No promises for better posting, but I will try. Has anyone else noticed a drop-off in the quality of Amazon’s packaging? I received books 5 & 6 of the Zelazny set yesterday, and one was damaged. Life other than that, is sort of good. I’m drowning in dragons, concerned about cyberpunk, and need to get year’s best reading done. But, holidays approach and I’m working on it all. Progress progress.
I did have a good recent family birthday – sister’s partner – and have been garderning (which is weird). Still reading about Hunters & Collectors, and not about SF, but that’s almost ready to change. Always more. Oh, we had mixed health news about Jessica. More tests to follow.
I think that’s the very potted synopsis. More later.
I hope that at some appropriate point in the future someone will publish The Collected Stories of Kage Baker. It would be a fine, rich and entertaining set of books. In the meantime, Subterranean Press have a new story, “The Bohemian Astrobleme”, on their website. Go read it, or go buy one of her books. The ‘Company’ novels are fun, but her fantasy novels are excellent, and she was a very fine short story writer.
I awoke this morning to the extremely sad news that Kage Baker has died. Sadly, I never really got to meet her. I read and reviewed her first novel, In the Garden of Iden, for Locus when it was published in 1997, and was in touch with her via email several times obtaining rights to stories to reprint in my year’s bests. I was also fortunate enough to be able to solicit two fine stories, “Maelstrom” (The New Space Opera 2) and the yet-to-be-published “Attlee and the Long Walk” (Life on Mars). She was a fine writer, a delight to deal with, and I honestly thought I’d be buying and reading her stories for years to come. A sad day indeed. I think I might mark it by reading The Hotel Under the Sand with my eight-year-old daughter, Sophie. I don’t doubt Kage’s work will long out live her, but that doesn’t make this news any more welcome.
The February issue of Locusis out now. It includes the annual recommended reading coverage, the Recommended Reading list etc etc. Some of it should be online shortly, but it’s a reasonably comprehensive coverage of science fiction and fantasy in 2009.
And yes, I do work for them. I wish there was an iPhone app for it.
The winner and shortlist for the Crawford Award has been announced by the awards administator, Gary K. Wolfe.  I am delighted that my dear friend Deb Biancotti’s The Book of Endings made the shortlist. I was in Melbourne last year for the book launch and I think it’s a fine debut, and a terrific piece of book production from Twelfth Planet Press. There was a winner of course – congratulations to Jedediah Berry for The Manual of Detection taking the gong – but this really, really pleased me. Deb’s a fine writer and I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do next. In the meantime, all of you should go get a copy and check it out yourselves.
