I’m reading, reading, reading at the moment. Because of some terrible psychological scarring that even I can’t quite explain, I can’t seem to bring myself to pick up a magazine, a collection, or an anthology and read it cover-to-cover, so I dip in here, try something there, taste just a little bit of this or that. This morning I sampled Ellen Datlow’s guest-edited issue of Subterranean Magazine and John Klima’s Logorrhea, and would happily recommend both to you.

The story that I read in Subterranean is a dark, horrible little piece by Terry Bisson called “Pirates of the Somali Coast”. It’s told as a series of emails written by a young boy on a cruise ship to his mother and best friend, and circles around the idea of being divorced from the reality around you. I’m not sure if it’s good – the whole epistolary thing usually troubles me – but it’s disturbing and I think will stay with me all through the year. I then read Tim Pratt’s “From Around Here” in Logorrhea. It tells of a traveller who visits an Oakland neighbourhood and tries to unravel the reason for the dark shadow that hangs over the area. There’s a lot to like in this story: Pratt captures the neighbourhood perfectly, gets the characters just right, and all in all delivers what is probably his most successful story to date. It may be because I lived in Oakland, which made the story resonate even more for me, but I liked “From Around Here” even more than his ‘video store of dreams’ tale, “Impossible Dreams“, from Asimov’s last year which I also really enjoyed. It’s a very strong tale, and is definitely on the shortlist for my year’s best this year.

My Locus colleague Tim Pratt has some terrific news over on this journal. The good folks at Bantam have committed to the third and fourth books in his new ‘Marla Mason’ urban fantasy series. This means we’ll see Blood Engines in October 2007,  Poison Sleep in April 2008, Dead Reign in October 2008, and Grift Sense in April 2009. This is colossal news for all sorts of reasons. First, Tim is a lovely guy and a good writer, who deserves success. Second, it means Bantam are really committing to these books, so they should be successful. And, finally, Tim and his partner Heather are part of the Locus baby boom. Liza is going to have a little girl in June, and Tim and Heather should have their baby in time for World Fantasy, which is awesome! I’ll get to meet both of these newest Locus-folk when over in the US later this year. All I need to do now, is to work out what the perfect little-person gift is to bring from Australia.

Michiko Kakutani reviews Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union in The New York Times today. I honestly have little time or interest in the discussion of how genre fiction is or isn’t viewed in the mainstream, or even in the divide between genre and mainstream, but I was struck by how the one thing that Kakutani repeatedly praised is Chabon’s world-building skills. The novel, which I’m reading at the moment, is an alternate history, and a good one. The only possible thing that might set it apart from genre alternate histories (and this is a big maybe) is that the alternate history element of the story is pretty much used only as setting, while the story focusses on other matters. That is to say, the alternate history isn’t the point of the story. At least, not so far. Even allowing for that, it’s hard to see how anything else could win the Sidewise Award. Actually, here’s a question: given that the most successful science fiction novel of 2007 was written by Cormac McCarthy, do we in the genre have the courage to recognise non-genre writers achievements in these areas? Or, do we just not like to see the mainstream playing in our sandpit?

My friend Kelly sold a book to my friend Sharyn, and it will include a story I bought. How awesome is that!