A good week for the Locus Awards…
It’s been a good week for the Locus Awards. The latest winners were just announced, and the anthology is now on sale on both sides of the Pacific. I even went out to a local bookstore on Saturday which had an enormous 60-copy face forward display with posters of the book, which was a buzz. On top of that, the Australian publisher has advised that the book is out-of-stock at the warehouse. This isn’t that unusual, as copies can be returned, but it’s a good sign for how the book is doing.

It is, of course, entirely untrue…
…that the only reason I’m going to the Boston WorldCon is to make sure I get a copy of this. I’m sure there must be some other way to get it, but who wants to take a chance, right?

You may need this…
Any number of good things show up regularly in my post office box and email box every week, and one of the coolest lately is a copy of Eileen Gunn’s forthcoming collection, Stable Strategies and Others, which contains a dozen stories (two original to the book) and some fine introductory stuff by William Gibson, Howard Waldrop and others. It’s from the fine folk at Tachyon, who seem to be getting better and better with each passing year, and is well worth chasing down.

Just a quick additional note. Has anyone else noted that some of the small presses are doing some particuarly terrific covers of late? I just saw the cover to Liz Williams new collection from Night Shade, which is just lovely. I also really liked Prime’s work on the cover for Robert Freeman Wexler’s book (see link in the post below), and thought that Small Beer did a great job on Sean Stewart’s Perfect Circle.

Two books with trains…
My reading, as you, oh faithful reader, already know, has been all over the place of late. As you can see from the sidebar on this page, I’m currently reading Circus of the Grand Design and Iron Council, both of which feature trains (to greater or lesser extents). The opening of the Wexler is very smooth, and reminds me a lot of “In Springdale Town”, which you all have already read. Good stuff.