Editor and publisher Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books joins Gary and I for a new podcast as our second ever guest. Jeremy and Gary were in Seattle at the Locus Awards/Science Fiction Hall of Fame weekend while I was still pottering around after breakfast while one kid was off at swimming lessons in Perth.
I once again showed mylack of technical skills in the audio arena, but we discussed:
Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl and understanding science fiction in 21st Century world;
how science fiction still isn’t dying;
rescheduling Eclipse Four; and
a little bit on gender and the SF Hall of Fame (more to come here!).
There’s probably some other stuff, but we recorded this this morning and I’m not going to re-listen to the whole thing. We hope you enjoy it as always and will see you next weekend!
For those of you following along at home, we are having genuine progress with my long-delayed anthology, Godlike Machines. Originally due for publication in 2008, it has been delayed at the publisher for some time, but yesterday brought the copyedits of the book, which is very exciting. There’s also a cover (I’ve seen a draft but not the final), and if all goes smoothly, there will be copies of the book at Aussiecon 4. At the moment the book is only available to members of the SF Book Club, but I remain hopeful that we can get it out to a larger audience. It features original hard SF novellas by Stephen Baxter, Cory Doctorow, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, and Sean Williams, and a reprint by Greg Egan “Hot Rock” (it was to have been original to the book).
More news as it transpires, but this book is coming out this year, and honestly there was a time when I wasn’t sure it was going to happen at all – I’m excited and very pleased.
Last night I finished reading Amelia Beamer‘s The Loving Dead and I really enjoyed it. It’s a romantic comedy (sort of) featuring zombies, zeppelins, and employees from a popular U.S. retail chain. There are all sorts of reasons I liked it so much. Some are probably unique to me, but some aren’t. The book is funny, sexy and a bit off-putting at times (there are flesh-eating zombies here, after all). It’s also, for me, a real trip down memory lane. Part of the story is set in a friend’s house where I used to spend a lot of time and part of it in an area of Oakland where I lived for a year. It’s also told in Amelia’s voice. I can hear her reading this out loud, telling the jokes that her lead character tells, and being brave and kick-ass in pretty much the same way. Those personal things only add, though, to what is a very good first novel. Even if you’ve never been in the Oakland hills, wandered through Piedmont, or worked in a retail outlet, The Loving Dead has a lot to offer you. Highly recommended. (You can read the book online for free now at ameliabeamer.com, but you’re going to want to own your own copy – trust me.)
Author, critic, photographer, and Locus editor Amelia Beamer joins Gary and I for a new podcast as our first ever guest. Amelia was only just home from Locus HQ in Oakland, Gary was taking some time out from reading for his column in Chicago, and I was still pottering around after breakfast while the kids are off at swimming lessons in Perth.
I once again showed my lack of technical skills in the audio arena, but we discussed:
being a first-time novelist, writing and The Loving Dead;
the SF Signal Mind Meld on short story collections you have to have and whether there’s a language we can use to discuss the history of the SF field that’s inclusive,
There’s probably some other stuff, but we recorded this morning and I’m not going to re-listen to the whole thing. We hope you enjoy it as always and will see you next weekend!
Every Saturday morning now Gary and I fire up Skype to record the latest in our series of chats. Gary’s usually not that long home from his office in Chicago, while I’m mostly still pottering around after breakfast while the kids are off at swimming lessons.
We did it again yesterday morning, and we once again reveal our collective lack of technical skills in the audio arena and briefly mention:
getting contributor’s copies,
re-editing classic books,
ebook design and the iPad,
books I’d like to see exist that don’t,
The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson and how humanists wrote short fiction,
entry-level SF novels and anthologies,
year’s bests,
the lack of SF for children, and
spend some time discussing Nnedi Okorafor and her novel Who Fears Death.
There’s probably some other stuff, but we recorded this yesterday and I’m not going to re-listen to the whole thing. We hope you enjoy it as always and will see you next weekend!
Editor and publisher Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books joins Gary and I for a new podcast as our second ever guest. Jeremy and Gary were in Seattle at the Locus Awards/Science Fiction Hall of Fame weekend while I was still pottering around after breakfast while one kid was off at swimming lessons in Perth.