Author: Andrew Wheeler

Science Fiction/Fantasy Podcasts

The new episode of The Future And You went up for the beginning of the month; it includes conversations with Battlestar Galactica cast member Bodie Olmos, Walt (The Bananaslug) Boyes from Jim Baen’s Universe magazine, and the authors Robert Buettner, Mike Resnick, Randal L. Schwartz and Stoney Compton. How can you not want to hear what a man named “Bananaslug” has to say?

Episode # 40 of The Sci Phi Show is an introduction to the books and stories of Greg Egan.

The Odyssey Fantasy Workshop has just posted a new podcast, featuring Terry Bisson talking about setting. [via Locus Online]

Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Reviews

highlord-3818281I should warn you about these link-lists: Mondays tend to be longer than usual (since there’s a lot of content that goes up on the weekend, or early on Monday), and the beginning of the month tends to be longer than usual. Since we’re just past both of those things, this is going to be a really long one…

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist reviews Dragons of the Highlord Skies by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

A.N. Wilson reviews Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go in the Telegraph.

SF Crowsnest reviews a whole bunch of things this week:

  • first, here’s a review for Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier – a collection of essays by scientists about the plausibility of and evidence for various paranormal claims.
  • and there’s a review of Cory Doctorow’s new short story collection, Overclocked
  • another review covers Kay Kenyon’s new science fantasy novel Bright of the Sky
  • a review of Ian McDonald’s Brasyl
  • a review of Eliot Fintushel’s Breakfast With the Ones You Love
  • a review of Kage Baker’s new “Company” short story collection, Gods and Pawns
  • a review of David Deveraux’s Hunter’s Moon
  • a review of a new art book – James Bama: American Realist – about the cover artist best known for his ‘70s Doc Savage series
  • a review of Charles de Lint’s Memory & Dream
  • a review of Chris Moriarty’s Spin Control
  • a review  of David Anthony Durham’s first fantasy novel, the epic Acacia
  • and several other reviews, too, but my fingers are getting tired.

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In Memoriam: Fred Saberhagen (1930-2007)

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Frederick Thomas Saberhagen is reported to have died at his home in Albuquerque, NM on the afternoon of Friday, June 29th, after a two-year battle with cancer.

Fred Saberhagen was best known for the long series of novels and stories about the implacable life-destroying thinking machines known as the Bersekers; the series began with the collection Berserker (1967) and ran for nearly two dozen books in the years since. The Berserkers typified the central SFnal conflict of Humanity versus the coldness of the universe, and Saberhagen rang dozens of changes on that idea, always championing the impulse of life to go on and thrive against all odds. He also wrote many other science fiction novels and stories, beginning in 1961, when Galaxy published his debut story, "Volume PAA-PYX."

Saberhagen’s fantasy work was centered around the long "Book of Swords" series, which began as a trilogy in the early 1980s and extended into a further eight-novel "Book of Lost Swords" sequence, a connection to his earlier Empire of the East trilogy, and a new series begun with 2006’s Ardneh’s Sword. Saberhagen was quoted at the time as wanting to try a fantasy series with a large number of magical objects — the twelve swords — since most such series had only one or two powerful items.

Saberhagen’s horror novels were also notable, with his The Dracula Tape (1975) being a then-modern, very atmospheric retelling of the events of Bram Stoker’s Dracula from the point-of-view of the Count, in his own words. The series continued for another nine books, including The Holmes-Dracula File (1978), in which Dracula encounters Sherlock Holmes. (more…)

Links About Art and Artists

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SF Revu interviews two artists in their current issue: John Jude Palencar and Stephan Martiniere.

Eddie Campbell has been posting a lot about covers (mostly from Bacchus and related comics from the late ‘90s), but today he writes about what kind of paper he draws on.

Illustration: The Arm of the Stone, copyright John Jude Palencar

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In Memoriam: Sterling Lanier

lanier-7816285 Jane Jewell, Executive Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has received word of the death of Sterling Lanier on Thursday, June 28th at the age of 79.

Sterling Edmund Lanier worked as both a writer and editor in the science fiction field beginning in the early 1960s; he was published extensively in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, especially with his "Brigadier Ffellowes" club stories. As an editor, he worked for Chilton for various periods in the ’60s, and, most famously, was responsible for the book publication of Frank Herbert’s Dune in 1965. Starting in the 1970s, he worked mostly on a freelance basis, as a sculptor, jeweler, and writer.

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His best-known novel is his second, Hiero’s Journey (1973), an adventure story set in a far-future world long after a nuclear war. Its sequel, The Unforsaken Hiero (1983), was nearly as popular with SF readers. Speculation about a possible third Hiero book continued, but Lanier had no new publications, or substantial contact with the SF field, since the mid-80s.

