Episode 69 of Adventures in SciFi Publishing is out, and it's an interview with The Stormcaller
author Tom Lloyd. They discuss fantasy influences, the virtues of ramping things up quick, being 18 and in charge of the fate of nations, Steve Erikson, Scott Lynch, and the wonderful art of Todd Lockwood. (They don't talk about me enough, though, of course.) You can listen to the podcast at the link above, download it, or subscribe via iTunes.
This 22 foot long Batmobile was built by Oscar Pumpin, who was inspired by Batman Forever, and cost a reported $325,000. Again, plenty more photos at the link.
Don't know anything about this homemade Batmobile. I think the concept of it is perhaps a little cooler than the execution, at least around the windshield, but if it were a little less lumpy there it would be cool, and I love the hood/grill.
This one not so much:
But you've got to love this homemade 1940s Golden Age style Batmobile:
Don't know anything about this one and wish I had a better picture:
And what's not to love about BMW's latest, cloth-covered, shape-shifting "Batmobile-style" concept car, the Gina, which can change its shape at the touch of a button. Reportedly, "the headlights open like eyes from behind the stretchable fabric, which shifts at speed to make the car more aerodynamic." Wow:
Sweet, huh? And Santa will vouche that I've been very nice this year.
This time it's just a short love letter to The Mountain Goats, my new favorite band.
My third Tor.com post is up, Meet Sean Williams: A Force to Be Reckoned With (bad pun intended). Basically, it's a run down of a lot of his recent work, from Ace, Monkeybrain, and Pyr. Sean mentioned that next year marks his 20 year anniversary since he started writing seriously, his 10th year since he was able to support himself full time. And what's he got to show for it? Only 26 novels, 1 stand-alone novella, 5 short story collections, a few New York Times best sellers, and a buttload of awards.
Incidentally, that's one of my favorite examples of Gist's work you see pictured above. It's from the soon-to-be-released, highly anticipated Escape From Hell!,The best piece of advice I can give is the best advice ever given me. The very wise Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Publications said, You should never judge an artist by the best piece in his/her portfolio. You should judge them by their worst, because if that’s what they hand in, you’re going to have to live with it. I think this is tremendous advice for art directors. For illustrators, I suppose it means you should identify the worst piece of art in your portfolio and get rid of it! In all seriousness, I see too many portfolios that include everything going back to college, too many roughs and early works. A portfolio should reflect where you are now, not where you were five or ten years ago. Best foot forward, and only that foot!
from Hal Duncan and published by Monkeybrain Books.
I should put a ***spoiler warning*** at the start of this post, but really, I'm like the last person on earth to see Iron Man, so come on. But unlike Spider-Man 3, where I felt the that the movie was unfairly maligned, Iron Man was every bit as fantastically awesome as I had been told. Saw it last night, and I'm still buzzing.
always maintained that a good movie script could be understood sans sound anyway. So, Hulk without sound goes something like this: Bruce Banner on the run, captured by military. Experiments. Hulk gets loose. Bad guy gets formula. Bad guy becomes bigger, meaner Bad-Hulk. Military must rely on Hulk to stop Bad Hulk. And Iron Man (with or without sound), goes like this: Tony Stark captured, builds prototype suit, escapes, bad guy gets old suit and makes bigger, meaner Iron Man suit. Military/government agency must rely on Iron Man to stop Bad Iron Man.Pyr® publishes only science fiction and fantasy novels. We are not currently looking for short story collections, anthologies, novellas or nonfiction. We do not consider material under 80,000 words in length. We strongly prefer that you query first. The required method for having manuscripts considered for publication is through an established literary agent. Agents can be found in such literary guides as Literary Marketplace and The Writer's Market.I repost them here because it keeps coming up. We don't consider anthology proposals, ever, no exceptions. I love anthologies, but I don't have a big enough list to publish more than the ones I do myself! And you gots to have an agent.
