On First Finishing Mira Grant's Newsflesh Trilogy

Seldom I've dabbled in the realms of red,
Or splashed my cricket bat with sanguine stains:
Who once the zombie genre sore disdains
Not lightly is amused by dudes undead.
At whiles attempts most valiant I'd read:
Bill Swears and Alden Bell took noble pains,
Yet none, meseems, did nosh upon my brains
Till ( Read more... )

"The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming."

Philip K Dick, 1980.

SF as the rightful literature not of "What if - ?" but "My God; what if - ?!" is a motto I would willingly blaze in forty-eight point letters of gold upon ( Read more... )

I've found I can't keep re-writing this, because it gets every way worse each time, and there's nothing I really ought to change in it; so here's a few words re-posted from my comment on John Scalzi's tribute thread to the late Anne McCaffrey, one of my great influences from my early teens: -

I was twelve, and in various ways less than happy, when I ( Read more... )

Following on from Nicola Griffith's Russ Pledge post in June, and the ongoing discussions about the literary invisibility of female authors* -

Since the end of May, guestblogger Anna at Echidne of the Snakes has been posting a Sunday series on A Literary Canon of Women Writers, beginning with Enheduanna of Ur (23rd century BCE).  She's now reached ( Read more... )

From
( Read more... )

I said I would get back to this.

Let's begin with the assumption that a story's protagonist wants something, and that they have some sort of personal code, constraining what they will do to get it.  If either of these is false, I'm probably not among the intended audience.

So a victory would seem to consist of more or less getting what they're going ( Read more... )

I eventually broke down, and gave Sriva from The Worm Ouroboros a handful of spare paragraphs to buy some Thramnian wine with.  But as soon as my brain is my own again, who now invades it but the mutant mindchild of Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin, come to a near-future UK to start an impossible and undesirable revolution - with a very high trump ( Read more... )

Got back last night from a thoroughly revivifying week with the Mam in Anglesey.  Heard our first cuckoo, by the feet of Holy Mountain!  Saw our first puffin, clowning around by the great cleft in the rocks of South Stack!  Ate sea bass with banana and tomato chutney at the tiny, unpretentious, but ever-delicious Harbourfront Bistro!    (The ( Read more... )