. If you’re interested, you can read one of the stories, “Another Continuum Heard From!” at Revolution SF.  Recommended.

Every day a new story is published. Hah! Every day dozens of new stories are published. Hidden in books and magazines and websites, in .epub files and .mobi ones, places you’d never think to look. I struggle to find them, to not lose track of them on my Kindle, in my iBooks thingie, on the shelf behind my desk. Wherever they may end up. And every day we move inevitably, inexorably towards the moment when I’m going to have to start choosing stories for my next best of the year volume. I can see the day from here, and I am not ready!

Not only am I not ready, but I have a magazine issue to get ready for the end of September and two original anthologies due in January and March of next year. Things are going to be crazy over Christmas, my friends. Off the top of my head, I’ll be delivering 400,000 wds of manuscript, a collated reading list and writing an essay between Christmas and the end of March. I have no idea how that’s going to work out!

How can you help? Let me know about the best stories you see. Blog, tweet, post on my Facebook or email me direct, but let me know. If you’re working on something, let me know too. I want to know. Really!

I especially want to thank the great team at Solaris who have made Edge of Infinity such a success, and everyone behind the scenes who worked on The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six at Night Shade. It’s a privilege to work with all of them.

I wish I could be at the Locus Awards Weekend. It sounds like a brilliant time and I envy everyone who will be there more than a little.

For a full list of nominees, see here.

The Natcon, for those of you unfamiliar with it,  is the annual gathering of the tribe here in Australia, so next week writers, artists, editors, publishers, fans, and readers of all stripes (those are never discrete groups, by the way), will head to Canberra to talk, eat, drink and live science fiction and fantasy for a long weekend.  It’s a chance to catch up, to do a little business and to reconnect with the field. I almost always find these events rejuvenating, and the Conflux’s I’ve attended have been terrific.

I do seem to have already booked all but one of my dinners (a failing of mine), so I think I know what I’m doing every night except for Sunday.  I’m also thinking about doing a whole bunch of short interviews for Coode Street, which if they work out should be fun. I need to work out the details of those, though.

Other than that, I just need to get ready. Before I know it, it’s going to be Wednesday morning and Alisa, Terri and I will be at the airport and ready to go. I can’t wait!

We’d like to thank Nalo for being a wonderful guest and, as always, hope you enjoy the podcast.

What did seem to draw a lot of attention (I discussed it myself with friends on Twitter at the time) was the Best Short Story category, which featured three nominees instead of the typical five. The reason for this was that section 3.8.5 of the WSFS Constitution requires any nominee to receive at least 5% of the nominations if it is to make the final ballot.

I’m not steeped in the history of the Hugo Awards like my good friends Cheryl Morgan and Kevin Standlee, both of whom have been incredibly generous over the years in providing information on the Awards to the Coode St Podcast, so I asked them for some background.

Kevin let me know that according to the Annotated WSFS Constitution, the rule was adopted in 1980, and was intended to protect against flat distributions of votes (75, 53, 43, 12, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, …..) which presumably could lead to very large numbers of works appearing on the final ballot (something that I think would attract at least as much criticism as this year’s situation!).

From what I can gather this rule has only very rarely come into effect. The only instance that has been mentioned to me was in 1994 [ETA: As per a note from Kevin in comments below, section 3.8.5 has come into effect twice in the Short Story category, once in 1994 and once in 2011], and it’s quite possible that is the only time.  So, do I think the rule is unreasonable? Do I think a ballot with just three nominees in the Short Story category signals the end times? Is it a terrible ballot? What does it mean?

Well, all sorts of good information is available on the Hugo Awards site which might help us understand things a bit better. One of my own barometers for the health of an award, especially a popular vote award like the Hugo, is how many people are involved. Has involvement increased or decreased? I took a quick look and this is what it showed:

While that doesn’t go back far in time, it does show that more and more people are taking the time to nominate. This is important because you have to pay to nominate (you need to  be either a voting, supporting or attending member of WorldCon) so I think it shows an increase in the number of people who care about the awards and are willing to act. A good thing, and a sign of good health.

But are those nominators interested in the Short Story category? Well, pretty much. Valid nominating ballots received for the category increased from 270 in 2008 to 662 in 2013, which I think is not quite proportional to the overall increase, but is still pretty darned good. I feel comfortable saying more people care about the Hugos and more people care about the Short Story category than they did as recently as 2008.  All good.

Has it become easier to get nominated during that time? Well, in 2008 you needed 15 nominations to make the final ballot and by 2013 you needed 33 nominations, or about twice times as many. Not too shabby, though I always imagine larger numbers must be involved (I think we all do).

How about the total number of stories nominated?  There are no figures for total number of stories nominated, though we do get some indication of this from looking at the final published voting statistics. Conventions typically release information for works that garner a certain number of nominations. The 2012 WorldCon listed 18 short stories, which cut off at those receiving 16 or more nominations. I assume there were a lot more. In 2008 there were 17 listed, cutting off at those receiving 10 nominations. I am going to guess, and it’s only a guess, a lot more short stories received nominations this year, which strikes me as a good thing.

Given all of that, if you share my biases that more voter involvement and more works nominated are a good thing, then I think we can say the awards themselves are in good health. This doesn’t make any judgement on what is nominated. That really is up to the voters, and I agree with them strongly sometimes, and other times I don’t.  Still, good health is good. I’d like to see increased diversity, and I think that is coming over slowly over time. So, yay voters on that.

What about the 5% rule? Is it unreasonable? Honestly, this is a personal judgement and mine is that the 5% solution is about as good a solution to the problem as any. I don’t think anyone would welcome a ballot with eight or ten works on it, and that means the cut-off has to occur somewhere. Is 5% the right point for the cut-off? I don’t have all the data available, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Yes, we have the lowest number of nominees in the category since 1968, but that’s an artefact of the voting, and the 5% rule seems to have had quite minimal impact since it came into effect in 1980.  So, no I don’t think it’s unreasonable or signals the endtimes.

What about the ballot itself? Is it good? Actually, yes, it’s hella good:

• “Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld, June 2012)
• “Mantis Wives” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
• “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

All three of the nominees are in my Best of the Year this year, so obviously I think they are good! There’s traditional hard SF from Ken Liu, but with a different slant. There’s gender chewiness, literally, from Kij Johnson, and more gender focussed hard SF from Aliette de Bodard. There’s two women and one man. There’s a French writer, an American, and an American of Chinese extraction (I believe. Apologies if that’s wrong Ken). There are two stories published online, and one from an anthology.  So, I think the stories that are on the ballot are good, and pretty diverse really. All in all, in my opinion, it is good.

But there are only three stories! Isn’t that bad? Weren’t there other good stories, and shouldn’t they be here? Why did this happen? Well, it’s a little unfortunate. There were a LOT of stories, thousands, published in 2012. Lots of them were good, and I suspect lots of them were of sufficient quality that they would have made worthy nominees. There could have been even more variety and even more diversity, but the ballot as it stands is fine. I hope there will be more nominees next year, and this brings us to why? Why do I think it happened?

It is my personal suspicion that there are more stories being published in more venues at the moment than ever before. This diversity in publishing is a good thing, opening doors to new writers, new viewpoints, and generally invigorating the field and the awards (see the enormous increase in voter involvement above). It does come at a cost, though. I suspect that with this proliferation of fiction means fewer sets of eyeballs on each story, which in turn makes it harder to get the necessary five percent for a story to make the ballot.  I am also convinced by an argument put to me privately by Cheryl Morgan. Beyond a few very well known indidivuals, many short story writers simply aren’t well known. This could mean that it’s easier for popular writers to meet the 5% requirement, while others publish works that are less widely read.   Either way it comes down to the way that readers = nominations. These are just suspicions, though. I’m eager to see the final voting information, as I said, to see if it casts any further light on the situation. I will say, this can’t be too much of a problem, though. Why? Well, even though the field is changing rapidly, we didn’t need the 5% solution in 2008, 2009, 2010, or 2012. I’m guessing we won’t need it in 2014, though we shall see.

So, after all that, I’m pretty happy with the 2013 ballot, and not just because I’m on it. There are works in every category I would loved to have seen added, but that is always the case, just as there are works I might not have chosen, which is also always the case. I’m content, though, that it fairly reflects the view of the largest group of Hugo voters ever and I don’t think we can ask much more than that.

Note:  Thanks to Kevin Standlee for providing some information used in this post. Special thanks to Cheryl Morgan for her input. Cheryl has her own post on the subject, which I commend to your attention.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven

With all of the recent news I’m not sure I had the chance to mention that The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven [aka editorial project #51!] has been published and is now in-store and available from your favourite booksellers (including Stefen’s Books here in Perth). I imagine orders are already shipping and on their way, and that if your local bookstore doesn’t have it, they should soon.

In other news, I continue to work on all of my other editing projects, including Reach for Infinity and The New Solaris Book of Fantasy: Volume Two for Solaris Books,  a special issue of Subterranean Magazine for my dear friends at Subterranean Press, as well as continuing to work as Reviews Editor for Locus.   I am also busy planning new projects that aren’t quite ready for the light of day. All in all, with minor reservations, good and busy times!

In October 2012 Jonathan Strahan and Night Shade Books decided to relaunch Eclipse as Eclipse Online, an online magazine featuring two new previously unpublished stories and artwork by Kathleen Jennings each month. Eclipse Online has featured stories by Christopher Rowe, K.J. Parker, Eleanor Arnason, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lavie Tidhar, Christopher Barzak, Genevieve Valentine, F. Brett Cox, Susan Palwick, Peter M. Ball, E. Lily Yu and An Owomoyela.

It is with sadness, therefore, that we are announcing that Eclipse Online has ceased publication effective immediately. All stories in inventory have been returned to their authors, and no new stories will be considered for publication. All authors have been paid. Any queries regarding other payments should be directed to Night Shade Books.

Editor Jonathan Strahan said today: “While I am disappointed to see Eclipse Online close, I will always be grateful to Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, Ross Lockhart, and the team at Night Shade Books for their enthusiastic and energetic support of Eclipse over the past seven years. It was a joy and privilege to work with the authors and with Night Shade to produce such wonderful work, and I am deeply grateful to them all. There are no future plans for Eclipse at this time, but Night Shade will always be a critical, valued part of its past.”

2013 Hugo Awards

As was reported here yesterday, LoneStarCon3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention, announced the nominees for 2013 Hugo Awards.  Many friends and colleagues were nominated and delightfully I was nominated for Best Editor, Short Form and Gary and I were nominated for The Coode Street Podcast in the Best Fancast category.

To say this is an honor and a pleasure, even if it has happened before, doesn’t really begin to cover how I feel about being nominated for the Hugos. This year’s awards have a record number of nominating ballots, topping several recent record setting years, so community involvement is at an all time high. This means that being nominated takes more nominations and means even more, because it means more people appreciate my/our work. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who has nominated me and the podcast this year. It does mean a lot to be on the ballot amongst such fine company and to have the respect and support of our community.

There are many conversations to have about the changing awards, their lack of diversity, and how representative they are, but at this point I really just want to say thank you. It does mean a lot. Good luck to everyone in San Antonio this August. I wish I could be there. Lasso a steer for me!

As part of the Hugo Awards discussions, we invited fellow nominee and Coode Street regular Kij Johnson, to join us in the Waldorf Room once more to chat about the ballot, the nominees, and all things Hugo.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

I am especially delighted with the news because it was such a pleasure working alongside Jonathan Oliver and the Solaris Team on Edge of Infinity, with Jim Thomas and the Random House team and Sara Odedina and the Hot Key team on Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, and with Ross Lockhart and Marty Halpern on The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six.   I’ve been extremely fortunate to have such a dedicated, talented and hard working bunch of people there to make me look good.

I would like to acknowledge, though, that the true credit belongs to the wonderful writers who sent me stories and let me print or reprint them in my books – I’m very lucky and working with them really is enough reward in itself.

It would be remiss of me, too, to not shout out to all of my friends who are nominated in other categories — too many to name – all of whom deserve enormous congratulations!