John C. Snider interviews me for the SciFiDimensions Podcast. You can hear in streaming from his website, or you can search iTunes for "SciFiDimensions." I've not listened to it yet, so no idea how I come off, but it felt like a very thorough interview at the time. We talk about Fast Forward 2,
Pyr, the art of John Picacio, and many more topics besides. He's a good interviewer, (and hit me with a curve ball out of the gate. Not that I'm saying that's a criteria for a good interview!) He also interviews Tim Lasuita, licensing director for Jack Lake Productions, a Canadian company involved in reprinting Classics Illustrated. Cool!There’s no theme to the Fast Forward series, other than excellence in storytelling. The stories in FF2 cover the spectrum of sub-genres, from near-future parables to far-future space opera, from post-cyberpunk to hard SF; from cautionary tales a la The Twilight Zone to uplifting vignettes that affirm the best in human nature. With such a wide selection of styles and themes, it should come as no surprise that not every entry will appeal to every reader. At the very least, FF2 is like a Whitman Sampler; a little something for everyone, and if you find a story you like, it’ll be from a writer with plenty of other work you can chase down later.
I'm back, sooner even than I expected to be, with another post at Tor.com.UK scientists working at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford and the universities of York and Strathclyde have tested a "mini-magnetosphere" enveloping a model spacecraft in the lab. It turns out that their prototype offers almost total protection against high energy solar particles.Deflector shields are a reality. Awesome.
So, is it just me, or does House have more technobabble than any scifi show ever did?
So much so that I avoided seeing it until now. I'd heard initial reports that Spider-Man 3
sucked, and I was so devastated by the disappointment that was X-Men 3, that I just couldn't bear to be let down the same way by my favorite Marvel character. Even when it came up in the Netflix que, it sat unopened for a month until my wife started urging me to just return it unwatched so we could move on to Juno.
So I broke down and watched it this week, steeling myself for a heartache.
but it shouldn't be. This is a movie about a guy who got his superpowers by being bitten by a radioactive/genetically engineered arachnid. I've read the comic, and this was the comic. It was everything I love about Spider-Man and always have. It was a great companion to the previous two.
Back from World Fantasy 2008 in Calgary, AB, Canada. The con felt smaller than most, but the hotel, the Hyatt Regency, was wonderful, the bar quite nice, the wait staff really friendly and helpful, and there were enough good restaurants in walking vicinity to provide options, but nothing so wonderful nearby as to pull people away for too long.
Todd Lockwood was the Artist Guest of Honor. Todd and I have only known each other a year, but in that time, I've really come to dig him as a person (having already digged him as an artist). He brought prints of his work to hang in the show, and the largest by far was the print of the illustration he did for our just-released novel, The Stormcallerby Tom Lloyd. Seeing as how these were prints (he works digitally) that could be printed at any size, his choice of size for The Stormcaller was especially cool. And seeing it at this size was just magnificent, but getting to spend as much time with Todd as I did was even better.
Having the time to spend was a real plus of this convention for me, as I was able to get actual quality facetime with Rani Graff (publisher and chief editor of Israel's Graff Publishing), Alan Beatts (owner of Borderlands Books), Mark Newton and Christian Dunn (of Solaris books), David Anthony Durham (author of Acacia), new author Tim Akers, and a host of people who usually only see me running from one meeting to the next. "Not running" was pretty much the order of my day here, as I went with a determination to have conversations that lasted longer than 5 minutes. The result was that I really enjoyed this convention.
who attended World Con as well and who I hope will keep coming to these. Loved being with Liza Trombi, Diana Gill, Marc Gascoigne, Jeremy Lassen, Jetse De Vries, Kay Kenyon, Louise Marley, Jim Minz, Lee Modesitt, Jude Feldman, Farah Mendlesohn, Jacob Weisman. And meet new friends like Asaf Ashery (who can put a cigarette out on his hand) and the incomparable Daryl Gregory (who writes a mean short story).
Hats were a weekend long theme. Lots of them being passed around from head to head (including mine, with very mixed results.) The only ones who really pulled it off were Marjorie M. Liu, pictured here above with Bill Willingham and wearing a cowboy hat, Graham Joyce, with John Picacio and the same cowboy hat, and Mark Newton, with this Canadian Mountie hat.
