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Category archive: Speculative Fiction

Review: Inkheart (movie)

As many of y'all may recall, a year ago I committed the sacrilege of disliking Inkheart (the book). One of... (More...)

Who does whitewashing hurt?

Ellen Oh, a Korean-American writer, is one of many people who've blogged about the shameful whitewashing of the cast of... (More...)

R.I.P., William Tenn/Phil Klass

I've been reading William Tenn's stories since I was a kid; his stories were scattered through a bunch of the... (More...)

Want to read the fifth Marla Mason book?

T.A. Pratt's Marla Mason series of urban fantasy novels was cancelled last year after four books. Not long ago, the... (More...)

R.I.P., Kage Baker

Green Man Review reports that Kage Baker died this morning, of cancer. (More...)

Very sad news about Kage Baker

A couple of weeks ago, author Kage Baker's sister Kathleen Bartholomew sent out a public note revealing that Baker had metastatic cancer. Unfortunately, things have gotten even worse. (More...)

Yet another whitewashed book cover

Ari at Reading in Color blogs about the latest YA fantasy novel with a whitewashed cover. Yep, it's yet another... (More...)

NKJ on positive aspects of RaceFail

Thoughtful and interesting post from N. K. Jemisin on why RaceFail was good for science fiction/fantasy. Excerpt: The angry questions that... (More...)

Description of a PDA

I came across the following description of a PDA in a book a while back; I sent it out in... (More...)

Tolkien songs

SarahP asked if there's a way to hear how the songs in Lord of the Rings are meant to be... (More...)

The Correct Number

Started reading Pamela Dean's The Secret Country last night on the way to sleep. My comment so far: Having five... (More...)

Westerns and science fiction

The opportunity of a Western is that it takes issues of our culture—conflict, racial conflict, economic injustice, what is... (More...)

Paleface anthropology

I'm reading William Tenn's 1958 story "Eastward Ho!" (as reprinted in the 60th-anniversary volume The Very Best of Fantasy &... (More...)

Year's Bests: New stories in single-author collections?

David Hartwell points out that it's easy for Year's Best editors to miss new stories (non-reprints) that appear in single-author... (More...)

Four reasons to watch FlashForward

I've now seen three episodes of FlashForward. So far, I'd say it's an interesting show; not brilliant, but intriguing. (I... (More...)

Nalo Hopkinson speaking at Swarthmore on Tuesday

Nalo is going to be speaking at Swarthmore College this coming Tuesday evening (the 27th) at 7:30 p.m. She's a... (More...)

Leverage + Dr. Who

One of the things that I like about Leverage is that the hacker, Hardison, is a geek. This is particularly... (More...)

Martha Jones, meet Lee Adama

I just happened across an article from mid-2008 that says that Freema Agyeman and Jamie Bamber are starring in the... (More...)

Maurice Sendak is so gay

Happened across a passing reference this morning to Sendak having come out last year (at age 80); looked it up... (More...)

Cylon jack-o'-lantern

Over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories a few years back, they provided schemata for how to make a Cylon jack-o'-lantern.... (More...)

Dialogue about racism in fan communities

Smart and interesting discussion in the latest issue of Transformative Works and Cultures: "Pattern recognition: A dialogue on racism in... (More...)

Items: Miscellaneous

Really must clear out some browser windows. Squirrels: Y'all know about Crasher Squirrel? This couple was on vacation in Banff,... (More...)

Short story discussions

I recently speculated that people generally don't seem to have a lot to say in online discussions about individual short... (More...)

Is recent YA producing new sf readers?

In recent years, there's been a great deal of discussion (and angst) about the graying of science fiction and the... (More...)

Justine L on protagonists of color and book covers

Justine Larbalestier recently posted two excellent blog entries on topics related to protagonists of color: First: "Why My Protags Aren't... (More...)

A wiki about people of color in and around speculative fiction

One of the things you personally can do to help work against racism in the speculative fiction world is to... (More...)

Tempest and Ellison

(This is another one of those entries that will probably make no sense to people not involved in the speculative-fiction... (More...)