Sunday I was up fairly early, even allowing for time differences. I got to chat with Anna over pancakes, then with Garth over coffee. They were kind, wonderful hosts, but before I knew it I was in a cab and headed for the city. I got to the hotel in time to drop off a bag and then grab yum cha with my dear travel buddy, Deb, where we talked of all sorts of things over steamed morsels and jasmine tea.  Hours drifted by and before I knew it we’d finished coffee back at the hotel, said goodbye, and I headed to the 37th Floor to crash for a little while. Stephen arrived around 6pm and we had what proved to be a relaxing time over drinks in the Excecutive Lounge, before grabbing dinner at Glass.   All in all a fine day.

Sleep, though, as it has of late proved a little elusive, though I didn’t put the waking hours to much use. Today should be a day to chill and wander around town a bit before heading out to Allphone Arena for the show. It should be something special.

Loss, with Chalk Diagrams by E. Lily Yu

March is well progressed and it’s time for the first Eclipse story of the month.  This time it’s a brand new short story from Campbell Award winner E. Lily Yu. Yu’s brilliant story “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, and was reprinted in my best of the year. This new story, “Loss, with Chalk Diagrams“, is a moving look at the impact loss can have on our lives.

Me

(c) 2013 by Kathleen Jennings

The second Eclipse Online story for February 2013, “On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V” by Peter M. Ball, has just been published. A powerful fantasy novelette, I think it’s possibly the best story I’ve read from Ball. As always, Kathleen Jennings provides us with another wonderful illustration.

(c) 2013 Kathleen Jennings.

The first Eclipse Online story for February 2013, “Sanctuary” by Susan Palwick, has just been published. This disturbing novelette about a group of survivors of sorts stuck in a dark future features one of Kathleen Jennings darkest illustrations for us yet. Palwick is a wonderful writer, and I’m delighted to be able to feature her work on Eclipse Online this month.

Susan Palwick’s new novel Mending the Moon is due out from Tor in May.

The Locus Recommended Reading List is online, as is the annual Locus Poll and a list of links to recommended short fiction.  As discussed during the episode, both Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan work for Locus and were actively involved in compiling the recommended reading list.  You can subscribe to Locus here. The Year in Review issue is available as the start of a subscription or as a stand-alone issue.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

Listen to this episode

Well, after too many years, it has just been published quietly by The Borgo Press in the United States. If you love dark fantasy, consider downloading a sample and checking it out.

Review of Edge of Infinity at Stainless Steel Droppings

I usually don’t link to reviews or commentary on my books here, but there have been three really nice reviews of Edge of Infinity that I want to mention. Carl V. Anderson has just reviewed the book on his blog, Stainless Steel Droppings, calling it one of the best science fiction anthologies he has ever read, Lois Tilton at Locus Online called is “a superior anthology” in her review, and late last year long-time friend of Coode Street Paul Weimer gave it a very strong review at SF Signal. I’m delighted they all enjoyed the book as much as they did.

You can read Elizabeth Bear’s terrific short story “The Deeps of the Sky” from Edge of Infinity over at io9.com. It’s available from, as they say, all good bookstores (including Stefen’s Books, if you want a signed copy!).

I’m also delighted to be working on a third “Infinity” book, Reach for Infinity, for my great friends at Solaris Books. Where Engineering Infinity was a pure hard SF book looking out in the universe around us, and Edge of Infinity covered the time when we have spread out through the Solar System, Reach for Infinity will be about mankind’s first steps out into the Solar System around us. I think it should be something special. It’s due out in mid-2014 and will post more information on it here as we get closer to the time of publication.

(c) 2013 Kathleen Jennings.

The second Eclipse Online story for 2013, “The Amnesia Helmet” by F. Brett Cox, has just been published. This compelling story about a young girl who in inspired by a Buck Rogers movie is beautifully illustrated by Kathleen Jennings. Cox is a fine short story writer, and I’m very pleased that I am able to feature his work on Eclipse Online this month.

Buy my books at Stefen’s!

Every now and then someone asks me where they can get copies of my books and until now I’ve only ever been able to direct them to the wilds of the internet. I do have spare copies of many of my titles – most of them in fact – but I’ve not been in a position to sell them myself, for a number of reasons.

Well, that is no longer the case. On Sunday I took copies of just over two dozen of my books to Stefen’s Books in Perth. Stefen’s is run by one of my best friends, and one of Australia’s best booksellers, Stefen Brazulaitis. For the next few months at least, he will be offering those books for sale. Please check out his website or drop him an email with your wishlist. I’ll be happy to sign any books if you just let him know.

Oh, and if you’re not fortunate enough to be near the bookshop, drop him an email with a query about mail order.

Fearsome Journeys: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy

For the last few months, in amongst other happy commitments, I have been working on an exciting new project which is just about finished.  Fearsome Journeys: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy is an anthology of adventure fantasy, with a slight emphasis on military fantasy and swords and sorcery. The working title for the book, Reap the Whirlwind, hinted at the energy I hoped to capture in the book, but Fearsome Journeys fits it best.

Here’s how Jonathan Oliver and the talented team at Solaris Books describe the anthology:

An amazing array of the most popular and exciting names in Fantasy are set to appear in the first in a brand new series of Fantasy anthologies featuring original fiction, from the master editor Jonathan Strahan. The authors appearing in the launch volume include Trudi Canavan, Elizabeth Bear, Daniel Abraham, Kate Elliott, Saladin Ahmed, Glen Cook, Scott Lynch, Ellen Klages, Ellen Kushner & Ysabeau Wilce, Jeffrey Ford, Robert Redick and KJ Parker.

I am delighted with the book, the stories, the cover, and the idea that this could potentially be the first in new semi-regular series of original fantasy anthologies.  That, of course, will depend on how Fearsome Journeys does, but I’m very hopeful for it.  And with publication in June, I’m working hard to get it finished and off to Jonathan & co.

Here’s the table of contents for the book (running order subject to change):

1. Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
2. “The Effigy Engine: A Tale of the Red Hats”, Scott Lynch
3. “Amethyst, Shadow, and Light “, Saladin Ahmed
4. “Camp Follower”, Trudi Canavan
5. “The Dragonslayer of Merebarton “, K J Parker
6. “leaf and branch and grass and vine”, Kate Eliot
7. “Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart”, Jeffrey Ford
8. “Forever People”, Robert V S Redick
9. “Sponda the Suet Girl and the Secret of the French Pearl”, Ellen Klages
10. “Shaggy Dog Bridge: A Black Company Story”, Glen Cook
11. “The Ghost Makers”, Elizabeth Bear
12. “One Last, Great Adventure”, Ellen Kushner & Ysabeau Wilce
13. “The High King Dreaming”, Daniel Abraham

All in all, I think it’s a terrific book. The publisher has put together a very handy page that allows you to pre-order the paperback or ebook editions from your preferred retailer. Pre-ordering is a good thing.

Having been busy during 2012, I’ve been fortunate enough to help publish a large number of what I think are really excellent works of fiction that I think are worthy of your consideration. It was a year when I edited or co-edited two new collections of Jack Vance fiction, three anthologies, launched an online magazine, appeared on more than 50 podcast episodes, and still acted as reviews editor for Locus.

The anthologies, which I’m incredibly proud of are:

• Edge of Infinity (Solaris Books)
• Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron (Random House)
• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six (Night Shade Books)

As a guide, fiction in Edge of Infinity is science fiction, in Under My Hat is fantasy, and in Eclipse Online is mixed. I would imagine Under My Hat is eligble for anthology in the WFAs.

Novelettes

Eclipse Online

• Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery, Eleanor Arnason
• Invisible Men, Christopher Barzak
• Firebugs, Nina Kiriki Hoffmann
• One Room an Everywhere, K J Parker
• The Contrary Gardner, Christopher Rowe

Edge of Infinity

• Obelisk, Stephen Baxter
• The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi, Pat Cadigan
• Drive, James S.A. Corey
• The Road to NPS, Sandra McDonald
• Safety Tests, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• The Peak of Eternal Light, Bruce Sterling

Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

• B is for Bigfoot, Jim Butcher
• The Stone Witch, Isobelle Carmody
• A Handful of Ashes, Garth Nix

Short stories

Eclipse Online

• The Memcordist, Lavie Tidhar

Edge of Infinity

• Water Rights, An Owomayela
• Swift as a dream and fleeting as a sigh, John Barnes
• The Deeps of the Sky, Elizabeth Bear
• Bricks, Sticks, Straw, Gwyneth Jones
• Macy Minnot’s Last Christmas on Dione, Ring Racing, Fiddler’s Green, the Potter’s Garden, Paul McAuley
• Tyche and the Ants, Hannu Rajaniemi
• Vainglory, Alastair Reynolds

Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

• Great-Grandmother in the Cellar, Peter S. Beagle
• Little Gods, Holly Black
• Barrio Girls, Charles de Lint
• Payment Due, Frances Hardinge
• The Education of a Witch, Ellen Klages
• The Three-Fold World, Ellen Kushner
• Crow and caper, caper and crow, Margo Lanagan
• Felidis, Tanith Lee
• Which Witch, Patricia McKillip
• Stray Magic, Diana Peterfreund
• The Carved Forest, Tim Pratt
• Burning Castles, M. Rickert
• The Witch in the Wood, Delia Sherman
• Andersen’s Witch, Jane Yolen

Editor, Short-Form (Hugos)/Professional Achievement (WFA)

• Jonathan Strahan (Edge of Infinity, Under My Hat, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six, Eclipse Online, Locus [reviews editor], Dream Castles, Desperate Days)

Fan Artist

• Kathleen Jennings [Eclipse Online illustrations]

Best Fancast

• The Coode Street Podcast [Episodes 83 - 129] [co-hosted with Gary K. Wolfe.

I hope you’ll considrer supporting the talented people that I’ve worked with during the year.

(c) 2013 Kathleen Jennings

The first Eclipse Online story for 2013, “The Advocate” by Genevieve Valentine, has just been published. The touching story of the first Martian ambassador to Earth, it’s once again wonderfully illustrated by Kathleen Jennings. Valentine is one of our best writers and I’m delighted to be able to feature her on Eclipse Online this month.

Moments before podcasting began, though, a query came through from James Bradley, asking our thoughts on excellent contemporary fantasy. Interest piqued, we discussed, we listed and we chatted. While we would love to hear listeners recommendations, these are the books we discussed (and recommended) during the podcast:

Contemporary Fantasy Novels (in the order mentioned on the podcast)

• Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock
• The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan
• Last Call, Tim Powers
• Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay
• The Limits of Enchantment, Graham Joyce
• The Wizard Knight, Gene Wolfe
• The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke
• Perfect Circle, Sean Stewart
• Waking the Moon, Elizabeth Hand
• Wizard of Pigeons, Megan Lindholm
• The Scar, China Mieville
• The Prestige, Christopher Priest
• Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
• The Brides of Roll-Rock Island, Margo Lanagan
• Was, Geoff Ryman

The list has its flaws and omissions (one we reason we’d love your recommendations), but it’s a starting point for discussing an interesting subject. Our thanks to James for his question. At podcast’s end we briefly also discuss some points of comparison with the Locus All-Time Poll recently released, and encourage others to run their own similar polls.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

That said, looking back at 2012 I had a lovely time with family relaxing in the south west back in April, a fantastic trip to Melbourne in June (the sojourn in Foster was a highlight I’ll always treasure), and a good trip to Toronto (Alisa was a great travel buddy and I had a good time).

Health-wise, while my hearing/balance issues are a concern, I actually started to get fit. After a wake-up call from my doctor in September, I lost 15kgs pretty quickly and have plans to lose a lot more over the coming year. Hopefully, when it’s time to write the next of these brief updates, all of my health issues will be either gone or understood and under control.

Career-wise, I edited what I think are two of my best books, Edge of Infinity and Under My Hat, which was enormously satisfying. I also started work on Eclipse Online, my online magazine, which is being well received, and made what I hope is a solid contribution to Locus as Reviews Editor. I  co-hosted and produced fifty-plus episodes of The Coode Street Podcast with Gary K Wolfe and did a smattering of other podcast appearances.  I was also nominated for Best Editor for the Hugo again, which was an enormous honour and feels like a nod from the community that the work I’m doing is worthwhile. While there remains lots to do, I’m content.

Day job-wise things were a bit more mixed.  A lot of stress and concern over the uncertainty there, but I completed a year acting as the manager of a team of really dedicated people. We had about seven months of real productivity, before losing a staff member and dropping back into getting by mode. The year will start with significant challenges, including shifting two long delayed major projects, and probably applying for the job I’ve been acting in for two years. That won’t be fun, but it has to be done. Hopefully it will all work out.