Now, I'm not surprised that Marjorie can make the hat work - I suspect she can make anything work - and Graham really threw himself into the part, desperately trying to sound "western" with lines like "m heya t' fug yu up," - but that anyone can make a Mountie hat work is really an accomplishment! Mark, I am in awe.
Borderlands Scotch tasting was hands down the best party, even if I stick to beer and wine. Saturday's dinner at the Gypsy Bistro hands down the best meal. And lunch with Marc Gascoigne was great even if the fish and chips weren't. Talking to him at length has me excited to see what he does with Angry Robot. He's pictured here with John Berlyne, associate editor for SFRevu, whose got his own interesting venture upcoming.
As to the World Fantasy Awards, I'm very, very happy for Rob Shearman, he of the new Doctor Who episode "Dalek" fame, who was attending his very first con and won a World Fantasy Award for Best Collection for Tiny Deaths.
Rob was a nice guy, who seemed a bit overwhelmed by the whole con scene, but I hope he'll become a regular at these things.
Solaris is delighted to announce a major new anthology from ex-Interzone editor Jetse De Vries.
Christian Dunn said of the deal: “Jetse has been quite vocal in his opinions about moving SF in a more positive direction, and it’s a journey Solaris are delighted to be accompanying him on.”
Jetse de Vries was co-editor of Interzone for four-and-a-half years, and his non-fiction has appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction, the BSFA´s Focus and others. His fiction has appeared in a few dozen publications on both sides of the Atlantic, most recently in Postscripts, Clarkesworld Magazine, Hub, Escape Pod, and Flurb. Shine is his first post-Interzone project. Jetse lives in the city of Hieronymus Bosch, has a blog at eclipticplane.blogspot.com and can be contacted at Jetse.deVries@gmail.com.
BL Publishing, a division of Games Workshop Group PLC has been publishing SF and Fantasy under its Black Library imprint for over ten years. Solaris was founded in February 2007 with the aim of publishing original genre fiction for the US and UK mass markets. In its first year Solaris gained praise from many critics, especially for its back to basics approach. Solaris continues to attract high profile authors to its stable. For more information visit www.solarisbooks.com
For more information please contact Mark Newton on mark.newton@games-workshop.co.uk or on ++44 (0)115 - 916 8384
Jetse reports that he has a SHINE anthology website, "doubling up as an open platform for optimistic SF" here: Shine Anthology Blog.
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."...the real challenge is writing near future SF. Stross I believe said near future sf is impossible. I respectfully say that is bullshit. To be relevant that is exactly what SF needs and how SF is falling down on the job right now. SF can do escapism just fine right now. But dealing with things head on? Not so well. SF has to get down in the nitty gritty of the horrible position we are in right now or it runs the risk of being just as irrelevant as the next medieval based fantasy trilogy. Yes it is hard to do. Who ever said writing was supposed to be easy? Show some guts."And I particularly liked Chris Roberson's exact opposite reaction:
"I'd love to see more people playing what Rudy Rucker calls the 'power chords' of science fiction. He describes these as 'those classic SF topes that have the visceral punch of heavy musical riffs.' The list includes: Blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, immersive virtual realities, clones, robots, teleportation, alien-controlled pod people, endless shrinking, the shattering of planet Earth, intelligent goo, antigravity, generation starships, ecodisaster, pleasure-center zappers, alternate universes, nanomachines, mind viruses, higher dimensions, a cosmic computation that generates our reality and, of course, the attack of the giant ants. I want more of that stuff. The good stuff, the fun stuff. The mind-expanding thought-experiments and heady adventure stories."And I loved Jay Lake's analogy, which explains how I can reconcile both of the above:
"Literature is like rock and roll...new movements come along, but the old ones never die. Reader tastes change, writers and publishers adapt, or they don't. I for one hope to keep writing what I love, and keep adapting at the same time."Amen.
