Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor Books was kind enough to send me an advanced reader’s copy of John Scalzi’s new novel, The Last Colony. And then, when the first copy hadn’t shown up quickly enough, he sent me another. Both copies arrived safely, and I’ve duly read and enjoyed the book, however something’s been bothering me. The kindness of publishers isn’t something to be trifled with, and it’s not really fair on the world that I should end up with such bounty, so I’ve been thinking about what to do with the second The Last Colony ARC. And here it is. I’m going to run my first ever competition. The competition is this:

Scalzi Last Colony ARC competition

Create your own The Last Colony promotional image, post it on your blog, journal or website, and then let me know in the comments field to this post. If you don’t have a blog, journal, or website, email it to me, and I’ll add it here. The most interesting, entertaining or amusing will win the ARC, which will be posted by yours truly to your door. The competition is open from now until 21 March. The winner will be announcedhere on 22 March, and the ARC will be in the winner’s hands by the end of the month.

Just heard that Michael Swanwick has sold his new novel, The Dragons of Babel, to David Hartwell at Tor for a Fall 2008 publication. I’ve read all of the stories – Lord Weary’s Empire” and others – and they’re terrific. Can’t wait to see the final novel!!

When the good folk at SciFi.com decided to discontinue Ellen Datlow’s extraordinary SciFiction, the field lost it’s best and most important source of top quality new fiction online. There have been a few attempts to launch something to fill that gap, most notably Jim Baen’s Universe, but nothing has really filled the void left by SciFiction. Speaking as someone who reads fairly widely in the field, and who focusses on short fiction these days, you can almost see the whole left by SciFiction, the work simply not being published.

Into that void steps Bill Schafer’s Subterranean Magazine. After publishing a handful of print issues, Shafer is making the magazine a strictly online venture, and promises a lot of interesting top-notch material. If the Winter 2007 issue – with new work by Lucius Shepard, John Scalzi, and Poppy Brite – is anything to go by, then this is going to be something special. It shows every likelihood of becoming a must-see stop on the web, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it getting a lot of attention in coming months.

I’m pretty darn happy right at the moment. Just got news that Publishers Weekly have given The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 1 a starred review (see below). Woot! That’s the third straight PW star for my year’s bests, which makes me feel pretty darn good. I believe it ships next week, which is pretty exciting. My sincerest thanks to everyone involved, especially the guys at Night Shade and all of the contributors.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year #1
Edited by Jonathan Strahan. Night Shade (www.nightshadebooks.com), $19.95 paper (478p) ISBN 978-1-59780-068-6

Australian editor Strahan (Best Short Novels: 2007) gathers 24 stories from a wealth of standard and New Age publications for a provocative anthology that will satisfy readers looking for fresh, contemporary work that stretches both SF and fantasy boundaries. Walter Jon Williams’s bittersweet “Incarnation Day” and Cory Doctorow’s oddly touching “I, Row-Boat” extrapolate current bioengineering and robotics trends into far-flung times and places. Kelly Link’s elegiac “The Wizards of Perfil” and Peter S. Beagle’s perceptive take on siblinghood, “El Regalo,” skew family relationships into bizarre and endearing new shapes. Still others, especially Elizabeth Hand’s exquisite “The Saffron Gatherer” and Margo Lanagan’s terrifying “Under Hell, Over Heaven,” defy categorization, offering flashes of primal recognition of the peaks and valleys of human emotion. Except for a few forays into gory violence (possibly influenced by current video gaming), these stories all refract experience into kaleidoscopic new worlds-strange, dangerous and lovely. (Apr.)

It’s hard for complaints not to look like sour grapes when, after the summer the Australian cricket team has had, it goes through a form slump and you point out problems. It looks like you can handle success, but not failure. Still, a few thoughts. How essential was a three game series that may have cost the World Cup appearances of Michael Clarke, Brett Lee, and Matthew Hayden? It’s hard to see how it was worth it. Even if we’d won three nil, as opposed to losing three nil, it would have been of marginal value. The most disturbing thought, though, is this one: since December 2005 Australia has failed to defend the four highest one day scores in this history of the game; 436 against South Afrtica, and 346, 336,  and 331 against New Zealand. It must say something that essentially the same bowling attack and fielding side has had this problem, and it’s only made worse by the fact that two of these failures were in the past week.  While there’s still every chance Australia will regroup and head into the World Cup with a competitive team (though frankly, sans Symonds, Lee, and possibly Hayden and Clarke), and it still well may win the competition, it’s going to be a much tougher tournament that we expected, especially if the bowlers and fielders can’t get their acts together.