What am I looking forward to in 2013? Well, there’s a trip to Sydney in March to see Bruce Springsteen with Stephen. Some “Bro bonding time” and hopefully a great show. There’s a trip to the UK with my eleven year old daughter in October that should be fantastic, and there should be lots of time with family, loved ones, and colleagues to make the year worthwhile. Along the way, I hope there’ll be a glass or two of something special, some wonderful conversations, a memorable story or two, and all of those moments that make life worth living.

May your year be filled with all that and more.

(c) 2012 Kathleen Jennings

The latest Eclipse story, “The Memcordist” by Lavie Tidhar has just been published, along with an absolutely perfect illustration by Kathleen Jennings!. It’s a terrific story and one I’m very proud to have been able to publish as part of Eclipse Online. We are also featuring “The Continuity“, an annotated bibliography of Lavie’s work with the story.

PS: This podcast is usually cross-posted at www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp, however that site is unavailable at the moment. The episode will be published there when service is restored.

So far we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to feature five wonderful stories (see below for a list) that span a lot of the spectrum that Eclipse hopes to cover in coming years. There’s still a lot more to do: new kinds of stories to find, new authors to publish, and new boundaries to push. I’m excited about that, and grateful for the chance to do it.  I’m also grateful to Kathleen Jennings for letting us feature her beautiful art, and to each of the authors for their stories.

October

• October 8: “The Contrary Gardener“, Christopher Rowe
• October 22: “One Little Room An Everywhere“, K.J. Parker

November

• November 12: “Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery“, Eleanor Arnason
• November 26: “Firebugs“, Nina Kiriki Hoffmann

December

• December 10: “Invisible Men“, Christopher Barzak
• December: “The Memcordist“, Lavie Tidhar

With the holiday season upon us, there are two things I’d ask you to consider doing if you’ve enjoyed any of our stories. Head over to the Night Shade Books site and leave a comment letting our authors know how much you’ve enjoyed their stories, and consider ordering a book from our publisher. Their support keeps Eclipse going and they do have all of the Eclipse anthologies available!

Illustration by Kathleen Jennings

The latest Eclipse story, “Invisible Men” by Christopher Barzak just gone been published, along with an absolutely perfect illustration by Kathleen Jennings!. It’s a terrific story and one I’m very proud to have been able to publish as part of Eclipse Online.

There was a great dinner with friends at a local Himalayan restaurant, a screening of Skyfall, a big special needs Christmas event and some other stuff, which were fun. There was surprisingly little reading, and no exercise (I have to get that happening again), but above all there was hearing. Somewhere around ten days ago my ears became blocked, tinnitus roared, and my left ear especially lost a chunk of sensitivity. I saw my GP about it, had a hearing test, and pursued an appointment with my specialist.

I had an explained hearing loss in my right ear in February and was extremely concerned I was facing more permanent hearing loss. It threw me off completely. I did finish the Best of the Year, but I lost and had to rewrite the intro, and mostly worried. The hearing test showed that my right ear had recovered somewhat, and that my left was at approx. the same level as the right. Yesterday I spoke to the specialist who, given the tests, feels appointments can wait till after Christmas. The hearing may recover, but the tests show it’s nothing serious. I am vaguely relieved, though still concerned. This morning I see a dentist, just to be sure a tender tooth isn’t involved, and I shall hope for recovery.

Am I depressed? No. I wondered about that. I’d be depressed if my hearing deteriorated, but there is hope. There is also Christmas, family, a Bruce Springsteen tour and other good things go look forward to. I do have work to do before Christmas that I’d still prefer to avoid, but that too will pass. I read Neil’s new book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, this week. Unexpectedly, it proved to be the balm I needed.

Cover for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven

It feels like I’ve been in whirlwind since the plane touched down in Perth and the Toronto trip came to an end. There have been parties, celebrations, book projects to start, and book projects to finish. I’m working on the Locus Recommended Reading list while also trying to edit reviews, give the day job due diligence and spend some time with the family.

In amongst all of that, I’ve found some time to finish the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven, which will be published by Night Shade Books in March 2013.   I still have the introduction to finish and the running order to finalise (this is simply an alphabetical listing), but I’m very happy with it.  As always, there were stories I would liked to have squeezed in, ones that permissions weren’t available for and so on, but that’s always the case.  I’m actually a bit stunned that this is my 36th anthology! Anyway, without further ado here is the table of contents!

1. “The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times”, Eleanor Arnason
2. “Great Grandmother in the Cellar”, Peter S. Beagle
3. “Immersion”, Aliette de Bodard
4. “Troll Blood”, Peter Dickinson
5. “Close Encounters”, Andy Duncan
6. “Blood Drive”, Jeffrey Ford
7. “Adventure Story”, Neil Gaiman
8. “The Grinnell Method”, Molly Gloss
9. “Beautiful Boys”, Theodora Goss
10. “The Easthound”, Nalo Hopkinson
11. “Mantis Wives”, Kij Johnson
12. “Bricks”, Sticks”, Straw”, Gwyneth Jones
13. “Goggles c 1910”, Caitlin R. Kiernan
14. “The Education of a Witch”, Ellen Klages
15. “The Color Least Used by Nature”, Ted Kosmatka
16. “Significant Dust”, Margo Lanagan
17. “Two Houses”, Kelly Link
18. “Mono No Aware”, Ken Liu
19. “Macy Minnot’s Last Christmas on Dione”, Ring Racing”, Fiddler’s Green”, the Potter’s Garden”, Paul McAuley
20. “Swift”, Brutal Retaliation”, Megan McCarron
21. “About Fairies”, Pat Murphy
22. “Nahiku West”, Linda Nagata
23. “Let Maps to Others”, K.J. Parker
24. “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls”, Rachel Pollack
25. “Katabasis”, Robert Reed
26. “What Did Tessimond Tell You?”, Adam Roberts
27. “The Contrary Gardener”, Christopher Rowe
28. “Joke in Four Panels”, Robert Shearman
29. “Domestic Magic”, Steve Rasnic Tem & Melanie Tem
30. “Reindeer Mountain”, Karin Tidbeck
31. “Fade to White”, Catherynne M. Valente
32. “A Bead of Jasper”, Four Small Stones”, Genevieve Valentine

My special thanks to Marianne Jablon who has worked heroically on this book to help me get it finished. If I make the deadline it will be thanks mostly to her hard work.

This week Graham Joyce incredibly kindly agreed to try again, to join us via Skype and have an entirely new conversation about fiction, fairy tale and much, much more.  And five minutes into recording Skype, for the first time in 124 podcasts, crashed.  Ignoring all of the signals from the universe that this podcast was not meant to happen, we pushed forward and despite a slightly tinny connection and the accidental return of the dreaded stereo, ended up with a conversation that we think totally rewarded our persistence. We hope you’ll agree.

Our sincere thanks to Graham Joyce who persisted despite our incompetence and was exceediingly kind and generous with his time.

Time, however, does not wait for me to recover from jetlag and what may be residual con crud. Part of yesterday was sent tinkering with the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven, which is due at the publisher in mid-December. I have perhaps four short story slots I’m tinkering with, and the remaining 30 are set. There are writers I’d love to have had in the book, but permissions or other practicalities have prevented me from doing so. Still, I think the core of the book is coming together nicely. I still have the dreaded introduction to write, but that can wait till December.

At the same time I’m launching a bunch of new projects that will fill the second part of next year, while also desperately looking for new stories for Eclipse Online. I probably need another four or five stories pretty quickly, so I’m looking for them quite urgently. Also trying to work out the structure of a possible new Infinity book and a magazine project. Lots to do.

And reading? I think I’ve abandoned the new Ian McKewan, which hasn’t held my attention. I have some short stuff to read, and the first of the 2013 magazines (!!), but I think some Mike Harrison is next. Busy times, with lots to do between now and year’s end.

How did the convention go? It was terrific. Preceded by a bit of tourism and sightseeing, as well as wonderful lunches with Peter Watts and Guy Kay on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the event, World Fantasy really kicked off on Thursday morning with breakfast with Karen Lord, followed by a podcast recording with Guy Kay (more of which later), and a fabulous dinner with Liza, Garth, Sean, Rob, Ellen, Alisa, Gary, and Stacie at Sarpa. A fine time was had by all.  Friday was an early breakfast with Farah Mendlesohn, then a Locus AGM, lunch with my fabulous Solaris editor Jonathan Oliver, another podcast (this time with Graham Joyce), and the dinner with Gary, Peter, Graham, Stacie and Ben.  Saturday was breakfast with Bill & Yanni from SubPress, a podcast with Jo Walton on why C J Cherryh deserves a SFWA Grand Master Award, a panel on the best of the year, drinks with my buddy Jack, then dinner Ellen Klages, Alisa and  bunch of other pals.

By now you’re getting a feeling for it. Talking, drinking and celebrating for a week covers it. Sunday was a brief chat with Ann VanderMeer, then brunch with Liza, to talk recommended reading lists and so on, a terrific meeting with Steve Saffel from Titan, and then the WFA’s. I was delighted to see KJ Parker won, and very happy to accept on her behalf.  Dinner than night with Jack, Janeen, Dina, Joe and Gay, back at an oft-visited Indian Restaurant, before a late night in the bar.

And then it was Monday. Breakfast with Graham and Alisa (and the oft-eaten Fritata), then lunch with Rani and Gili, before heading to the airport for the long flight home.  Alisa was a terrific traveling companion and the convention itself was a delight.

Then disaster struck.  I staggered home at 3.30am on Thursday morning, tired and ready for bed. When I woke I had kid stuff to do and a tux to return, but that afternoon I decided to edit the podcasts we recorded. An ill-fated decision. During the synching process all give podcasts recorded were wiped from the iPad and the face of the Earth. That means brilliant conversations with Guy Gavriel Kay, Graham Joyce, Jo Walton, Ellen Klages & Robert Shearman, and James Blaylock & Tim Powers now only exist as sparkling, ephemeral memories.

I’m trying a last ditch recovery effort this morning, but the chances really are minimal, and I continue to struggle with my reaction to events. Why? Well, losing the podcasts was almost enough to persuade me to stop. I’m the producer/engineer, so the loss is my responsibility. I should have set up earlier and found a more rigorous way to back  recordings up (when we record at home we always do two parallel recordings, a main one and a safety, but didn’t in Toronto) from the iPad. I didn’t, and it’s both hurt Gary and I and squandered some terrific recordings.

What encourages me, though, is that those recordings were good, some of the best we’ve done. I think Gary and I are getting better at this, and I’m committed to continuing and improving. I do think I’d like to find a new producer for Coode St, so if you know anyone who’d like to volunteer for an unpaid position to work on a Hugo, BSFA, and Ditmar nominated podcast, we’d love hear from them.  But I think the best is yet to come. I want to find a new energy to expand and improve the podcast in the coming year, and with Gary on my side, I think we can.

More soon.

Where am I now? Somewhere over the North Atlantic, about 15 minutes West of the United Kingdom, as the A380 flies. A lightning stop in Dubai, accompanied by Twelfth Planet Press publisher Alisa Krasnostein is already far behind us. We failed Dubai Tourism 101 in our 21 hours on the ground, though we did see the Burj Kalihfa through the hazy desert sky piercing the sky like Stephen King’s Dark Tower (it’s quintessentially SF close up, but mythic from a distance), and a dock full of dhows. We also tried the worst Irish pub in the world. It was a great stopover.

The flights have been terrific so far, and Emirates have impressed. The plane was 25% full out of Perth, and we have an empty seat between us here, so the long flights have been comfy. I’ve watched some movies, mostly stupid ones, and tried to do some work. Ahead lies Toronto, WFC, then home to job application hell. The end of the year is going to be insanely busy, so I intend to enjoy this.

Oh, and if you ever wondered if we live in the future, we do. Tucked Miss 11 into bed from 38,000 feet two weeks after a man dove to Earth from space like one of Heinlein’s space marines. Strange times!
Is Toronto.

If you enjoy either of the stories on Eclipse Online please let us know and please let others know. We want our stories to be as widely read as possible!

• Gary’s Library of America series
• Eclipse: Online

We hope you’ll forgive our poor planning self-indulgence and that you enjoy the podcast!