Cthulhu online

The search engine man was not meant to know: Cthuugle. And for more Internet Cthulhu goodness: LOLTHULHU. Some of my... (More...)

Space travel, sense of wonder, and engineering feats

Interesting pair of articles: "Space: Is the final frontier all it used to be?", by Ted Anthony, for AP, discusses... (More...)

R.I.P., Charles Brown

I'm sorry to hear that Charles N. Brown, publisher of Locus for the past forty years, has died. For some... (More...)

What I've been up to

It's been a couple of weeks since my last life-update post. I don't feel like much has been going on,... (More...)

Free online anthology: Thoughtcrime Experiments

I've been meaning for weeks now to link to Thoughtcrime Experiments. It's a science fiction anthology, edited by Sumana Harihareswara... (More...)

Best Trekfic EVER: litcrit slash

I wasn't going to post any more tonight, but this is way too good not to share: The idea of... (More...)

Describing characters of color

I've been aware for a while now of the penchant that many white writers have for using food metaphors to... (More...)

Items: Video roundup

My backup system makes my computer unusably slow if I have too many Safari windows open that contain videos, even... (More...)

Sarah Connor Chronicles update

Ever since Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles started airing, I've been meaning to write in some detail about all the... (More...)

Peter S. Beagle and Richard Lupoff reading in San Francisco tonight!

On the evening of Saturday the 18th (tonight--about 17 hours from now), Beagle and Lupoff are reading in San Francisco.... (More...)

Tennant & Davies on leaving Dr. Who

The Times Online last week had a fun interview with David Tennant and Russell T. Davies about leaving Dr. Who.... (More...)

Thoughtcrime Experiments submission deadline impending

Sumana mentioned Thoughtcrime Experiments in a comment this evening. I hadn't previously heard of it--I'm a little out of touch--but... (More...)

Darths and Droids

Back in 2006, a guy named Shamus Young posted a couple of strips of a photonovel-style webcomic with the following... (More...)

Give me that old science fiction

I've been reading (well, mostly skimming) the stories in The Best of Lester del Rey, and just found this line: "War... (More...)

Inventing the Wheel

In science fiction stories, there are certain ideas and tropes that writers who aren't well-read in the history of the... (More...)

Going to Eleven

The Guardian provides info on relatively unknown actor Matt Smith being chosen to play the eleventh Doctor on Dr. Who.... (More...)

R.I.P., Majel Barrett Roddenberry

I'm sorry to see that Majel Barrett Roddenberry died of leukemia this morning, age 76. Memory Alpha's entry says that... (More...)

~Gasp! It's ... REAL!~

I've seen a bunch of stories in the last couple of weeks that boil down to this quasi-plot: Someone encounters... (More...)

Sarah Connor returns

Season 2 of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles started tonight. I'll be waiting to watch the new episode with Kam,... (More...)

Kiosk

Been reading Strahan's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Two. I've only read about half the stories... (More...)

Fictional female scientists

Helen Merrick has started a list of female scientist characters in fiction, especially in science fiction. It's part of a... (More...)

Infinite Matrix special issue

In honor of Cory Doctorow's birthday, Eileen Gunn has put together a special one-shot issue of The Infinite Matrix, featuring... (More...)

R.I.P., Thomas M. Disch

I imagine most of you who would want to know already know by now that Thomas M. Disch committed suicide... (More...)

Nancy Pearl interviews William Gibson tomorrow night in Seattle

As a benefit for Clarion West's 25th anniversary, Nancy Pearl ("Seattle's own rock star librarian" and the only librarian with... (More...)

Jumper and Jumper

As I mentioned the other day, I saw the movie Jumper back in March. Back when we saw it, all... (More...)

Stuff I like in fiction

Lengthy notes on stuff I like in fiction. (More...)

Previously, on Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica returns to TV tonight for the start of its final season. (Or at least the start of the... (More...)

Futurismic fiction returns!

I continue to be out of touch; it's been a month now since Chris East announced that the fiction department... (More...)

