sometimes i think my real superpower is moping. need to find new antho. title. am no good with antho titles. will mope instead. transmission resumes shortly. there may be more moping. don’t say you weren’t warned.

Fairly mediocre review of Science Fiction: Best of 2004 over at BestSF.net. Mark Watson makes the comment that:

“My feeling with this volume, as in previous years, is that the selections seem somewhat arbitrary, as if the rush to get the volume out so early (the initial publication date of February).

This Haber/Strahan volume has few stories than the Hartwell/Cramer volume, and unless you are looking for the shortest possible Year’s Best read, I would put the latter volume ahead of the one in hand, as being the better buy of the two pocket sized collections this year.”

There’s no doubt that the early publication date has a significant impact on the two ibooks year’s bests. Still, you do the job you can. We’re working on the next pair at the moment, and hopefully they’ll be somewhat better. We’ll see.

Ariel, over at The Alien Online, reports that Steve Jones is looking for horror stories for his the Best New Horror 17. No Australians, of course, but drop him a line (130 Park View, Wembley, Middx HA9 6JU, England) if you have something he might be interested in.

Just finished reading the interview with Kelly that I linked to below. You’ll see, when you read it, that she says that Small Beer are “going to reissue Howard Waldrop’s wonderful sf collection HOWARD WHO?” The gates to heaven are now officially open. Will they get a new cover? Will anyone ever do the compleat Waldrop. sigh. Oh, and Kelly, if you read this, if you need a copy of the book to scan, I have a spare (but don’t tell anyone).

* Oops. I should make it clear that Gavin was, of course, already going to get in for obvious reasons.

It took Kelly 24 hours to write “The Faery Handbag”. She said so. I will ply her with chocolate, and never give up. I may even learn how to talk to girls in bars…