Happily, she joins us to continue that discussion and to consider the importance of not flinching in fiction, and the recent discussion of the state of science fiction by Paul Kincaid, Jonathan McAlmont, and Mike Harrison (among others).  It proved to be a wide-ranging discussion, another total delight, and we hope the precursor to another discussion sometime soon.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

Those conversations changed my professional life and continue to impact on me every day. They lead directly to The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, which is currently heading into its seventh volume (I’ve actually been sending out contracts for stories and am working on assembling the book which has to be finished in December). It also led to Eclipse which, in many ways, is my dream project. An unthemed anthology series where I could feature what I thought was the best fiction I could find, one that blended science fiction and fantasy at a time when I believed that was what the field really needed.

Eclipse was successful. We published four volumes of the series, all to great critical acclaim, and some to a little controversy. I’m incredibly proud of each and every story we published, but when the time came to assemble Eclipse Five it became clear times had changed, and we needed to change with them.

After some discussion we decided we needed to relaunch Eclipse as an online magazine, Eclipse Online, which would feature two original stories every month and which would continue the work we’d done with the books. It’s taken some time, and we’re doing this on a tightrope over a yawning chasm, but at last Eclipse Online is ready to see the light of day. Next week the first story will launch, Christopher Rowe’s “The Contrary Gardner”, and it will be followed two weeks later by K.J. Parker’s “One Little Room an Everywhere”. Both are accompanied by wonderful illustrations by Kathleen Jennings.

I couldn’t be happier with our launch stories and hope readers everywhere will love them as much as I have. There’s much more to come, and soon!

Under My Hat, Hot Key Books

There’s a lot to celebrate this month. First is the welcome news that the fabulous Hot Key Books edition of Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron is now out in the UK and Australia! Sarah Odedina and the Hot Key team, who are busy launching a brand new book imprint, have been wonderful to deal with (they even sent me champagne and chololates to celebrate!), and they’re doing a brilliant job with the book.

If you’re in Australia or the UK please consider heading out to a bookshop near you – chain or independent – and check out the beautiful book and the great stories in it. Of course, if you’re in the US you can get the first edition of the book from Random House and Jim Thomas, who have been similarly fabulous.

I have to say it’s been a joy and a privilege working with everyone associated with the book, and I only hope I’m lucky enough to get to work with them again.

Welcome to the second episode of Last Short Story. This month Ian Mond and I are joined by Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth co-founder Tansy Rayner Roberts to discuss Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling’s After:  Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia.

As part of the pre-season for the podcast, we continue to refine the format. This time we accept that we’re not going to get through nineteen stories, however fine they may be, in an hour podcast, so we restrict ourselves to discussing these six stories, all of which rank amongst the year’s better stories, and several of which are clearly amongst the best:

1. “The Segment,” Genevieve Valentine
2. “Valedictorian,” N.K. Jemisin
3. “Blood Drive,” Jeffrey Ford
4. “The Easthound,” Nalo Hopkinson
5. “Fake Plastic Trees,”  Caitlin R. Kiernan
6. “The Marker,” Cecil Castellucci

These aren’t the only good stories in the book, by any means, but in the collective opinion of the podcast panel they easily justify the time spent reading the book.

Next month: The Future is Japanese, Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington eds.

Listen to the podcast here.

Our original conversation didn’t cover the subject well, so we invited Paul to join us in the Gershwin Room to discuss the essay and the issues surrounding it.  Our thanks to Paul for being such a generous guest and, as always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

However, we were back in the Gershwin Room this weekend to discuss the Hugo Awards, Paul Kincaid’s LA Times article on the exhaustion of science fiction, and steampunk, through the lens of two very fine stories by Caitlin R. Kiernan (“Goggles (c.1910)” from Steampunk 3) and Nick Mamatas (“Arbeitschraft” from The Mammoth Book of Steampunk).

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

About a month ago I was talking podcasts with Ian Mond, who is also part of LSSOE, and we discussed how the one problem with the group is that we never really get to discussing what we’re reading with one another in a meaningful way. I said we should do a podcast once a month and that it should be of one work only (a collection, a magazine, something), that way we all would have read it.

I liked the idea so much I almost just launched it as my own podcast, but I began to think it would make sense to actually do it with Last Short Story, so I proposed it to the group. And everyone liked it. Yay. I was ready to go. Less yay. Everyone in the group was busy and they thought NEXT year was a great time to start.

I agreed, but I’m always impatient when I have an idea I like so I went back to Ian and started talking about it some more. After a little discussion we decided to record a pre-season for the podcast. A set of monthly podcasts that would come out every four weeks, that would let us test and develop the format, and that would set the ground for the full podcast when it happens in 2013. This sounded like fun and scratched my itch to do something now.

And so, last weekend Ian and I sat down and recorded Pre-Season Episode 1 of Last Short Story, where we discuss the August issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. I’m including the podcast in this post as a sample. I won’t be repeating this as I don’t want to double up subs with The Coode St Podcast. If you like it you can subscribe here! Next month we plan to discuss Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling’s new anthology, After.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of the most interesting and rewarding books I’ve read in 2012, G. Willow Wilson’s debut novel Alif the Unseen is ostensibly a contemporary young adult fantasy novel about a dissident computer hacker set in an unspecified Arabic country at a time of rising civil unrest. The book has a lot to recommend it – engaging characters, a fast-paced narrative and so on – but what makes it most interesting is the way it interrogates the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy, between what secular and religious worldviews, and about the role of women in traditional societies. That a book focussed on dissent and revolution is so respectful of traditional religious perspectives is a significant strength of the book. Highly recommended.

Note: Check out this review of the book by James Bradley ( http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/b…)

View all my reviews

I can only say read it. I agree pretty much wholeheartedly. Realistically, no single editor can influence a writer’s career significantly. Any editor who tries to suggest otherwise is either being foolish or a creep. Anyone who tries to trade on that impression in any way (especially physically) is contemptible, damages every editor when he or she does so, and deserves to be ejected from our community for such actions (the punch in the face Jeff suggests would also be appropriate).

I also agree about the editor/writer power balance comments Jeff makes. I still very much feel like the newbie I was 20 years ago, and am always surprised and taken aback when I hear people don’t see me that way. It is something I try more and more to be aware of and to manage as best I can, but it does turn people like me into old farts, and I’m already far too far down that path to need any help so I’d ask anyone I meet to remember I’m just some guy and not to take me too seriously.

Edge of Infinity is a direct follow on from last year’s Engineering Infinity, but this time is focussed on hard SF/adventure set in an industrialised, settled pre-starflight solar system. It gathers stories set everywhere from Mercury to Neptune, the nooks and crannies of the asteroid belt, to the wonders and beauties of Jupiter.  At a time when interstellar travel seems ever more impractical, these stories breathe life into our dream of the future by showing us the romance and challenge of what is achievable here on our own doorstep.

And so, the very nearly almost completely final table of contents for Edge of Infinity, a book that I’ve come to love a great deal. There’s a very much outside chance one more story might sneek into the book, but it’ll be last minute it it does. I’ll advise you all here if so.

In the meantime, my sincere thanks to the fabulous Jonathan Oliver and the team at Solaris Books , who have been spectacular to work with and who have done a brilliant job of packaging the book, as you can see below.

 

1. Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
2. The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi, Pat Cadigan
3. The Deeps of the Sky, Elizabeth Bear
4. Drive, James S.A. Corey
5. The Road to NPS, Sandra McDonald & Stephen D. Covey
6. Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh, John Barnes
7. Macy Minnot’s Last Christmas on Dione, Ring Racing, Fiddler’s Green, the Potter’s Garden, Paul McAuley
8. Safety Tests, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
9. Bricks, Sticks, Straw, Gwyneth Jones
10. Tyche and the Ants, Hannu Rajaniemi
11. Obelisk, Stephen Baxter
12. Vainglory, Alastair Reynolds
13. Water Rights, An Owomayela
14. The Peak of Eternal Light, Bruce Sterling

Edge of Infinity is now available for pre-order in all sorts of cool places.
* For working, read slightly panicking and looking blearily through a post-wedding haze trying to focus enough to write an introduction.

My sincere thanks to Ian and Kirstyn for having me on the show!!

Everybody knows something that most people don’t. Perhaps you went skydiving once, or competed as an ice skater when you were a kid. Perhaps you’re learning how to make cheese, or lived in Japan for a year. The trick is in identifying that knowledge, and turning it into a story.

Join award-winning novelist Amelia Beamer for a three-hour workshop designed to write, talk about writing, and get inspiration from the things you already know. Amelia will take you through the process of turning your knowledge into characters and storylines that highlight your unique, individual storytelling voice.

Amelia is the award-winning author of the novel The Loving Dead (2010) as well as fiction and poetry in Interfictions 2, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Red Cedar Review, and The Living Dead 2 amongst others. A former program assistant for the highly-respected international Clarion East writing workshop, Amelia has also as an editor, reviewer, and photographer for Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field. As an independent scholar she has published papers in Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction and the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, on topics including John W. Campbell’s Astounding, the TV series Lost, and the works of Peter Straub (written with Gary K. Wolfe). She has spoken at many conferences and conventions on various aspects of publishing. Born in Michigan, USA, Amelia now lives in Australia after stints in California and the UK.

WHEN: 1-4pm, Saturday 11 August, Gary Holland Community Centre, cnr Kent St & Flinders Lane, Rockingham

COST: Free.

Bookings are essential. To book a place, contact Lee Battersby, Coordinator Cultural Development & the Arts, City of Rockingham on 9528 0386 or  lee.battersby@rockingham.wa.gov.au.

And time is limited. So, with some reluctant, we’re amending our usual regular schedule of a new Coode Street Podcast every darned week. Instead, and for the month of July only, we will be recording every second week. This means the new schedule for the Waldorf Room is:

7-8 July:    No podcast
14-15 July: Gary goes to Readercon. Podcast!
21-22 July: No podcast
28-29 July:    Podcast!

We’ll then return to our schedule of a new podcast every darned week in August. We’re yet to decide what we’re doing through August, though I do know we have some interesting guests lined up and that we hope to record a whole batch of podcasts during Chicon 7 at the end of the month. We’ve not planned those yet, but we need a sufficient backlog to see us through the World Fantasy Convention Hiatus, when we will all be travelling and things will be discombobulated.

We do appreciate your understanding and patience during July and will see you back in the Waldorf Room, or wherever your listen to the podcast, in two weeks.

I’ve touched on this before, but I’m not really listening to much new music, not getting to do things I enjoy, and am even struggling to focus on reading because of my commitments.  I know I need to change, but I can’t work out how I want to/need to restructure what I do to make things work out.

The conversation was intriguing and engaging, and one we intend to revisit in coming weeks. A small warning: the Gods of Skype were not on our side and there are some audio difficulties with the recording, though things do improve. Our apologies for the problems, but we feel the conversation was interesting enough to justify releasing as is.

As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

To my great delight I was met at the airport by my dear friend and great pal Jack Dann. We clicked, as we always do, and were chatting away like it had only been five minutes since we saw each other last, and not several years. We jumped in his car and headed down to his gorgeous newly renovated home in Foster. This is where the photos would come in handy. Not for the drive down, not for the dinner we had at the local pub, but for the stunning house with the most perfect library I’ve ever seen, and for the beautiful scenery.

Both Jack and Janeen insist that’s there’s something called “the Prom” just a few miles away. Their home is high on a hill with views over rolling farmland and out to sea – sort of Middle Earth meets Tuscany. It was always, while I was there, bitterly cold and indundated by gale force winds and sleeting rain. I got there at 5pm on Saturday and I don’t think I stepped outside again until I left on Tuesday. That might sound claustrophobic and shut in, but it wasn’t. The company was the best imaginable, the house was gorgeous and got to relax, unwind, chat and just recuperate from the last few months. Rainswept greenery was really all I needed.

What did we do? There was dinner, their wonder beagle Bertie, and lots of talk about books and other stuff. I’ve promised to go back when the weather improves, hopefully with Marianne. Not sure when, but sooner than the last time we did this 17 years ago. If I did nothing else in Melbourne, this alone would make the trip worthwhile.

