Recently posted on Runagate Rampant, the very low-volume China Mieville-related mailing list, was a link to sketches that will be incuded in his upcoming book Un Lun Dun at Del Rey Online. They look interesting enough. I just hope it’s not as Neil Gaiman-ish as it looks from the cover. I saw a Neil Gaiman film in Seattle and, no offense, Splinister, but it didn’t really work for me all that well, though I really did give it the old open-minded college try.
Category: REVIEWS
Elevensies
Kat’s got a good post up about eleven things one should never put into an SF novel unless with the intention to undermine them. It’s actually a riff on a slightly different meme about fantasy novels, but like Kat I don’t write them things, so I’m gonna go with SF instead. Let’s see if I can cook up a list of the same, and not include anything already proscribed by the Turkey City Lexicon: 1. The ancient story of Earth. Okay, maybe sometimes it works. I’ve seen it work. But I’ve more often seen it flop. Either humanity knows where …
Hugo Nominees, 2006
Adrian posted a link to a site with tons of criticism of all of the Hugo nominees for 2006. Worth a look.
Do You Know This Song?
Sounds like it’s form the 70s, but that could mean it’s new. It’s sung by a woman and she sings off-key. There are strings in the accompaniment. She sounds a bit like Nico, and she’s singing these lines over and over that are vaguely like, “Yesterday is a day like any other day”, or “Yesterday was a day like everyday…” but I can’t remember what exactly. It’s very melodramatic and it was just very amusing and strange, and I’d like to hear it again. If anyone knows, please do comment. I heard it in a taxi the other night and …
Someone I’m Beginning to Get the Feeling I Wouldn’t Like Much
One of my students wrote an essay on Jo Jung-rae, who is a famous and well-known author in Korea. A friend of mine read his epic ten-volume Hangang (The Han River) back during my second year here, and spoke of it with praise, but also seemed to find reading it onerous. Interestingly, she was studying Japanese at the time and her boyfriend told her to study it (but, then, he was studying Japanese then, too, and was quite good at it). That’s ironic, because according to the essay my student wrote about his epic, Hangang, and about the author himself, …
worthwhile things @ i d e o m a n c e r
i d e o m a n c e r has some worthwhile things up this month: a poem by a Clarion West classmate of mine, Tina, called Tam Lin A pretty interesting (fantasy) story called Unstringing the Bow by Yoon Ha Lee, the Korean-American SF writer I once began to interview, but never got around to really asking any questions to. (Yet, anyway.)
Tune the Damned Thing
While I have been trying to rest my eyes, one of the things I’ve noticed is that trying not to look at anything too long, or in a way that strains your eyes, leads to you noticing more about your aural surroundings — the sounds that surround you. This morning, I woke to what I think were magpies — black birds with blue and white patterns on them. Someone upstairs hollered out his window at them, in English: “Hey birds! I can’t concentrate!” I can see why. They were really dreadfully loud, and their “call” sounded a lot like electric …
Neat Book. New Story Idea
Ex-girlfriend of H.G. Wells narrating, explaining her refusal to marry him once he was available to her. London, around the turn of the century (which I’ll need help with). Possible alien invasion (long before the end of the 19th century) hidden by the writings of a popular early SF pioneer, but… why? And who are the aliens? Oh, not who you think. Muhahaha. Into the idea file it goes. The book is H.G. Wells in Love, a text I happened upon in the University library. I have no idea why it was purchased, but the card in the back of …
Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2006 issue
I’m going to start my post with the disclosure that most people would stick at the end: the magazine issue I’m about to review was sent to me free, on the condition that once read, I would blog about it. Gordon van Gelder sent out fifty advance issues of the July 2006 edition of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine to various people as part of a promotion announced here and I was one of the lucky ones who heard about it early enough to ask him for a copy. However, I should add that I’ve been intending to invest in …
My Eye and Pumpkin
I had my good eye tested today. Doc says I have some condensation in the vitreous (sp?) fluid in my eye, and that this is unusual for someone of my age (usually we see that in people in their 50s), but that I shouldn’t worry too much and that it won’t bug me after I get used to it. To be honest, I’m a little doubtful about the diagnosis, for a few reasons — one, the behaviour of the spots I’ve been seeing in my peripheral vision don’t seem to be behaving the way I think floaters in the viterous …