In their review of Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller,Dreamwatch's Total SciFi says that the book "brings hope for the future of fantasy literature." What's not to love about that? They make some weird analogies between the novels protagonist, Isak, and Neo of The Matrix that somewhat elude me. But what's not to love about:"This dark medieval tale of rejection and revelation encapsulates the more sinister side of the fantasy genre, exploring the precarious nature of power and its unwavering ability to manipulate... might not be the first time we’ve seen a man of humble beginnings become rich and powerful in the blink of an eye, but the subtle volatility of the plot is extremely refreshing and certainly revitalises the premise."
With the death earlier this year of Arthur C Clarke, the last of science fiction's Golden Age giants, and with mainstream literature becoming increasingly speculative and futuristic, is science fiction as a genre dying out?They have a page where you can vote for your favorite science fiction book. Naturally, I might have a few suggestions of folks who should be on their radar.We plan to explore this question in a special edition of New Scientist out on 15 November – as well as reviewing the best new science fiction books and talking to some of the world's leading writers.
October 2, 2008
CONTACT: Jill Maxick at 800-853-7545
Look Who’s Talking Up Pyr
A Variety of Notable Fans Brand It Well Worth Reading
Amherst, NY — The conventional wisdom holds that publishers don't have dedicated readerships, authors and subgenres do. Those few publishers that do cultivate a single brand identity tend to concentrate their focus on a particular subgenre, such as military science fiction.
Yet over the last few years, we have begun to hear from readers, critics, chain bookstore buyers, distributors, bloggers and independent bookstores, that Pyr is becoming an exception to this notion. It seems a Pyr brand is taking hold—based not on any one niche within the genre, but on the expectation of a general level of extremely high quality.
Every press likes to identify their readership. Whether for epic fantasy, hard science fiction, sci-fantasy blends, space opera or something else, just who thinks of Pyr as a line worth reading?
Junot DÃaz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, says “Pyr books has in a few short years become the imprint to beat in the science fiction and fantasy fields.”
DÃaz explains, “[With The First Law series, Joe] Abercrombie has written the finest epic fantasy trilogy in recent memory. He's one writer that no one should miss. Ian McDonald’s Brasyl is beyond superb. This novel should have beaten all comers for all the main awards. And who is writing space opera as sharp as Kay Kenyon in her The Entire And The Rose series?”
Barbara Ehrenreich—author of This Land Is Their Land and Nickel and Dimed (Metropolitan Books)—was asked by Time Magazine to name a guilty pleasure, something she reads when she doesn’t want to work. She named River of Gods by Ian McDonald. Ehrenreich said, “There aren't many literary sci-fi thrillers that deliver a mind-expanding metaphysical punch, and this one ended all too soon. But in the afterglow of McDonald's lushly blooming imagination, even the real world is looking better.”
Joseph Mallozzi writes and produces one of television’s hottest science fiction shows, Stargate: Atlantis. During production in Vancouver, Canada, he regularly communicates with the show’s fans through online forums and blogs. Somehow, he also finds time to read for pleasure—and some of his recent favorites come from Pyr.
Mallozzi says, “Pyr continues to impress with its growing line-up of premiere genre fiction. From Justina Robson's mind-bending Quantum Gravity series to Kay Kenyon's thoughtful and provocative Entire and the Rose saga, it's an imprint marked for offering up some of the best Fantasy and SF being written today.”
Apparently, even Stargate: Atlantis characters read Pyr books. In recent episodes, both Chuck the technician and Dusty were seen reading Theodore Judson’s The Martian General’s Daughter.
Lou Anders, Pyr Editorial Director, notes, “Pyr’s goal from day one was to provide books of a consistently high quality, so it is extremely gratifying to hear that readers—famous, fictional, or otherwise—feel that is what they are getting.”
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My introduction to Fast Forward 2,"The Age of Accelerating Returns," has just gone up on SFSignal this morning.In support of Fast Forward 2,we've put the entirely of the opening story from the anthology online at the new Pyr Sample Chapters page. (If you are viewing this inside the frame of the Pyr site, you might right click to avoid opening a window in a window).
world powers - extends its reach throughout the solar system."I like to think I'm writing in the tradition of Ian Fleming's Bond novels (not the movies) but I'm trying to stay away from pastiche, and instead hope to explore the same debates about masculinity and Britishness he did, while perhaps coming to different conclusions."