Sarah Connor ARG

Been meaning to post more about the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I've been quite enjoying. (I've... (More...)

On Spinrad

In discussions of early sf criticism--of writers who write serious and thoughtful critiques of speculative fiction as literature--I hear certain... (More...)

Online sf notes from all over

It continues to frustrate me that I don't have time to read everything I want to read. Here are a... (More...)

Oz

A call for newness in worldbuilding. (More...)

New sf commentary site: io9

Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders, and a cast of several have been running a blog called io9 for the past few... (More...)

Tiptree and Russ

I'm still reading the Tiptree bio. Getting close to the end; I'm becoming more and more aware of what I... (More...)

Anti-technological sf

I'm sometimes surprised by how often sf stories are all about the evils of technology, and how much better unmodified... (More...)

Fantasy debut novel blog

For the past couple months, Tia Nevitt has been blogging about debut fantasy novels, including reviews of some of the... (More...)

Dr. Who church service

"[St Paul's Church in Grangetown, Cardiff] is to host a Doctor Who-themed communion service aimed at young people. [The church]... (More...)

R.I.P., Madeleine L'Engle

As most of you know by now, Madeleine L'Engle has died at age 88. I liked the original Wrinkle in... (More...)

Utopia is bad?

For decades now, sf writers have been writing stories that go like this: Pick some big change (to a person... (More...)

"In the Quake Zone"

I realized recently that I had never finished reading last year's Year's Best science fiction and fantasy anthologies, and that... (More...)

"Am I going mad?"

This happened all the time in sf stories in the 1940s: the protagonist would see something strange happen, and his... (More...)

More about Year's Bests

I've just updated the Year's Best SF Info page to link to the newly posted table of contents for Best... (More...)

ISO Star Trek: The Good Parts Version

Which Star Trek episodes shouldn't be missed? (More...)

Throwing in the hat

The discussion has taken its toll, and I've decided: I'm declaring myself to be a write-in candidate for the SFWA... (More...)

Sf items from all over

Some assorted tidbits pertaining to speculative fiction: Everyone but me appears to have known for days now that last week,... (More...)

Arguments about science fiction

Among my father's books, I just found a copy of a printed fanzine. It contains, among other things: A complaint... (More...)

Bay Area events

A few noteworthy upcoming and current things happening in Redwood City and San José: Tonight (Wednesday, March 14), 7:30 p.m.,... (More...)

Delany interviews Russ

At WisCon last year, Samuel R. Delany interviewed Joanna Russ by telephone; I was sad to miss the event, but... (More...)

Year's Bests interim report

The majority of the Year's Best reprint volumes have posted tables of contents; I've been updating my Year's Best info... (More...)

Move Under Ground for free!

In honor of Nick M's birthday (happy birthday, Nick!), I'm finally getting around to mentioning that Nick has provided his... (More...)

Slobodkin site

Carol Reid of Albany, New York writes to tell me about Io Sono, her new site honoring the life and... (More...)

Flammarion woodcut

A couple weeks ago, for reasons I can't remember offhand, I was trying to figure out the name of a... (More...)

Items: Writing advice

In the past few days, I keep coming across various items of advice and commentary about writing. (The focus here... (More...)

Year's Bests info site

It seems like every year we SH editors frantically scurry around to all sorts of websites and journals and things,... (More...)

Greek suffix meets Lingua Terra

Sometimes people complain that the word polyamory is a mix of Latin and Greek roots. I've been known to make... (More...)

R.I.P., Jack Williamson

To quote Locus Online: "SF Grand Master Jack Williamson, born 1908, died this afternoon at his home in Portales, New... (More...)

BSG season 3 opener

So with the aid of the new devil device, Kam and I watched the two-hour season opener of Battlestar Galactica.... (More...)

Imminent and upcoming readings/events at Borderlands

Borderlands Books, in San Francisco, has a bunch of readings and other events coming soon. For example: Date and time... (More...)

Eleanor Arnason has a blog

I've been meaning for quite some time to link to Eleanor Arnason's blog, but I don't think I ever got... (More...)

