Books
As any of you who know me understand, I love me some books. Therefore, many of the postings on this blog will be reviews of books, comics, magazines, etc. All sorts of interesting stuff (okay, maybe that's pushing it, but I digress...).
Today's post is about METATROPOLIS, which is editor John Scalzi's attempt to form a universe with a group of SF and fantasy writers, with the intent of creating the fictional world, and then allowing other writers to play within that universe. The stories were originally developed for an audio anthology featuring each of the writers, but Subterranean Press, an excellent publisher of exclusive and signed limited run books, decided to put out a print edition of the stories. The result is terrifically entertaining. Scalzi recruited fellow SF and fantasy writers Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Karl Schroeder, Elizabeth Bear and Scalzi himself to each write a tale about characters within this post-apocalyptic world, and the results are not a disappointment.
I was a big fan of Scalzi's writing before reading this (I read his WHATEVER blog ever day - http://whatever.scalzi.com/), so I knew that it would probably be good. Buckell is a new find of mine, having heard of his work through Scalzi, and Bear is an excellent writer and an author of some pretty terrific books herself. Lake and Schroeder were the newcomers to me, and after reading this, I'll probably seek out more of their work. I was especially impressed with Lake's "In the Forests of the Night," and the great characters that he established in the first story of the book. I just wanted to read more about all of them.
METATROPOLIS is currently sold out at Subterranean, but a trade edition is planned for the future, so there is hope. Give this a try if you like a shared universe approach to fiction, as this one is worth the effort.
Today's post is about METATROPOLIS, which is editor John Scalzi's attempt to form a universe with a group of SF and fantasy writers, with the intent of creating the fictional world, and then allowing other writers to play within that universe. The stories were originally developed for an audio anthology featuring each of the writers, but Subterranean Press, an excellent publisher of exclusive and signed limited run books, decided to put out a print edition of the stories. The result is terrifically entertaining. Scalzi recruited fellow SF and fantasy writers Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Karl Schroeder, Elizabeth Bear and Scalzi himself to each write a tale about characters within this post-apocalyptic world, and the results are not a disappointment.
I was a big fan of Scalzi's writing before reading this (I read his WHATEVER blog ever day - http://whatever.scalzi.com/), so I knew that it would probably be good. Buckell is a new find of mine, having heard of his work through Scalzi, and Bear is an excellent writer and an author of some pretty terrific books herself. Lake and Schroeder were the newcomers to me, and after reading this, I'll probably seek out more of their work. I was especially impressed with Lake's "In the Forests of the Night," and the great characters that he established in the first story of the book. I just wanted to read more about all of them.
METATROPOLIS is currently sold out at Subterranean, but a trade edition is planned for the future, so there is hope. Give this a try if you like a shared universe approach to fiction, as this one is worth the effort.