Market Insights

I'm guest posting on the Clarion blog today, doing a piece they call "Market Insights," talking about all the things that Pyr isn't. Here's a sample:

"We’re not really a good place for gross-out horror, slipstream, literary fantasy, or those “difficult to categorize” works. 'Not that there’s anything wrong with that,' he says, in his best Seinfeld impression. It’s just not our focus. When we first conceived of Pyr, we debated about whether or not to specialize in a subgenre, create a line look, or adhere to a particular philosophy or theme (in keeping with the parent company’s reputation for rationalist/humanist works). We opted not to do any of these things. Rather, we decided that we’d publish unabashedly genre works—space opera, military SF, time travel novels, epic fantasies, swords & sorcery—works that recognize and honor the tradition of science fiction and fantasy literature, but had an eye on the 21^st century. We wanted, though it sounds egotistical to say, works which took the writing to a 'higher level.'"

Robert Silverberg on “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

Science Fiction Grandmaster Robert Silverberg (whose Star of Gypsies and Son of Man we reprinted), at the Black Gate blog:

"Now we are back to the same situation that obtained in the golden era of the Fifties — s-f is mainly a field for hobbyist writers, with just a few able to earn a living writing just the real stuff and nothing but. (It is different, of course, for those who write pseudo-Tolkien trilogies, vampire novels, zombie books, and other sorts of highly commercial fantasy.) For a while, in the late 70s and early 80s, the money flowed freely and all sorts of people set up in business as s-f writers full time. I remember Greg Bear, president of SFWA somewhere back in the mid-80s, warning the writers at the SFWA business session not to quit their day jobs, because the good times were just about over; and was he ever right!"

Babel Clash: The Babel is Blowing My Mind, Man!

The current discussion on Borders Books' Babel Clash blog between The Silver Skull author Mark Chadbourn and the Quantum Gravity series author Justina Robson has been just amazing. Some highlights:

"But there is a feeling that some writers lose sight of the ones they’re writing for. Fandom is hugely developed nowadays, a way of life with everyone linked by the net and navel-gazing, dissection and comment taken to the ultimate degree. It’s easy to get enveloped by the bubble and write books for all those people rather than the readers who exist beyond that glaring scrutiny. Fans are few and readers many and their tastes and instincts don’t always intersect. It can become a habit to feed increasingly rarified and jaded tastes and drag the stories out of the reference frame of many people’s lives." - Mark Chadbourn

"For the record I see realism as the poorer little country cousin of Fantasy. In my view realism is a particular subset of fantasy and not the other way around. Fantasy on the other hand is, as you say Mark, not to be analysed or atomised away. It is a mode of thought that operates intuitively and with great psychological richness and reward. This is true of all creative narratives though, not just fantasy novels. These features of it however, do make it unpalatable to people who prefer their universe served up as realism (ie under the illusion that no narrative creation is going on). We would all get along much better if this was acknowledged and everyone was left to get on with their own things in peace. There is no point in poking each other and whining. It can’t go anywhere because the conflict is at the personal level, where people feel threatened and insulted by one another. It doesn’t exist in the books or their genres. They’re just modes of narrative and ways of seeing. They can complement or they can clash." - Justina Robson

Public Service Announcement

Apologies, but due to a rash of anonymous spam (in what looks like Japanese), I'm turning off anonymous comments. Just spending too much time deleting spam. Hope everyone legitimately here will understand. Thanks.

Exciting and unsettling: Ender’s Game: Battle School

My review of Ender's Game: Battle School,the comic adaptation from the creative team of writer Christopher Yost (Killer of Demons, X-Force, Red Robin) and artist Pasqual Ferry (Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Iron Man), is up at Tor.com.

In short, I dug it.

THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE GODS OF WRITING

Mark Chadbourn, author of the Age of Misrule trilogy that begins with World's End,is guest-blogging at Amazon's Omnivoracious, courtesy of the amazing Jeff Vandermeer. His first post, THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE GODS OF WRITING, is up now. It begins:

"When the author and poet Robert Graves embarked on a study of ancient myth, he found an unsettling world opening up to him. The work in question, The White Goddess, proposed the existence of a long-forgotten cult dedicated to a moon goddess who was the root of most pre-Christian religions--Greek, Phoenician, Celtic, Roman, Scandinavian Hindu, even African...."