He had spent recent years in Florida with his wife, Ann.

Science Fiction/Fantasy News & Links

  • Uncategorized
  • July 1, 2007

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Variety reports that Robert E. Howard’s most famous sword-swinger, Conan the Barbarian, may be coming back to the screen via New Line Pictures, mere weeks after Warner Brothers lost the rights to the Cimmerian. [report – but not link – originally from SciFi Wire]

Warming us all up for the publication off Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in less than a month, the Californian provides a short history of the boy wizard, with lots of learned quotes.

Time Magazine, also on the Harry Potter beat, talks to the “brain trust” at Scholastic – J.K. Rowling’s US publisher – about all of the security measures in place to keep the events of Deathly Hallows secret.

Onelowerlight has thrown down the gauntlet: Serenity is “not good SF” because it has too much sex and is “preachy” about things that blogger does not agree with. The sound you hear is a million browncoats screaming in unison… [via SF Signal]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Reviews and Interviews

  • Uncategorized
  • June 30, 2007

wanderer-9974815Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist was not impressed by David Bilsborough’s debut fantasy novel, The Wanderer’s Tale.

The Baltimore City Paper reviews the new all-original anthology The New Space Opera, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan.

Another review of the Dozois-Strahan New Space Opera comes from Locus’s Gary K. Wolfe.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy News & Links, June 28th

  • News
  • June 28, 2007

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Mad Magazine goes for the easy jokes with their “Rejected Star Wars Stamps.”

The UK’s own Guardian newspaper wonders why science fiction is more popular now on TV than it used to be, and blames 9/11.  Others have already pointed out that the Guardian seems to have forgotten the mid-90s surge of SF and Fantasy TV (Buffy, anyone? Babylon 5, perhaps?), but at least they’re saying nice things…

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist is running a contest to give away a few copies of Jay Lake’s new novel, Mainspring, set in a clockwork solar system. (That bizarre mental image you just got? Yes – it’s exactly like that.)

Did you know that ABEbooks.com (the noted conglomerator of used book retailers) has been running a contest for Harry Potter-related poetry? And that the entries, so far, are not nearly as horribly soul-destroying as you might expect?

James Maxey, author of the new novel Bitterwood, ruminates on how to create dragons.

Jonathan McCalmont has been to see “The Ugly Side of Fandom,” and reports back about what he has seen.

Hey, didja notice that the cover from last week’s New Yorker was by Pixar artist Lou Romano? Romano explains how he got the job, and what went into it, on his blog this week.

Artwork copyright E.C. Publications. All Rights Reserved.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Reviews, June 28th

  • News
  • June 28, 2007

The Agony Column loves Matthew Hughes’s new far-future philosophical detective comedy The Spiral Labyrinth, and doesn’t care who knows it.

OF Blog of the Fallen reviews Tobias S. Buckell’s second novel, the space opera Ragamuffin.

Strange Horizons reviews the new Mike Resnick-edited anthology of future police stories, Alien Crimes.

Blogcritics reviews Interworld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. (An amusing sidenote: Gaiman recently explained how he and Reaves originally pitched the idea as a movie, couldn’t get any interest from Hollywood, and wrote it up as a novel instead…only to have Hollywood come begging.)

The St. Marys-Mt. Druitt Star (one of my favorite newspaper names, by the way) has a very short, and not terribly useful, review of Cornelia Funke’s acclaimed Young Adult novel The Thief Lord.

David Louis Edelman (author of Infoquake and all-around smart guy) has been re-reading all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories and blogging about them; he’s just now gotten to that interesting item, Unfinished Tales.

Kate Nepveu reviews Charles Stross’s Hugo-nominated novel Glasshouse.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy Interviews, June 28th

  • Uncategorized
  • June 28, 2007

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Fantasy Book Critic interviews Austin Grossman, author of the swell new superhero novel Soon I Will Be Invincible.

Locus Online has posted excerpts from their interview with Nalo Hopkinson, author of The New Moon’s Arms, from the June issue of the print magazine.

Locus Online has similarly posted excerpts from the interview with Holly Phillips, also from the June issue.

CNN recently talked to Michael Chabon about his new alternate history novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, in which the Jewish homeland formed after WW II was in the Alaska panhandle.

SciFi Wire chats with Tim Pratt, author of the Asimov’s Readers’ Award-winning (and Hugo Award nominated) story “Impossible Dreams.”

Stage Noise has a podcast-interview with SF novelist Sean Williams and then (separately) with Jeff Wayne, creator of a War of the Worlds musical. [via Talking Squid]

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