At noon I hopped on a bus to Melbourne. Got here about three and immediately set myself up in the bar (getting ready for the con) where I tweeted and read and let time pass, before meeting Richard for dinner. We go back 25 years or more, so it was fun to sit and chat and just catch up with what’s happening with each other. I hope I’ll get to see him before heading home again.

And tomorrow? Cindy in the day then Ian and Kirstyn tomorrow evening. The trip progresses! For now, a nightcap perhaps.

And of course, I’m going to Melbourne! I’m actually in my slightly anxious pre-departure phase, but I’m looking forward to seeing old friends, spending time in a wonderful city, and attending Continuum next weekend. It should, hopefully, be a wonderful time.

I will try to blog a little from the road, and to podcast if I can, but no promises. If I can’t, do look after the place and I’ll see you back here in a bit.

• The Forgotten Frontier?, Friday 5pm,  with m1k3y and Alexandra Pierce. This one’s about space opera.
• Masters Of Podcasting, Saturday 10am with Terry Frost, Alisa Krasnostein, and Kirstyn McDermott. We chat about, well, podcasting, I guess.
• Good Things Come In Small Packages, Saturday 4pm with Stephen Dedman, George Ivanoff, Kelly Link, and Cat Sparks. The art of the story. Writers and editors discuss.
• What’s It Worth?, Sunday 11am with Alan Baxter, Kate Eltham, Jason Nahrung, and Steven O’Connor. We discuss ebooks. Particularly delighted the other panelists, who actually know something on the subject, will be there. We will likely have a hashtag.
• Where Has All The Sci-Fi Gone?, Sunday 4pm, with David Golding, Ian Nichols, Michael Pryor, and Cat Sparks. Another panels on the dark age of Australian SF :)

All in all, it should be a great weekend. I’m also ducking over to an event organised by Twefth Planet Press at Embiggen Books on the Saturday evening, which sounds like fun.  I hope to see you all there!

Trip planning is becoming a thing. I intend to make two trips this year: one to Melbourne in a week’s time and one to Toronto in November.  The Melbourne trip is the one on my mind. I need to make sure I have all of the pieces in place, and I don’t. The big stuff – plane, hotel etc is sorted – so I have events and packing to think about. I have been debating taking a laptop with me so I can podcast, but given I have a long bus trip in there somewhere I’m thinking that might not be appropriate. That would leave me dependent on the iPad for podcasting, and I’m just not confident that would work out. I also only have limited ability to publish from the iPad.  That means most likely no podcasting in Melbourne, and no Coode St for at least one week up ahead.

The Toronto planning is weird. An acceptable route has been found. The okay has been given to make the booking, and yet still I hold off. It’s not that I don’t want to go – I do – I think it’s just that I can’t quite take the thought of all of that plane travel.

In other news, I’m trying to find time to put new home accounting in place, get my taxes out of the way (2010/11 are ready to go and 2011/12 are progressing), and do some other stuff. My stereo is acting up again. The amp I bought in 2008 seems to be experiencing problems. That means repair, all sorts of mucking about, and not so much music for a while. I can use headphones, but I find since I had the hearing loss a few months back I’m less eager to use them.

Weirdly I am very eager to pick up a copy of the reissue of Ram by Paul & Linda McCartney. I have no time for it at all back in the day, but now rather fancy it’s ramshackle appeal. Worryingly, I’ve not read much of late. I have read 2.5 of the books I need to read before going to Melbourne, but despite being surrounded by books I think I want to read, I find myself not wanting to actually read much. Dang.

We had much to discuss:

• the Nebula Awards winners, which had just been announced;
• feedback from Cheryl Morgan on Episode 101 and whether women write rigorous SF;
• gender and whether the gender of the author affects how we perceive the genre of their work;
• and more! Really.

For those seeking show notes, we did discuss all of the above, along with mention of the Tiptree Centenary (time to start planning!), Gary’s upcoming attendance at Wiscon and Readercon, and other stuff.

However, this is the Coode St Podcast. It soon became clear Gary had not *read* the show notes, that we couldn’t fit in everything we’d planned and…well, we did the best we could. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast. Next week, Wiscon!

We had all sorts of grandiose plans for the 100th episode, but in the end it’s just the two of us, rambling. We do want to thank all of our listeners, guests, commentators and friends – anyone who’s said anything nice about the podcast at all – for your enthusiasm and support. That’s what will get us through the next 100 episodes!

Here is the basic info:
Tickets for the SF Awards Weekend are $40 and include all Locus events — including readings, a kickoff meet-and-greet, panels with leading authors, an autograph session, the lunch banquet, and the annual Hawai’ian shirt contest judged by the fabulous Connie Willis, who will MC the ceremony and present the Locus Awards — all followed by the Clarion West Party on Saturday night honoring Clarion West supporters, awards weekend ticket holders, and special guests. The events are held across the street from the Seattle Center, home to the SF Hall of Fame and the Experience Music Project, with excellent access to the light rail and trolley systems.

In addition, non-profit literary organization NW Media Arts is sponsoring special Awards Weekend writers workshops with James Patrick Kelly and Connie Willis at the nearby Richard Hugo House. Additional fees apply.* Click here to learn more.

Special room rates, $131 per night, will be available from Wednesday, June 13 through Sunday June 17 at the Best Western Executive Inn at 200 Taylor Avenue North, Seattle WA 98109, directly across the street from the Seattle Center and Experience Music Project/SF Museum. For hotel reservations, call Joseph Ambler at (206) 674-6616 and mention the “Science Fiction Awards Group”, or you may call the general number at 1(800) 351-9444. Please make reservations by May 4, 2012 in order to secure the special room rate. If you need to book additional days, please e-mail Locus or call us at (510) 339-9196 and we will arrange it for you.
Tentative Schedule:

Friday, June 15

Evening: Author readings by Connie Willis and James Patrick Kelly in the Whidbey-Shaw Room at the Best Western Executive Inn, presented by NW Media Arts and University Book Store. Followed by an evening meet-and-greet in the lounge.

Saturday, June 16

10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.: Panel with leading authors, topic TBA.

10:55 a.m. to 11:40 a.m.: Panel with leading authors, topic TBA.

12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.: Autographing session with books available for purchase thanks to University Book Store.

12:45 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.: Locus Awards Lunch Banquet and Ceremony at the Best Western Executive Inn with M.C. Connie Willis, who will present the awards and judge the annual Hawai’ian Shirt Contest.

Evening: Clarion West Party in the Whidbey-Shaw Room at the Best Western Executive Inn.

Schedule is subject to change without notice. Don’t forget to wear your most outlandish Hawai’ian shirt to the Locus Awards!

Presented by NW Media Arts
SF in Seattle Fantastic Fiction Writers Workshops with Connie Willis & James Patrick Kelly

* Tickets will soon be available for workshops with James Patrick Kelly and Connie Willis at the nearby Richard Hugo House, which will be ticketed separately through non-profit literary organization NW Media Arts. Additional fees apply and workshop registration is limited. Check back later for information on purchasing tickets.

Thanks to 123-Awards.com and NW Media Arts for their assistance and sponsorship of the Locus Awards events.

I hope, though, that people will consider keeping supporting the project now that it has been funded. The Foundation says as part of its Kickstarter that:

Should we exceed our funding goals, there are several projects waiting in the wings:

•     digitizing and storing Locus’s immense and historic collection of audio author interviews, currently only on microcassettes and in imminent danger of degrading
•     cataloging the current book, pulp, and periodical collection housed at Locus
•     a fantastic but as-yet-to-be-announced project, one that would benefit many in the SF/F community from authors to fans to publishers

I think these are terrific projects and the first on the list – digitizing the audio collection, is a spectacularly good project. I’ve spent a lot of time at Locus HQ and Charles would always tell us that he had the original recordings for all of the interviews he did for Locus. It would be a spectacular primary resource for the field if they could be preserved for the future.

The goal of the project is to preserve these historic and irreplaceable materials, by stabilizing the archive and at the same time digitizing the photos, letters, etc., and creating a viewable gallery of as many of the materials as possible. The funding that the Foundation is seeking for this project will cover the cost of archival and preservation supplies such as acid-free tissue for interleaving documents, plastic sleeves for preserving significant photographs, acid-free folders for organization, acid-free labels and pens, a mid-range document and film scanner, long-term archival storage boxes, and finally, the cost of website construction to create a viewable gallery of the Photo and Ephemera Collection.

A collection like this is too important to be allowed to fall into disrepair. Please consider supporting the Kickstarter Campaign and the Locus Collection!

Hm. Now I think about it, there is one argument to go to WorldCon in August instead of World Fantasy in November: the best of the year. The WFC trip always plays havoc with prep for that. Something to ponder.

We would like to sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this has caused Coode Street listeners. If the hosting problems continue we will look for a new service. We do have a new episode of the podcast, Episode 92 recorded with special guest Michael Dirda, recorded and ready to go. We look forward to sharing it with you as soon as we can.

So, how have things been? Well, the dominant thing has been my recurring ear infection. Without whining too much more, I basically have tinnitus and hearing loss in my right ear. Not happy making, and the kind of thing that kicks the heck out of my ability/willingness to focus and concentrate on reading or writing.  I see an ENT specialist tomorrow, so I’m hopeful it’ll be sorted one way or the other (I’m hoping the hearing loss can be dealt with).

This doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. I have. I’m getting ready to ink the deal on a new project, which is nice. I also have a lot of work going on for most of the other ones I’m involved in.  I do need to clarify one thing. While I’ve made references to the fact that there won’t be any more print volumes of Eclipse, at least for now, there wil be a new incarnation of Eclipse announced shortly, and I’m completely committed to that and a possible return to print at some point.

I also solicited some new artwork this week. Dylan Horrocks and Kathleen Jennings are sketching witches for me. There’s no set plan for using the art at the moment, other than simply enjoying it, but it was a great feeling to ask for new art to be created.  I can’t wait to see the sketches when they’re done.

I have also been planning travel. I will be attending the Australian national science fiction convention in Melbourne this June. I’m going to be there for a week, and will mostly be holidaying with friends and maybe doing a little podcasting, before getting caught up in the con. It should be a great time. I’m also working out my travel plans for World Fantasy in Toronto.  It looks like I’ll go via Dubai, which will be economical, but I’m very sad not to be getting to Sydney and San Francisco. I’m unlikely to head to Chicago for WorldCon, but that’s not impossible. But I should not complain. Melbourne and Toronto will be a lot for 2012.

There’s likely more, but time for coffee!

• The Witches of Lublin (Audible); and
• the audiobook of Swordspoint (US information; UK information).

We would like to apologise for the audio quality of some of the podcast, which is a little below what we’d normally hope for.  Our primary recording of the ‘cast failed, but we were saved by our newly installed backup recording system.  We continue our hunt for improvements, but in the interim thank Ellen, and look forward to seeing you all next week.

Not sure where to next. I have some bits and pieces of TV to watch, a few comics to read, an ENORMOUS pile of books that I’m not looking at, and some other stuff.  I was pleased to see the new issue of Subterranean starting to appear. Bill’s magazine has consistently been amongst the frontrunners for quality fiction over the past couple of years, so more is welcome!