You'll have to go here for the rest. Meanwhile, I have several similar stories from when I wrote a script with a partner in my Hollywood days. The script was about a Vatican conspiracy of collosal proportions (this several years before Dan Brown), and I know firsthand that Joe Straczynski experienced a lot of odd coincidences when he wrote Babylon 5, which was also based on Celtic myth. Hmmm....

Missions Unknown: SF,F, & H in San Antonio

From their press release:

Horror writer Sanford Allen, World Fantasy Award-winning & Hugo-nominated artist John Picacio, and tech guru Paul "The Mac Guy" Vaughn have banded together and formed MISSIONS UNKNOWN! -- a blog celebrating science fiction, fantasy, and horror in San Antonio. The blog's main mission is to celebrate SA-based creators and fans of sf/f/h and everything related to the literature and art of sf/f/h. That includes books, authors, artists, comics, prose, and the making and enjoyment of all of them. The blog launched Sunday, May 24, 2009.

SF/F Reading List for the 2000s

Scott D. Parker is a writer looking to break into SF&F and eager to catch up on recent "must reads" of 21st century science fiction and fantasy. He asked me for a list of books/authors that everyone should read, and I gave him permission to post my response to his blog, SF Safari. Here, then, is my SF/F Reading List for the 2000s. This isn't meant to be comprehensive by any means. It was intended just to get him started, and I compiled it with an eye towards complimenting the many Pyr books he has already purchased. Note that it is not a Pyr-only list at all, though there is no one looking for cutting edge SF that would be hurt by reading McDonald or Kenyon.

The Myriad Worlds of Chris Roberson, Part One

My massive post covering all of Chris Roberson's Celestial Empire stories to date is up on Tor.com. And guess what? This is only part one of a two-part post.

Check it out, ya' hear.

Coming next is my massive post covering all of his Bonaventure-Carmody universe work, as well as his media-tie in, stand-alone, and forthcoming comic book work. Took me friggin' forever.

Batman: Year 100

Of all the Batman graphic novels I've read recently, my favorite to date is Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100.Really interesting, really beautiful, and certainly something that's given me a lot of food for thought. The graphic novel is set in 2039 - exactly 100 years after the original appearance of the Dark-knight Detective in “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” published in Detective Comics #27 in May of 1939. A fact which has some significance with the storyline here. See what I have to say about it here.

Brian Azzarello's Lex Luthor

Really proud of this one. My review of Brian Azzarello's Lex Luthor: Man of Steel. I've always had an affinity with Lex Luthor (can you guess why?), and to see him done right is such a pleasure.

As to the comic itself, it is certainly my favorite Superman story to date, and may eventually emerge as one of my favorite graphic novel reads.

The Author-Editor Relationship

I'm back at Colleen Lindsay's The Swivet with a post about the Author-Editor relationship.

Kirill Uncovered

What do you all make of this?



It's the first installment of online sci-fi drama, Kirill Uncovered.

Big Foot and Me

I'm back, sooner even than I expected to be, with another post at Tor.com.

This one is about my friend Eric Spitznagel, his Vanity Fair piece on Bigfoot, and the reaction it caused among cryptozoology enthusiasts.

My First Tor.com Post is Up

Yup, today I begin blogging for Tor.com. My first post just went up a few minutes ago. Though I've been encouraged to promote Pyr authors and books as part of their very laudable aim to be "publisher neutral," with this first one I think I've found a niche area that is sufficiently conflict-of-interest free to suffice even if I weren't. And something I can really get into doing regularly.

No points to my regular readers for guessing what I'm on about.

The Swivet

I'm guest blogging today on The Swivet, the (usually) book-centric blog of FinePrint Literary Management agent, former publicist, and all around wonderful person Colleen Lindsay. Colleen introduces me in this post, and right above it is my very first post. I say my first post because Colleen has invited me to be an occassional guest blogger, so hopefully there will be more to follow.

Meanwhile, my first Swivet, "Don't Be Good; Be Brilliant" is on manuscripts, editors, and how the one can get the attention of the other.

Net Wisdom

A ton of good advice floating round.

Sean Williams on Adventures in SciFi Publishing giving advice to new writers at the Writers of the Future event.

Jason Stoddard on "What's an author to do?" given self-marketing/promotion advice. Jason again on "What's a small publisher to do?"

