John Scalzi was stuck at home with nothing much else to do, so he ranked the Top 50 Personal Blogs in Science Fiction. Coode Street, to my great surprise, came in at #36, which is cool, complimentary, and also fiendishly clever of Scalzi (expect to see Whatever move up as the other 49 blogs point to him ). Still, if we’re at #36, I guess there’ll have to be content again. Gah.

Well, I’ve received about four hundred items of comment spam in the past 24 hours. I’ve not been able to get a decent spam filter working and I think, until I do, I’m going to turn off commenting. Hopefully this won’t be for long. If you have a comment you’d like to make, please feel free to email me, and I’ll add it.

Cory Doctorow is writing a bimonthly column in Locus about being a writer in the 21st Century.

The first instalment, “Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet” (which appears in the July issue of Locus), is now online at Locus: Online.

You can also check out more Cory stuff at boingboing.

In October this year Allen & Unwin will publish Margo Lanagan’s Red Spikes, her third short story collection, and the follow up to her World Fantasy Award winning collection, Black Juice. Because of the reception that Margo got for both Black Juice and “Singing My Sister Down” from critics and awards juries, I think a lot of readers wondered if that book lived up to the hype. Mostly I think people found that it did. The other thing that people have wondered is, can she do it again?

Well, it’s too early to say for sure, but the nice folks at Allen & Unwin here in Australia recently produced an intriguing little book – a sampler with three stories apiece from White Time, Black Juice and Red Spikes – that suggests the answer may be yes. The three stories from Red Spikes – “A Good Heart”, “Daughter of the Clay” and “Under Hell, Over Heaven” – are all strong stories, with “A Good Heart” possibly the stand out. I also read her story “A Pig’s Whisper” in the new Agog!, which made me shudder. Hmm. Can’t wait to see the other seven stories from the new book. She’s an amazing writer.