Featured blog

My journal will be one of the featured blogs on the featured blogs page on the Asimov's site and the... (More...)

Trek apocrypha, plus fan video

A bunch of links to various kinds of Star Trek fan films, plus info on Phase II. (More...)

Review: I, Robot (movie)

I liked it quite a bit. (More...)

Author gender and Asimov's

One of the high points of WorldCon for me was getting to chat more than I usually do with Sheila... (More...)

Non-English sf

I continue to be very slow in pursuing my goal of finding out more about sf published in languages other... (More...)

Still more on gender bias in sf

We at Strange Horizons have just about filled up our publishing schedule for 2006, and have started on 2007. Interestingly, even though still only about 33% to 40% of our submissions are by women, in 2006 two-thirds of the stories we're publishing are by women. (More...)

Twenty Epics

Do you like epic fiction, but don't have time to read the latest ten-thousand-page epic series? Fear not! Twenty Epics,... (More...)

R.I.P., Jim Baen

I knew Jim Baen had had a stroke a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn't known until just now... (More...)

Ones and zeroes and copies

It's fairly common in science fiction these days to see sentient beings in electronic form--whether artificial intelligences or uploaded human... (More...)

Nalo, Beagle, et alia reading in San Francisco on Tuesday

This coming Tuesday, June 13, there are two events in San Francisco, at the same time and in different places,... (More...)

Reviewed without venom

For over three months now, I've been meaning to post a note about Liz Henry's excellent SH review of Touched... (More...)

Sultan's Elephant and Tyger

I keep seeing links to photos of "The Sultan's Elephant," but not to information about it. In case anyone else... (More...)

BSG, "previously," and the iTunes Music Store

A couple of quick thoughts about BSG that don't involve spoilers (mostly discussion of the iTunes Music Store approach to... (More...)

BSG: Wow

Very big spoilers here for the last three episodes of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. Non-spoiler summary: I loved them,... (More...)

Becoming what they oppose

There's a trope I like a lot in fiction when it's done well: characters who are so ardent in their... (More...)

SH/SLF rapid-fire reading fundraiser, Wednesday in SF

Tomorrow night (which is to say Wednesday, 10 May), there'll be a rapid-fire reading in San Francisco to benefit Strange... (More...)

BSG: I spoke too soon

Some reasonably big and fairly specific spoilers here for the second half of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. Kam and... (More...)

Redshirts and spear-carriers are people too

This entry contains a couple of generalized and thematic quasi-spoilers for Battlestar Galactica, especially for the first half of season... (More...)

Five-minute summaries

Peter W. pointed to the Five-Minute "Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries" comic. Sort of in the style of the old Fotonovels,... (More...)

R.I.P., Stanislaw Lem

According to the SFWA obituary: Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem died in his home city of Krakow on Monday,... (More...)

Another Year's Best update

Assorted Year's Best TOCs and news and such: Kathryn Cramer has posted the table of contents for Year's Best SF... (More...)

More about Beagle, The Last Unicorn, and Lord of the Rings, plus Star Trek

I wrote about this a while back, but I've learned more about the situation since then, so I wanted to... (More...)

Two Hearts

I haven't finished reading all the non-SH stories from 2005 that I plan to read before making my Hugo nominations,... (More...)

Rich Horton to do Year's Bests

As many of y'all know, Rich Horton reads possibly a higher percentage of the short science fiction and fantasy published... (More...)

R.I.P., Octavia Butler

For those who haven't heard: sf writer Octavia E. Butler died on Saturday, age 58. Here are some relevant links... (More...)

Assorted sf notes

Some deadlines, to-do items, and con-related notes, and more good news for SH. (More...)

R.I.P., Andreas "G'Kar" Katsulas

Andreas Katsulas, who played G'Kar on Babylon 5, has died of lung cancer at age 59. I knew nothing about... (More...)

Genre levels

Some thoughts on plausibility and genre conventions. (More...)

R.I.P., Cynthia McQuillin

Just discovered that filksinger-songwriter Cynthia McQuillin died two weeks ago, on January 14, of renal and respiratory failure, at age... (More...)

