Sometimes your interests push up against the edges of what the world is willing to permit. In this case, my interest in a new James Blaylock novel. Over on the Blaylock forum they mention that he has finished a young adult sequel to The Digging Leviathan, and enjoyed writing it so much he is working on another. Both books are unsold. By rough count it’s been about four hundred years since the last Blaylock novel was published. Enough already! Cry mercy, give us surcease. Won’t someone publish it?

It is Christmas (well, almost) – something Elizabeth Hand seems to know pretty well. She has just written an interesting piece for the Washington Post. More importantly, and even more interestingly, a couple years back she wrote one of the best Christmas stories I’ve read in a long time. It should be a book. Oh, and as Matt Cheney points out, China Mieville has written one too.

There is a conversation going on out in the blogosphere started by Matt Cheney about the most neglected book of the year, which has been picked up here and there. It’s an interesting question, especially amongst those of us who are interested in making sure that great books get read.

I was tempted to nominate Leslie What’s debut novel Olympic Games, which is enormous fun and got only limited attention, as being amongst the year’s most overlooked books, or perhaps Jennifer Stevenson’s powerful debut, trash sex magic. However, at the end of the day there was really only one choice: Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice. Published in a small-ish print run in Australia as a young adult book, it’s a collection of powerful, tough minded, beautifully written, and generally quite extraordinary stories. For my money, it’s the best collection of 2004, and while it has won a mainstream literary award in Victoria, it really hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Now, it will be getting more play, hopefully, in the US when the Eos edition comes out, and when stories start to pop up in year’s bests, but even then, this is a major book with a minor profile that you need to read.

Our faithful correspondent over at The VanderWorld Times admits to having surrendered to the inevitable. Overwhelmed by the need to both maintain a household and indulge in the creation of claustrophobic secondary worlds peopled with insane sub-humans’ he has had to abandon his plans to blog about the majority of his reading. In doing so, he mentions his sympathy ‘for any poor bastard who tries to take the length and breadth of the short fiction published in the field over the past year…’ Ahhh, yes (sob). I am currently engaged in preparing a rough draft of a short fiction recommended reading list for what Tim refers to as a certain magazine which extends to over 300 stories. It needs to be reduced by two thirds, and it is a large task. Interesting, though.

I used to post stuff about Australian SF over at the old Coode Street news site, which I reluctantly had to stop working on because of time and other commitments. However, information does still trickle in.

First, Terry Dowling has a fine new story, “Clownette”, over at Ellen Datlow’s SciFiction. Go check it out. Second, the 2004 Aurealis Awards nominees were announced recently. I’ve posted a single list of them here.