"A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad in the January issue of Clarkesworld was lots of fun. :)

Must gather up more stuff to nominate for this year's awards. Liu Cixin's "Death's End" is going in there.

Oh darn - "Cat Pictures Please" by Naomi Kritzer, the short story that made it onto the Hugo ballot because Thomas Mays withdrew the Puppy-nominated "The Commuter" (respect is due), is not much more than a bit of entertaining fluff. Well, on to "Space Raptor Butt Invasion".

The Sandifer-man is right: just throw out slate ballots (ie ballots which ( Read more... )

The once-more Rabid Puppy-infested Hugo ballot is out, and File770.com is down, presumably from the strain of people slapping their foreheads and grinding their teeth. (Which means that for now I have nowhere to inflict these processes on myself except here ( Read more... )

My first ever Hugo nominations! omg I made a lot of mistakes. Should've nominated Fantasia for the retro award, Mike Glyer's File 770 for best fanzine, and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form). At least I figured out in time that I'd put a bunch of novelettes in the short story category, which meant I was able ( Read more... )

The Sad Puppies posted their list of recommendations for Hugo nominations on 17 March.

Two weeks before the nominations close.

That's a slate.

(The fact that they're acting like two-year-olds about authors being asked to be removed from their list tends to support this interpretation.)

Jon brought the July/August issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine home from the US for me, and it contains a couple of gems: "The Deepwater Bride" by Tamsin Muir, and "The Body Pirate" by Van Aaron Hughes. (The whole issue was pretty terrific - I enjoyed Rachel Pollack's "Johnny Rev" and Betsy James' "Paradise and Trout". Antidotes to all the ( Read more... )

I want everyone to read this short, untitled fantasy story, posted on Tumblr in February 2015. I plan to nominate it for the next round of Hugos:

when she is born, they name her mary.

I also plan to nominate Kelly Robson's short story "Two-Year Man" and Paul McAuley's "Wild Honey", both from the August 2015 issue of Asimov's ( Read more... )

Much of what I read in the major US SF magazines leaves me cold - so cold, in fact, that I skip most stories after reading about a page. (I'm still catching up with what's happening in contemporary SF, but I have read an awful lot of the stuff over the years.) So here I am on the treadmill with the September 2015 issue of Analog ( Read more... )

A terrific privilege of buying a support membership for Worldcon, and thus voting rights for the Hugos, is the ton of goodies included in the Hugo voters' packet - even this year's one, which is of course stuffed with unreadable Puppy rubbish. The "graphic story" examples in particular were a joy to read - juicy slabs of the new Ms Marvel, Rat ( Read more... )

I'm drinking a Cuba Libre made with Pepsi Max and making a list of books to read as research for when I get stuck into redrafting Strange Flesh, so I thought I'd share some links with you while I'm at it ( Read more... )