Novellas (Nebulas/Hugos)

• Martian Chronicles, Cory Doctorow (Life on Mars)

Novelettes (Nebulas/Hugos)

• Dying Young, Peter M Ball (Eclipse Four)
• Mercies, Gregory Benford (Engineering Infinity)
• Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone, Damien Broderick & Barbara Lamar (Engineering Infinity)
• Creatures with Wings, Kathleen Ann Goonan (Engineering Infinity)
• The Ki-Anna, Gwyneth Jones (Engineering Infinity)
• The Vicar of Mars, Gwyneth Jones (Eclipse Four)
• Tourists, James Patrick Kelly (Eclipse Four)
• The Old Man and the Martian Sea, Alastair Reynolds (Life on Mars)
• Laika’s Ghost, Karl Schroeder (Engineering Infinity)
• A Taste of Promises, Rachel Swirsky (Life on Mars)
• Fields of Gold, Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse Four)
• Judgement Eve, John C. Wright (Engineering Infinity)

Short Stories (Nebulas/Hugos)

• Attlee and the Long Walk, Kage Baker (Life on Mars)
• Martian Heart, John Barnes (Life on Mars)
• The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees, John Barnes (Engineering Infinity)
• On Chryse Plain, Stephen Baxter (Life on Mars)
• The Invasion of Venus, Stephen Baxter (Engineering Infinity)
• The Beancounter’s Cat, Damien Broderick (Eclipse Four)
• Nine Muses, Emma Bull (Eclipse Four)
• Slow as a Bullet, Andy Duncan (Eclipse Four)
• The Double of My Double Is Not My Double, Jeffrey Ford (Eclipse Four)
• Thought Experiment, Eileen Gunn (Eclipse Four)
• Old Habits, Nalo Hopkinson (Eclipse Four)
• Story Kit, Kij Johnson (Eclipse Four)
• Tidal Forces, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Eclipse Four)
• Goodnight Moons, Ellen Klages (Life on Mars)
• First Principle, Nancy Kress (Life on Mars)
• Digging, Ian McDonald (Life on Mars)
• A Soldier of the City, David Moles (Engineering Infinity)
• Wahala, Nnedi Okorafor (Life on Mars)
• The Server and the Dragon, Hannu Rajaniemi (Engineering Infinity)
• Mantis, Robert Reed (Engineering Infinity)
• Larp on Mars, Chris Roberson (Life on Mars)
• Watching the Music Dance, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Engineering Infinity)
• Bit Rot, Charles Stross (Engineering Infinity)
• The Man in Grey, Michael Swanwick (Eclipse Four)
• The Panda Coin, Jo Walton (Eclipse Four)
• Malak, Peter Watts (Engineering Infinity)

Editor, Short Form (Hugos)

• Jonathan Strahan
  Books (5): The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six; Eclipse Four; Engineering Infinity; Life on Mars; Dangerous Ways: Mystery Novels by Jack Vance)
  Magazines (12): Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field, Reviews Editor, Jan-Dec 2011 issues)

Semiprozine (Hugos)

• Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field  (Jan-Dec 2011 issues)

 Fanzine (Hugos)

• The Coode Street Podcast by Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe (Episodes 32-82 published in 2011) (Episode list)

Fancast (Hugos)

•  The Coode Street Podcast by Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe (Episodes 32-82 published in 2011) (Episode list)

I encourage everyone to look at these and all of the other very fine works that are eligible for awards in 2012 and nominate the works that you loved!  Your nomination and vote are important and the more people that are involved, the better the awards are!

Edited: Edited to remove Live and Sassy from Fancast/Fanzine to match eligibility criteria.

Finally, as an aside to this post, my thanks to all for their kind birthday wishes. They were all enormously appreciated.

There are some possible exceptions. I don’t know that I want to include anything here about short fiction I’m reading for the year’s best because it conflicts with Last Short Story, and because it seems like a fairly poor idea.

I also won’t post about some novels. Every now and then manuscripts fall into my hands, legitimately (!), and it’s best not to comment publicly on them until a more appropriate time.

With those two caveats, though, here’s the rather passive amount of culture I consumed on a holiday Sunday when I slept as late as I have in three years, and when we did go swimming for a while.

I’m been watching the first season of Kelsey Grammer’s new political drama, Boss. For those unfamiliar with it, Grammer plays a mayor of Chicago diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition. The script is tight, the cast is good, and the stories work. I’m not 100% I love it, but I find myself compelled to keep watching, which is a good sign.

I also watched the final two episodes of season two of Downton Abbey. Somehow I seem to have watched most of Downton Abbey on planes – season one on the Reno/WorldCon trip and most of season two on the NYC/LA/World Fantasy trip – but I’d not quite finished till last night. It’s a real soap opera now, and I’m not as impressed with s.2 as I was with s.1, but it still the right thing for the day.

Finally, during 2011 I purchased an iPad. That lead to me dipping my toes into the world of comics. I’ve never been an active comics reader, having read a small number of superhero comics as child, then Neil’s Sandman and Dave Sim’s Cerebus later on in life. Everything else passed me by, but James Bradley had me check out and rather enjoy Warren Ellis’s Planetary, and it got me interested enough to dabble.

Yesterday I read the opening three issues of Grant Morrison & Sean Murphy’s Joe the Barbarian. I’d seen the omnibus in Planet, but don’t really want to get into acquiring physical comics, so was happy to read it on the iPad. The story, of a young boy going into some kind of insulin shock and either seeing or hallucinating a great universe-saving epic adventure is pretty cool, and the art is great (though I sometimes seem to find comics panels generally confusing). I also tried issue 1 of Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s Spaceman. I think I want to re-read it before posting more on it.

That’s my culture for 1 January. I’m not expecting to add much to it today. It’s my birthday and I expect demands for my time will distract me from things, but we shall see.

On a serious note, we would like to deeply and sincerely thank everyone who appeared as a guest, commented on the blog, tweeted or blogged about the podcast, voted or nominated it for an award, said something nice about the podcast in passing in an elevator or at the bar – basically, everyone who has responded to it in any way. This first full year of podcasting has been a constant joy, surprise and delight and we’d like to thank all of the Coode St Community and wish you all a safe and happy celebration and the best year ever for 2012 (except for Mayans, who might be in for a bit of a torrid time).

I am currently reading for the 2012 volume, which will cover stories first published between 1 January and 31 December 2012. I am looking for stories from all branches of science fiction and fantasy: space opera to cyberpunk, fairy tales to the slipstream, or anything else that might qualify. If in doubt, PLEASE send it. Please note: This is a reprint anthology.

I work on a tight deadline, and need to see work as early as possible.  With that in mind, the submission deadline for this year’s book is 1 October 2012. Anything sent after this deadline will reach me too late. If a magazine, anthology, or collection you are in or you edit is coming out before 31 December 2012 please send galleys or manuscripts so that I can consider the stories in time.

Where possible, I prefer to receive book-length submissions in print. Anything else can be sent to me via email. I prefer .rtf or .doc files. PDFs are acceptable, but are inconvenient. I strongly suggest that authors check with their publishers that they are sending review copies out to me, as I don’t have the resources to follow-up every publisher to get material.

When sending material please put “BEST SF/F of the Year” on the envelope.

Jonathan Strahan
PO Box 544
Mt Lawley WA 6929
Australia

Email submissions, recommendations, or information on publications can be sent to me via email at: jonathan.strahan (at) gmail (dot) com.

NOTE TO PUBLISHERS

I am eager to see and be able to consider the work you are publishing. If you are producing a magazine, a chapbook, a collection or anthology with any original stories in it please let me know. While I prefer not to accept email submissions for book length works as a rule, I am happy to talk to publishers about making exceptions where necessary. The important thing, for me, is to make sure that I get to consider the best science fiction and fantasy published during 2011.

* I do not need to receive manuscripts from authors of stories from venues that it’s likely I already receive regularly (I get Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, Interzone, Postscripts etc, but not many of the smaller ‘zines and publications).

** If you are publishing online, please email me copies of your stories at (jonathan.strahan (at) gmail (dot) com). This is particularly important for stories published between October and December, which may otherwise be overlooked. I do not require print-outs of online publications (I regularly read Tor.com, IGMS, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex etc online).

*** Please do not send an SASE. This is not a submission, and I’m unable to return manuscripts or respond directly to stories sent to me.

This morning, Perth time, at least, a bunch of participants in Australian podcasting joined together to record The Second Annual Boxing Day Super Mega Podcast. Participating were:

• Alex, Alisa, and Tansy from Galactic Suburbia;
• Ian and Kirstyn from The Writer and the Critic; and
• Gary and I from The Coode St Podcast.

Sadly, Grant from Bad Film Diaries couldn’t make.

What we ended up with was seven seven people talking, in a fairly organised manner about their highlights of 2011 and what they’re looking forward to in 2012.  Because I was doing the engineering  for this there was a stuff up and the first 20 minutes of the podcast were lost forever.  Alex and I did a quick do-over and new intro which we think works pretty well.  Either way, we all hope you enjoy it, and that you check out our individual podcasts which will be coming out in coming weeks and months.

PS: While this is not an episode of The Coode St Podcast proper, it counts as episode 81 as far as we’re concerned :)

NB: My apologies for a technical hitch about an hour into the recording.  You’ll know it when you get to it.

It is possible that the running order might shift, but the contents really shouldn’t. As always, there were stories I would liked to have squeezed in, ones that permissions weren’t available for and so on, but basically I’m very happy with the book and a little stunned that it’s volume six! Anyway, here without further ado is the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six:

Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
The Case of Death and Honey, Neil Gaiman, (A Study in Sherlock)
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees, E. Lily Yu, (Clarkesworld, 4/11)
Tidal Forces, Caitlín R Kiernan, (Eclipse Four)
Younger Women, Karen Joy Fowler, (Subterranean, Summer 2011)
White Lines on a Green Field , Catherynne M. Valente, (Subterranean, Fall 2011)
All That Touches The Air, An Owomoyela, (Lightspeed Magazine, 4/11)
What We Found, Geoff Ryman, (F&SF, 9-10/11)
The Server and the Dragon, Hannu Rajaniemi, (Engineering Infinity)
The Choice, Paul McAuley, (Asimov‘s, 1/11)
Malak, Peter Watts, (Engineering Infinity)
Old Habits, Nalo Hopkinson, (Eclipse Four)
A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong, K. J. Parker, (Subterranean, Winter 2011. )
Valley of the Girls, Kelly Link, (Subterranean, Spring 2011)
Brave Little Toaster, Cory Doctorow, (TRSF)
The Dala Horse, Michael Swanwick, (Tor.com, 7/11)
The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece, M Rickert, (F&SF, 9-10/11)
The Paper Menagerie, Ken Liu, (F&SF, March/April 2011)
Steam Girl, Dylan Horrocks, (Steampunk!)
After the Apocalypse, Maureen F. McHugh, (After the Apocalypse)
Underbridge, Peter S. Beagle, (Naked City)
Relic, Jeffrey Ford, (The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities)
The Invasion of Venus, Stephen Baxter, (Engineering Infinity)
Woman Leaves Room, Robert Reed, (Lightspeed Magazine, 3/11)
Restoration, Robert Shearman, (Everyone’s Just So So Special)
The Onset of a Paranormal Romance, Bruce Sterling, (Flurb, Fall-Winter 2011)
Catastrophic Disruption of the Head, Margo Lanagan, (The Wilful Eye: Tales from the Tower Vol. 1)
The Last Ride of the Glory Girls, Libba Bray, (Steampunk!)
The Book of Phoenix (Excerpted from The Great Book) , Nnedi Okorafor, (Clarkesworld, 3/11)
Digging, Ian McDonald, (Life on Mars)
The Man Who Bridged the Mist, Kij Johnson, (Asimov’s, 10-11/11)
Goodnight Moons, Ellen Klages, (Life on Mars)

The book should be out in March. I’m yet to see a cover, but given the job they’ve done in the past, I can’t wait. It should be something special.

Note: If you have subscribed to The Coode Street Podcast via iTunes we’d like to encourage you to swap from our old link to the new official Podbean-hosted The Coode Street Podcast link. I’ve been cross-posting over the past few months, but plan to discontinue that and only post to the Podbean link in the next few weeks.

1. Introduction: Looking Under the Hat”, Jonathan Strahan
2. “Stray Magic”, Diana Peterfreund
3. “Payment Due”, Frances Hardinge
4. “A Handful of Ashes”, Garth Nix
5. “Little Gods”, Holly Black
6. “Barrio Girls”, Charles de Lint
7. “Felidis”, Tanith Lee
8. “Witch Work”, Neil Gaiman (poem)
9. “The Education of a Witch”, Ellen Klages
10. “The Threefold World”, Ellen Kushner
11. “The Witch in the Wood”, Delia Sherman
12. “Which Witch”, Patricia A. McKillip
13. “The Carved Forest”, Tim Pratt
14. “Burning Castles”, M. Rickert
15. “The Stone Witch”, Isobelle Carmody
16. “Andersen’s Witch”, Jane Yolen
17. “B Is for Bigfoot”, Jim Butcher
18. “Great-Grandmother in the Cellar”, Peter S. Beagle
19. “Crow and Caper, Caper and Crow”, Margo Lanagan

Under My Hat will be published by the completely marvelous Jim Thomas & co. at Random House Childrens’ in the US in October 2012 (just in time for Halloween!). I honestly feel this is probably the best book I’ve ever worked on, so I’m incredibly excited about this.

