There are all sorts of interesting conversations happening all over the web, and unless you know where to look it’s easy to miss them.

I just stumbled across Niall Harrison’s discussion of the early list of the year’s best short fiction that I posted here a while ago (it’s over at LiveJournal, but you can only post if you’re a LiveJournal subscriber). It’s interesting to see what he and others think of my list (for example, Niall didn’t like John Kessel’s “The Baum Plan for Financial Independence”, though I still do), and the other comments they have. The one thing I’d respond to is that if readers are interested in Margo Lanagan’s story collection Black Juice it’s due to be published in the US in March by HarperCollins. For my money, it’s pretty much the best collection of 2004 and I expect to see stories from in it most of the year’s bests. Hopefully the World Fantasy Award judges will get to see and consider it next year.