Here's what our free-books bags at World Fantasy Con contained:

• The First Betrayal (The Chronicles of Josan, Book 1) by Patricia Bray (2006)
• The Curse of the Raven Mocker by Marly Youmans (2006)
• Undertow by Elizabeth Bear (2007)
• Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller (2004) (two copies)
• The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (2006)

Really I shouldn't post a discussion question when I'm ferociously busy (like the last post, languishing for attention), but yhlee's post from partway into Throne of Jade prompted this thought (which is spoilery for the end of Throne) and it'll be stuck in my head all day if I don't post it:

The relationship betwen Laurence and Temeraire has been noted ( Read more... )

Another sucky week here at Chateau Steelypips, so let's talk about writing instead.

Apparently "ten things I know about writing" is going around as a meme. I'm not doing ten, because this is a specific list: ways that writing a legal brief is like writing a work of fiction, as noticed by me in the last couple of weeks.

1. Reader expectations.
   You ( Read more... )

Last week, in talking about something related, Chad and I wandered into a discussion of noir plots and why I tend not to like them, with the strong exception of L.A. Confidential. He eventually put his finger on it:

It's the noble but stupid gesture.

Or, less flippantly, it's because the noir protagonist is upright but the world is not; he stays ( Read more... )

1. Chad has posted his own Fantasy Conversion Kit, with a different emphasis, at The Library of Babel.
2. I hadn't realized that vonnielake started this and is keeping lists in her memories.
3. I posted my list to rec.arts.sf.written, where there is some discussion going on.

My entry in the genre conversion kits discussion is very belated, but here it is all the same (I came up with a list of titles back when the discussions were going around, and then didn't have time to add reasons to the list). Since I'm not up-to-date on science fiction ( Read more... )

I propose the following theorem (with corollary) regarding discussion of science fiction as a genre.

(ETA: Now revised for clarity! Plus a tentative title, and a suggested additional theorem.)

Theorem of Science Fiction Denial:

If an artist makes a point of asserting that a creative work is not science fiction, then (1) the odds that the work ( Read more... )

So we just watched Hero, because I was very tired and lying back and looking at something pretty seemed like a relaxing way to end the evening.

Unfortunately, when one spends five minutes after a movie's end yelling about how STUPID it was, one is not exactly in the mood to drop off into restorative slumber.

( spoilers bigger than your head )