And routine, welcome and sometimes not, is settling in.  I find myself reading a chapter a night of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to Sophie (and occasionally Jessica), while pushing ineffectualy at the pile of work I’d hoped to get through this week. Focus has been in short supply, though I have managed to get copyedits out for one book and I am working slowly on another. The problem is I need to finish that book ASAP and get proposals out into the world. Why? Well, even allowing for the disjointed nature of World Fantasy this year, I feel weirdly optimistic about things. I think there are books to be made and sold, if I can just tweak things a little.

I have been reading and watching. I’ve gotten through the opening episodes of both “Once Upon a Time” and “Grimm”, and like them about equally, which is to say a bit, but not a lot. I’ve also been half-reading things. With 2012 well under way, I’ve now finished reading an anthology and an issue of a magazine, which does make it feel real.  Last Short Story is firing up in the background, and I have other work to do! Recommended reading. Gah. Not going to think about that today.

This is becoming very rambly, but before I sign off I do have a recommendation. I picked up a copy of Patrick Ness’s widely-recommended and award-nominated A Monster Walks today. Taken by its brevity, I read it between lunchtime and now and can only say this it powerful, honest and beautiful, and that I recommend it without hesitation.

Busy days!

Note: If you have subscribed to The Coode Street Podcast via iTunes we’d like to encourage you to swap from our old link to the new official Podbean-hosted The Coode Street Podcast link. I’ve been cross-posting over the past few months, but plan to discontinue that and only post to the Podbean link in the next few weeks.

… and some of us got wet.

Note: Apologies for taking so long to get this cross posted here.

Note: As mentioned at the end of the podcast, this will be the last newly recorded episode until mid-November. The next three episodes will be interviews with Alastair Reynolds, Ian McDonald, and Kim Stanley Robinson recorded in Reno at WorldCon.

And as the rain comes down I have to do all sorts of bits and pieces.  Work on the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is progressing well. The first twenty-four writers have been approached about their stories, and a remaining seven or so should be, either later today or tomorrow. I have had to omit Peter Straub’s wonderful “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine”, from Conjunctions, which I’d hoped to include but wasn’t available for contractual reasons. You should read it, if you can. That means I should meet my goal of having chosen the stories, contacted everyone, and finalised the contents as much as possible before leaving for World Fantasy.  I’ll be able to manage a lot of the process while away, and then can assemble the manuscript on my return home in early November. Progress!

We’re also off to see Steely Dan tonight. They’re touring with Steve Winwood and, while the timing is awful, I’m looking forward to it.  The rest of the day is getting ready for that, trip prep and working! Busy. Or at least my mind is.

It does touch on a practical seasonal issue confronting us, though. Over the past three weeks we’ve submerged ourselves in the topic of the best of the year process. It was interesting, if occasionally troubling, and it’s fairly well covered. We need something else. And yet, it’s October. Mid-October. This is the time when the “end of the year” process begins for us. I’m busily finalizing the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and I just had the first contact from my editor at Locus about the recommended reading list. The next three months will be about nothing BUT the best of the year. I’m not sure how we’re going to stop that leaking through into the podcast. We shall see, though.

For me, I get the impression that there is buzz around someone or something when a number of unconnected positive mentions of a book come to my attention. This could be a good review on a website, a positive tweet or two, some anticipatory comments on a podcast.  It’s when the profile of something rises about the background noise or chatter that’s happening in media, social or otherwise, to the point where I become aware of it, and become aware of it in a positive sense.

An example of this is Christopher Priest’s The Islanders. Now, I know I said on the podcast that Priest generally doesn’t get much buzz, but this book is getting some. I’m pretty sure I discussed it with Paul Cornell and Al Reynolds at Worldcon. I noticed Ian McDonald tweet about it yesterday. Strange Horizons reviewed it and Adam Roberts commented (having previously reviewed it).  People are talking about it and it’s getting terrific reviews.

That’s buzz.  I don’t know if it’s the kind of buzz that adds up to sales, but it’s there.  I suspect it’s the kind of thing that drives marketing departments to distraction, primarily because it’s organic and difficult to control.

Oh, and a quick personal PS: I continue to struggle with a virus that has been kicking my ass since last week. I’m upright, but only just, so comms are slower than usual.

Some useful links following on from the podcast: Subterranean are publishing a best of Michael Bishop, and NESFA publish the collected ‘People’ stories by Zenna Henderson.

The first episode, recorded in a quietish courtyard of Nedland’s Elxir Coffee a month or two ago, is now online. We discuss ebooks, Borders and other publishing stuff. We should be recording a new episode shortly, but hope you enjoy this one!

The long trip to Reno for Renovation was well worth it, though mostly for the things that went on around the convention than for the convention itself. I got to spend some time in San Francisco with Ellen Klages, had a fantastic BBQ/ party up at Locus HQ, a fun road trip with Gary, Madeleine and Ellen to Reno, some great meals with friends, and all sorts of chats and discussions.

My hazy recollections of Reno are flashing lights, loud machines, people smoking indoors, a long boozy conversation with Ian McDonald in the dealer’s room bar (the one Reno innovation we could do with continuing); good conversations with Gary; recording podcasts with Ian McDonald, Al Reynolds, Stan Robinson, and Jo Walton; hanging out with local Perth-ite Andrew Bailey; lots of talking;  time with Bob and Karen;  a bet with Paul Cornell;  Lou winning the Hugo; hurriedly packing the Locus van to head back to Oakland; and the road trip back to Locus with Liza, Fran (who worked the Locus table incredibly) and Chloe.

I had a very pleasant day at Locus HQ chatting with Liza and the gang, where I actually packed one of the lamps I’d inherited from Charles to carry home (which I did successfully – I was very concerned about breaking it), before dinner with Amelia and then on to the merry-go-round that is modern plane travel to head home again.

It was, all in all, a good trip. I think it was worth it, though I possibly had an epiphany about WorldCon.  As much as I enjoyed the trip, I don’t think I actually enjoy WorldCon itself that much anymore.  The only events I attended across five days were panels I was on and the Hugos. So, although this is far from written in stone, I’m almost definitely going to skip ChiconV  (which is looking problematic from a distance) and LoneStarCon. Instead, I’ll be focussing on attending the Toronto and Brighton World Fantasy Conventions, which I do love.  I’ll likely be in London for WorldCon in 2014, but that’s more to do with the location than anything else.

So,  what now? I have to get the year’s best done by late October when the family and I fly BACK to the US again (whimper) for family events and World Fantasy. It should be a great time, though I’m a bit intimidated at the thought of more air travel.

And it was. We drove over to Oakland and spent Monday evening chatting and enjoying the company of old friends before Gary, Madeleine, Ellen and I headed back to SF, where conversation continued late into the night. Tuesday we were all up and packed early and headed out for breakfast at a small local place. Then we drove to Reno. The weather got perceptibly hotter as we approached Reno, but the conversation was fun and a good road trip was had by all. we got into town at about 6pm, registered, and then found a quietish bar in the enormous venue where we talked late into the night.

I expect to be tweeting while traveling, and possbily blogging.  There’s also some chance we’ll podcast, though don’t be surprised if there’s nothing next weekend.  Consider it a possible hiatus.  Anyhow, till the other side, g’bye!

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

As I write the big clock at RenovationSF says it’s five days and five hours till WorldCon.  What’s focussing my attention much more is that it’s about sixteen hours until I board a flight for Sydney. Tomorrow night I’ll dine with friends in Sydney, then on Sunday will fly on to San Francisco.  I’ll be tired and jetlagged, but  I’ll also be staying with a dear friend and preparing to see many more in the coming days.  It should be a wonderful week and a half.

Have I been preparing? Well….yes.  I have packed (looks over shoulder at suitcase on floor of office). I have also got the day job to at least the point where I can be away for a short while, most projects are fine, and the reading is only a dreadful tsunami now.  I have new business cards for Gary and I for the podcast, and I’ve also posted the last podcast before WorldCon.  All is in hand (I think).

I have also read Snuff, the new novel by Terry Pratchett. It’s a Sam Vimes novel where Vimes, Sibyll, Young Sam and Willikins retire to Sibyll’s country home for a holiday. It goes as well as Vimes in the countryside ever does and, even allowing for a slightly bumpy start, I loved it a lot. One of my favourite books of the year.  I hope to finish reading two other novels between now and WorldCon, but who knows? Till then!

For the most part, all of that sort of preparation is well in hand. I fly out of here at about 10.00am on Saturday, and all is looking good for that. I do need to do a little panel preparation, but I have some time for that.  Oh, my schedule, should you be interested, is:

Renovation – Programming

Makes for a busy Friday, and I am not going to be able to make the Locus party, which I’m very disappointed about, but all of those should be fun. For those interested, I’m doing a signing or a Kaffeeklatch but will be round the Locus table in the Dealer’s Room a bit (if anyone’s interested, let me know in comments and I’ll set a time when I’ll definitely be there).  Other than that, it’s all pretty much set, unless you’re free for dinner Friday.

Thanks to Jen (thanks!), I’m reading Pratchett’s Snuff and keeping focussed. I’m late getting a new project out the gate this week, but I hope I can do that. Other than that, onwarrds.  I will try to post more meaningfully every day on the way to Reno and hopefully from there too.

We’re going out for dinner on Friday, but Saturday will be all about getting clothes and papers sorted. I’ll start the physical packing come Monday or Tuesday. It’s my preference to leave a suitcase on the floor of my office and just toss things in there as they occur to me. This trip is going to be a real adventure. I need some downtime to de-stress, so I hope it will provide that, and it means seeing some dear friends in Sydney, San Francisco and Reno. Gary and I are going to podcast like maniacs, and I’m hoping we’ll have new t-shirts ready for that.

There’s a lot of other stuff. I’m reading a new novel I can’t really name, but am enjoying a great deal, and just got another in the email last night. Some cool stuff! More posting soon.

What have I been up to lately, you ask? Well, apart from suffering from acute day job madness and a series of small maladies, mostly reading and working. All of the work on Under My Hat is pretty much done, and I’m now turning my attention to Edge of Infinity. I am also trying to work out what’s happening with two of my other projects, both of which I’m unsure about. I am working to delivering the next year’s best, which is contracted for, on schedule, but I need to determine what’s happening with it before I progress with it too much further. Same with Eclipse Five.  In related news, I quietly cancelled Cyberpunk. My thanks for everyone’s feedback/input, but in the end I couldn’t quite make it fly.

Oh, I should add a thank you to the World Fantasy Awards judges. I’m delighted Swords and Dark Magic is nominated, and hope to be in San Diego for the convention.  As I write the likelihood of that is good, though it is by no means certain. We’re trying to plan a quite expensive family trip to visit relatives in New York. If that happens, then I shall be at WFC. If not, I’ll be looking to re-sell a membership, probably not long after returning from Reno.  I think that’s unlikely though.

This week encyclopedist, writer, editor, and critic John Clute joined Gary and I to discuss the coming September launch of the third edition of the SFE, the history of the project, and the exciting SF Gateway project which is being launched by Gollancz at around the same time.

We’d like to thank John for joining us and, as always, hope you enjoy the podcast!

Sat 13 Aug: Fly to Sydney and overnight
Sun 14 Aug: Fly to San Francisco
Tues 16 Aug: Drive to Reno
Sun 21 Aug: Drive to San Francisco
Mon 22 Aug: Fly to Perth via LA and Brisbane arriving home on 24 August.

It must be official because the impressively well organised people from Reno have already sent me a draft programme so I will be on panels and around publicly, as well as looking to meet up with old friends and new during my stopover. Oh, and this trip shouldn’t impact on my attending World Fantasy.

The second, and still slightly secret piece of information is that I’ve agreed to edit a new science fiction anthology. The idea is that it will feature new hard SF/action adventure stories set in a settled, industrialised, pre-starflight solar system. There are still details to be confirmed, but it’s due at the publisher next July and should be out before Christmas, I think. Lots still to be confirmed, but I’ll let you know more as I can.

There has also been a lot of personal stuff which I don’t think I’ll go into in too much detail here. Suffice it say we had happy news, with my eldest daughter celebrating her birthday, and less happy news with her needing to go through some medication changes as a result of recent events. I think she’ll be fine, but it keeps life interesting.

