Look Over There
Still no actual content here, but there's good stuff elsewhere.
greengolux has three Worldcon panel reports:At Worldcon I attended three particularly fascinating literary panels. The first two were on the aesthetics of science fiction and fantasy respectively, and the third was entitled 'Waiting for the Fantastic' and was about those pieces of fiction that never quite break out into explicit sf or fantasy, but feel like they could do at any moment. These three panels, in a way, formed the core of the convention for me. Between them they set out to explore the very heart of the real reason I was there in the first place, attempting to get to the bottom of what science fiction, fantasy, and other works that teeter on the brink of sf and fantasy are trying to do and how they set about doing it.
zarabee reports a question that China Mieville asked of Gary Wolfe and John Clute during their conversation:He commented about the the naivety of SF, and the literal reading of things in SF, and asked whether the critical approach and the interpretation which criticism necessitated means that the naievety is lost. He wanted [Clute and Wolfe] to talk about about the battle between naivety and sophistication which ensues when we start to explore the metaphorisation and the meaning of it all.
Jonathan Strahan enthuses about two stories, one by Jeff Vandermeer and one by Geoff Ryman:I got online this morning and downloaded the night's email. In amongst it was an email from Gordon with the December F&SF attached. I was delighted to see that there was a new Geoff Ryman novelette in the issue, a story called 'The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai'. From what I can tell, it's the cover story for the issue and is quite unusual. The story head note references something called 'monkpunk', and it's tempting to be glib and say this is it. But it would be glib. The story is a very subtle and quite powerful tale of a warrior monk who leads a revolt to save the country he loves, becomes what he detests and, possibly, is responsible for a change in the way the world works. It doesn't matter whether this story is SF or fantasy (my bet is SF, though I'd be curious to hear what Gordon thinks), but it was either going to be masterful or awful. Following so closely on the heels of his completely wonderful novel Air, it should come as no surprise, that it is far closer to masterful than not. A highlight in a year of stories.
Needless to say, I am jealous of Mr Strahan's early-reading privileges.
greengolux has three Worldcon panel reports:At Worldcon I attended three particularly fascinating literary panels. The first two were on the aesthetics of science fiction and fantasy respectively, and the third was entitled 'Waiting for the Fantastic' and was about those pieces of fiction that never quite break out into explicit sf or fantasy, but feel like they could do at any moment. These three panels, in a way, formed the core of the convention for me. Between them they set out to explore the very heart of the real reason I was there in the first place, attempting to get to the bottom of what science fiction, fantasy, and other works that teeter on the brink of sf and fantasy are trying to do and how they set about doing it.
zarabee reports a question that China Mieville asked of Gary Wolfe and John Clute during their conversation:He commented about the the naivety of SF, and the literal reading of things in SF, and asked whether the critical approach and the interpretation which criticism necessitated means that the naievety is lost. He wanted [Clute and Wolfe] to talk about about the battle between naivety and sophistication which ensues when we start to explore the metaphorisation and the meaning of it all.
Jonathan Strahan enthuses about two stories, one by Jeff Vandermeer and one by Geoff Ryman:I got online this morning and downloaded the night's email. In amongst it was an email from Gordon with the December F&SF attached. I was delighted to see that there was a new Geoff Ryman novelette in the issue, a story called 'The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai'. From what I can tell, it's the cover story for the issue and is quite unusual. The story head note references something called 'monkpunk', and it's tempting to be glib and say this is it. But it would be glib. The story is a very subtle and quite powerful tale of a warrior monk who leads a revolt to save the country he loves, becomes what he detests and, possibly, is responsible for a change in the way the world works. It doesn't matter whether this story is SF or fantasy (my bet is SF, though I'd be curious to hear what Gordon thinks), but it was either going to be masterful or awful. Following so closely on the heels of his completely wonderful novel Air, it should come as no surprise, that it is far closer to masterful than not. A highlight in a year of stories.
Needless to say, I am jealous of Mr Strahan's early-reading privileges.