And although it's a few months old, I just listened to this Agony Column podcast with the owner of San Francisco's Booksmith, Praveen Madan (direct link).

Consuming all this across 2 days makes the ganglia twitch. In a good way.

Happy Birthday Science Fiction Awards Watch!

One year ago today, Cheryl Morgan and Kevin Standlee launched the Science Fiction Awards Watch website, a site to aggregate, track, report on and discuss the multitude of genre-related awards in our industry. The site (as well as the related SFEditors Wiki) is absolutely invaluable. Contrary to what you may have heard, fandom isn't dying - it's booming online, and this website is an example of the way that fandom can marshal the capabilities of the internet to better inform itself. I'm grateful someone takes the (considerable) time to provide this essential resource. Happy Birthday, Science Fiction Awards Watch! Many happy returns!

Reviews, Blogs & Podcasts

Lissa Warren, of The Huffington Post, asks "Will Blogs Save Books?" She's reacting to the announcement that the LA Times is laying off two of its books editors and folding its stand-alone Sunday books section into its Calendar section.

She takes issue with the notion that blogs are an adequate substitute for professional reviews, saying, "Well, I think book reviews on blogs -- particularly those of the Blogspot variety -- tend to be self-indulgent. Book reviewing bloggers need to move away from opinion in favor of judgment. How does the book compare to -- and fit in with -- the author's previous work? What's the book's place in the genre? The canon? Does the writer succeed in doing what he or she set out to do -- meaning, is it the book they meant it to be? Whether it's the book the blogger wanted it to be is of much less importance to me, frankly."

But she's hopeful that will change: "But I can envision a day when blogs do for books what books have done for people: challenged us, made us think in ways we never would have."

Personally, I think peer-to-peer reviewing carries more weight with me than critical reviews these days, and I tend to read far more peer-to-peer review blogs than print sources. Part of that, of course, is my focus as an editor getting a handle on what actual readers think. And what I find the most helpful, actually, as a consumer - for when I'm debating what I want to read in my oh-so-scarce pleasure reading tie - is interviews. They give me the best sense for what a writer is like and whether I'm liable to respond to what he/she is doing.

And you know what, one of my favorite interviewers is Rick Kleffel, whose Agony Column podcast is in depth and detailed enough to hold my interest, and whose tastes broad enough that I feel it's still relevant to my day job while taking me a few places I wouldn't go otherwise. So good on Jeff Vandermeer for interviewing Rick!

John Picacio: Behold the Man

John Picacio guests on Stargate: Atlantis executive producer Joseph Mallozzi's blog. John answers questions from Mallozzi's readers - all his comments are well worth checking out.

Meanwhile, here's a taste: "There was a time when cover illustrators weren’t even CREDITED with their work, which is absurd. Today, cover illustrators generally are at least credited for their work, whereas I find that a lot of the pre-90’s paperbacks and novels sometimes didn’t print the credit, and that was especially the case with pre-1970’s books. I think knowing who created the art helps foster an appreciation (and a marketplace) for the art itself in professional sf/fantasy work. From a professional standpoint, history shows that back in the 1950’s when the Ballantines were first building their publishing empire (now owned by Random House as Ballantine Books), they entrusted avant-garde artists like Richard Powers to create ground-breaking covers for their sf books, and they were rewarded with greater critical awareness, and booming sales of those books. Powers’ covers of the time were very modern and anti-traditional (i.e. anti-pulp, at a time when pulp dominated the book racks). Basically, the Ballantines had the courage to allow an artist to work outside the box of the existing marketplace tropes, and it both expanded the readership of the field and made a lot of money for them. These days, I don’t think publishers owned by multinational corporations are as willing to take a chance on ground-breaking artists like Richard Powers, unless they’re guaranteed in advance that it sells well, which means they’re usually chasing the tail rather than heading it. If you notice, when the Ballantines were working, the editorial department dictated the game to the marketing and sales department. Nowadays, that equation seems inverted. Today, marketing, sales, and accounting departments seem to dictate the final creative say to the editorial department, especially in terms of cover art. I don’t think cover art is better for it. Today’s audience is far more sophisticated than marketing departments currently envision. I’d like to see cover illustration in sf/fantasy be more proactive rather than reactive to the latest fads in movies, gaming, and tv."