Africa, the Other, and sf

Some items that may or may not add up to more than the sum of their parts: Okay, so there's... (More...)

Saving the future

Imagine you're an 18-year-old computer gamer in Chicago, and you're sitting around at home one evening when someone you don't... (More...)

Rangergirl reading

Just a reminder that Tim Pratt will be reading at Borderlands Books in San Francisco today (Saturday, 7 January) at... (More...)

Star Wars misconceptions

While checking the quote in that last entry, I stumbled into a forum thread on The misconceptions you had about... (More...)

Farewell to the Infinite Matrix

Friday brought the sad news that The Infinite Matrix, once the second-highest-paying online speculative fiction venue, is closing its doors.... (More...)

Productive

Here are some of the things I've done in the past week, in no particular order: finally washed some dishes... (More...)

Hitherby

Back in May, I posted some links to a few entries at Hitherby Dragons. I still haven't gone back to... (More...)

Outline of Narnian history, plus nitpicking

I'm continuing to re-read the Narnia books. Will have more to say about that sooner or later, but for now,... (More...)

The predictive power of fantasy

People are always talking about the amazing predictive abilities of science fiction. But what about fantasy? Yes, yes, Arthur C.... (More...)

R.I.P., Robert Sheckley

Most of you who would care know by now that sf author Robert Sheckley died a week ago. It's been... (More...)

Review: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Narnia movie was splendid. I went into it with very high hopes and a lot of trepidation. The hopes... (More...)

Boxing up the books

I've abandoned my original plan to spend this weekend doing a triage pass on Peter's books to get rid of a bunch of them before shipping them to my place; instead, I'm boxing them all up to mail, and I'll sort them at my leisure at home. (More...)

Farewell to Sci Fiction

Like everyone else, I'm sad at the demise of Sci Fiction, which has been indisputably the premier online sf magazine... (More...)

Beagle tonight in SF

Peter S. Beagle will be reading tonight in San Francisco, at the Make-Out Room, as part of Charlie Anders's "Writers... (More...)

Dark side of the Plot

About halfway through reading the Slate article "Star Wars: Episodes I-VI: The greatest postmodern art film ever," by Aidan Wasley,... (More...)

RYT Hospital

It's been argued that the Hugo Award for Best Website, if it's to become a regular Hugo category, should go... (More...)

Busy

And another weekend flies by, just like that. I have lots of things to post, but keep not having time... (More...)

R.I.P., Andre Norton

Science fiction writer Andre Norton died this morning. I've been meaning to post for the past couple weeks mentioning that... (More...)

Homosexuality, sf, and the unheimlich

I really ought to be either editing or reading subs, but I'm gonna take a little time to point to... (More...)

Items: Shifting paradigms

Feeling a little better than yesterday, but still not up to going to work. Yesterday I didn't do nearly enough... (More...)

Nonpolitical (personal, minor) good news

Some things that've made me happy lately: At World Fantasy Con this past weekend, half a dozen people I didn't... (More...)

Grammarian

I got a few birthday presents and some nice phone calls and emails and journal comments; thank you all! I... (More...)

Three Laws rephrased

The fake robot-ad trailer for the upcoming I, Robot movie came out a few months ago, but now there's a... (More...)

Fictional translation

A friend of mine used to do something interesting when running roleplaying games: he'd use real-world historical names for famous... (More...)

Three laws for the robot-kings

Someone recently wrote to Mike Resnick (and Resnick quoted in his "Ask Bwana" column in Speculations) about Asimov's robot stories.... (More...)

Planetary intelligences and surprise twist endings

Just once, I'd like to see a story in which there's a planet-wide network of interlinked computational elements and/or life... (More...)

Which "Other City" Should You Live In?

In case you don't have a copy of The Book of All Cities, there's now a quiz that allows you... (More...)

Robots and heroes

Asimov's First Law of Robotics states: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human... (More...)

The Drake Equation

The Hugo nomination deadline is almost upon us, so I finally went over to Sci Fiction and read Ian R.... (More...)