Over at Ecstatic Days, JeffV mentions that he’s just re-read Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth, and is delighted to find that it holds up today. I’ve been working with Vance material over the past eighteen months, and I’m really happy to hear that other readers are finding it as fresh and vital as I am.  A discussion that’s been going round the backrooms of the Locus offices for the past year is just how influential both Vance and Philip Jose Farmer have proven to be.  At one point, time looked to have passed them both by, but more and more it’s becoming clear they’ve had an enormous impact on the field.  I hope someone reprints The Best of Philip Jose Farmer in a trade edition soon.

Amazon have released their new e-book reader, the Kindle, this week. It’s of absolutely no relevance here in Australia because it’s not offered for sale here, we don’t have our own Amazon store, and we can’t use the wireless network it’s based on.  That said, a thought or two.  It seems unreasonable to say that something is or isn’t going to be successful when it’s only just been released, but a couple things did occur to me. First, it’s the coolest name for a new device since Microsoft released the Zune.  Second, neat use of ’70s retro styling.  Way to go. And, third: who wants another dedicated device for reading?  Isn’t it obvious that the category killer here will be a nice, cool looking object that is a phone, a music player, a video player, a websurfing thing and an ebook reader? It’s not that we can’t carry the Kindle. It’s that we can’t carry it with our cell phone, our iPod, our camera, our Blackberry and whatever else we may or may not have.  One object to rule them all. That’s what we need.