Am I busy? I think so. Need to take care of family things while preparing the next year’s best for publication and getting the dreaded Cyberpunk ready to deliver pre-WorldCon.

This has been an odd weekend for me.  Gary’s been in Florida and we’ve not recorded a podcast for the first time in more than a year. It’s become part of the rhythm of my weekends, and everything seems a bit different without it. I’d meant to use the time getting caught up on work, but I haven’t really. I tinkered with this and that and spent time with the family.

Alisa dropped the pretty Aurealis Award round (and it is pretty), we took my mother out for her birthday, and we spent some time driving in the hills. Other than that, not so much. So, there’s still an ocean to do (won’t bore you with the details). I do have to find the name for the secret project which I’m tinkering with at the moment. Just as soon as an agreement is reached and there are details I’ll make it non-secret, but there’s still a chance it could become a non-project so I shall wait.

I did read my favorite anthology of the year this week, though. In October Candlewick will publish Gavin Grant and Kelly Link’s Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (you can see the ToC here).  It features fourteen pieces (12 stories/2 comics) by some terrific writers. I’m still going back and forth over my favorites but I adored Libba Bray’s “The Last Ride of the Glory Girls”, a Western about an all-girl gang of temporally-enhanced trainrobbers, Dylan Horrock’s novelette “Steamgirl” about (sort of) a steampunk girl hero on Mars, and M.T Anderson’s “The Oracle Engine”. Those three alone are strong enough to make this a wonderful anthology, but new stories from Kelly Link, Holly Black and others really do make it a book I’d recommend.  The only thing I found, when I reluctantly reached the end, was that I don’t know if I understand steampunk any better than I had at the start. I’m hoping someone like Jeff VanderMeer (who edited Steampunk and The Steampunk Bible) who has a really strong grasp of the subject might review it. In the meantime, there’s a lot here to read and edit and be distracted by so back to that,

The usual rules apply: bold those that you’ve read and italicize those that you own but haven’t read.

1. The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories by Joan Aiken
2. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
3. The Kite of Stars and Other Stories by Dean Francis Alfar
4. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
5. Black Projects, White Knights by Kage Baker
6. The Best of J. G. Ballard by J.G. Ballard
7. Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories by Neal Barrett, Jr.
8. The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
9. Occultation by Laird Barron
10. Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle
11. The Collected Stories of Greg Bear by Greg Bear
12. The Chains That You Refuse by Elizabeth Bear
13. The Girl With The Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
14. Lord Stink & Other Stories by Judith Berman
15. Trysts: A Triskaidecollection of Queer and Weird Stories by Steve Berman
16. A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti
17. Blooded on Arachne by Michael Bishop
18. One Winter in Eden by Michael Bishop
19. The Poison Eaters & Other Stories by Holly Black
20. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges
21. From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes
22. Streetcar Dreams by Richard Bowes
23. The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury
24. Graveyard People: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories by Gary Braunbeck
25. Home before Dark: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories by Gary Braunbeck
26. Particle Theory by Edward Bryant
27. Tides from the New Worlds by Tobias S. Buckell
28. Bloodchild and Other Stories By Octavia E. Butler
29. Dirty Work: Stories by Pat Cadigan
30. The Night We Buried Road Dog by Jack Cady
31. The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll
32. Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter
33. Fireworks: Nine Stories in Various Disguises by Angela Carter
34. The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories by Angela Carter
35.  Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
36. The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke by Arthur C. Clarke
37. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke
38. Novelties & Souvenirs, Collected Short Fiction by John Crowley
39. The Avram Davidson Treasury by Avram Davidson
40. The Enquiries of Dr. Eszterhazy by Avram Davidson
41. Driftglass: Ten Tales of Speculative Fiction by Samuel R. Delany
42. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick
43. Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois by Gardner Dozois
44. Beluthahatchie by Andy Duncan
45. What Will Come After by Scott Edelman
46. Axiomatic by Greg Egan
47. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
48. The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison
49. Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
50. The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller by Carol Emshwiller
51. Dangerous Space by Kelley Eskridge
52. Fugue State by Brian Evenson
53. Harsh Oases by Paul Di Filippo
54. The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories by Jeffrey Ford
55. The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford
56. The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford
57. Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice by Eugie Foster
58. Artificial Things by Karen Joy Fowler
59. What I Didn’t See and Other Stories by Karen Joy Fowler
60. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
61. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
62. Burning Chrome by William Gibson
63. In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss
64. Take No Prisoners by John Grant
65. A Separate War and Other Stories by Joe Haldeman
66. Last Summer at Mars Hill by Elizabeth Hand
67. Saffron & Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand
68. Things That Never Happen by M. John Harrison
69. The Past Through Tomorrow by Robert Heinlein
70. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
71. Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson
72. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard
73. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
74. Unexpected Magics: Collected Stories by Diana Wynne Jones
75. Minor Arcana by Diana Wynne Jones
76. Grazing the Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones
77. The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories by James Patrick Kelly
78. The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories by John Kessel
79. Night Shift by Stephen King
80. Different Seasons by Stephen King
81. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
82. Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages
83. Scenting the Dark and Other Stories by Mary Robinette Kowal
84. Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories by Nancy Kress
85. Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty
86. Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere
87. Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
88. Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan
89. Yellowcake by Margo Lanagan
90. Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan
91. The Best of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale
92. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin
93. The Compass Rose by Ursula K. Le Guin
94. The Birthday of the World and Other Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin
95. Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer by Tanith Lee
96. The First Book of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
97. The Second Book of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
98. The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti
99. Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
100. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
101. Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors by Livia Llewellyn
102. H. P. Lovecraft: Tales by H.P. Lovecraft
103. Breathmoss and other Exhalations by Ian R. MacLeod
104. You Might Sleep by Nick Mamatas
105. Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective by George R. R. Martin
106. Invisible Country by Paul McAuley
107. Harrowing the Dragon by Patricia McKillip
108. The Bone Key by Sarah Monette
109. The Best of Michael Moorcock by Michael Moorcock
110. Black God’s Kiss by C.L. Moore
111. The Cat’s Pajamas and Other Stories by James Morrow
112. Dreams of the Compass Rose by Vera Nazarian
113. Unforgivable Stories by Kim Newman
114. The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman
115. The Original Dr. Shade and Other Stories by Kim Newman
116. Monstrous Affections by David Nickle
117. The Best of Larry Niven by Larry Niven
118. I Am No One You Know: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
119. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
120. Zoo by Otsuichi
121. Lesser Demons by Norman Partridge
122. Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales by Norman Partridge
123. Night Moves and Other Stories by Tim Powers
124. Little Gods by Tim Pratt
125. Map of Dreams by M. Rickert
126. Holiday by M. Rickert
127. The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson by Kim Stanley Robinson
128. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum
129. Unacceptable Behaviour by Penelope Rowe
130. The Adventures of Alyx by Joanna Russ
131. Long Walks, Last Flights, and Other Journeys by Ken Scholes
132. Filter House by Nisi Shawl
133. Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Rob Shearman
134. The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard
135. Trujillo and Other Stories by Lucius Shepard
136. Phases of the Moon: Stories from Six Decades by Robert Silverberg
137. Are You There and Other Stories by Jack Skillingstead
138. The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales by Angela Slatter
139. Crystal Express by Bruce Sterling
140. Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling
141. Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub
142. Magic Terror: 7 Tales by Peter Straub
143. Absolute Uncertainty by Lucy Sussex
144. The Best of Michael Swanwick by Michael Swanwick
145. Gravity’s Angels: 13 Stories by Michael Swanwick
146. Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales & by Anna Tambour
147. The Ice Downstream by Melanie Tem
148. The Far Side of the Lake by Steve Rasnic Tem
149. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr.
150. Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home by James Tiptree, Jr.
151. In the Mean Time by Paul Tremblay
152. My Pathology by Lisa Tuttle
153. Ventriloquism by Catherynne M. Valente
154. The Jack Vance Treasury by Jack Vance
155. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer
156. The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer
157. Strange Things in Close-up; the Nearly Complete Howard Waldrop
158. Dead Sea Fruit by Kaaron Warren
159. Everland and Other Stories by Paul Witcover
160. The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories by Gene Wolfe
161. The Very Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe
162. Impossible Things by Connie Willis
163. Fire Watch by Connie Willis
164. The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories by Roger Zelazny
165. Impossible Stories by Zoran Zivkovic
166. The Writer, The Book, The Reader by Zoran Zivkovic

In the immediate aftermath Gary and I asked Locus editor-in-chief Liza Groen Trombi to join us in the pod to discuss the Nebulas, the winners, what happened to the Grand Master award, and other fun stuff. We hope you enjoy it, as always!

I should also report that this was one of two podcasts we recorded this weekend. In the other one, likely published next weekend, we chatted with the wonderful Karen Lord about all sorts of interesting stuff. See you then!

We had a small group of friends over for champagne and gossip while we watched and waited for “our” category (Best Anthology) to roll around. Last year was a great one here in Western Australia and Alisa (for her excellent Sprawl), Marianne and I (for Wings of Fire) , and just me solo (for Godlike Machines) were all up for Best Anthology.  which I think in itself was one of the best things about the awards.  As it turned out Marianne and I were delighted to hear that Wings of Fire had been given the award. We worked hard on the book, and it was especially pleasing to win an award with Marianne.

Other friends won during the evening – Tansy, Helen, Margo, and Kirstyn among many. Congratulations to them all! More than one person pointed out how similar the results were to the recent Ditmar Awards, and how good it was to see a convergence of popular and critical opinion looking back at last year’s Australian SF/F scene.

And, since I’ve not seen it online elswhere, the full list of winners:

Kris Hembury Encouragement Award: Jodie Cleghorn
Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award: Helen Merrick
Best Science Fiction Novel: Transformation Space, Marianne de Pierres
Best Science Fiction Short Story: The Heart of a Mouse, K.J. Bishop
Best Fantasy Novel: Power and Majesty, Tansy Rayner Roberts
Best Fantasy Short Story: The February Dragon, LL Hannett & Angela Slatter (joint winners) Yowie, Thoraiya Dyer
Best Horror Novel: Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott
Best Horror Short Story: The Fear, Richard Harland
Best Anthology: Wings of Fire, Edited by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon
Best Collection: The Girl With No Hands, Angela Slatter
Best Illustrated Book / Graphic Novel: Changing Ways: Book 1, Justin Randall
Best Young Adult Novel: Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey
Best Young Adult Short Story: A Thousand Flowers, Margo Lanagan
Best Children’s Fiction(told primarily through pictures): The Boy and the Toy, Sonya Hartnett (writer) & Lucia Masciullo (illustrator)
Best Children’s Fiction (told primarily through words): The Keepers, Lian Tanner

PS: Yes, we know it’s ridiculously long! Sorry. We’ll do better next time. Probably. No. Really. Well, possibly.

The nice thing is that the weather in Perth is finally turning towards a convincing facsimile of autumn – cool mornings and cooler nights – which means I’m feeling more and more like reading. I’m beginning to get a little momentum on reading shorts and even reading a novel or two. While I’m making my way through the online stories at the moment, I’m also reading and enjoying James A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes. It’s very much old school space opera, but it hits the spot right now.

There are a lot of things sitting in the background – proposals to write, taxes to do, oceans of home maintenance, and travel to plan (!) – but for this thirty minutes a little blogging and some Locus work is enough.

I have to say I’m delighted to get to continue working with Jason, Jeremy, Ross and the team at Night Shade. They’ve been fantastic collaborators on this project since we started work on the first volume back in mid-2006, and I look forward to continuing the series for many years to come.

When we realised the anniversary was coming up we planned to do all sorts of things, but as is pretty much our trademark, we haven’t quite gotten to it. We still might. But in the interim, should you be motivated please feel free to leave any questions or subjects you might like us to discuss, or just birthday wishes, in the comments thread to this post.

And, importantly, thank you to all of you who have listened, commented, or guested on the podcast.  We’re looking forward Coode St Year 2.0 already.

It started a few weeks ago when:

• they spoke to Kij Johnson about her writing;
• then they reviewed the book; and
• finally they interviewed me!

Coming up next time will be a discussion with Jim Kelly and Mike Swanwick about their stories from the book.

I’m really grateful to Gregory and Brad for doing this, even if I’ve been too much of a coward to listen to the review :)