I'm not quite sure why I got this, given my low opinion of the editor's fiction andnon-fiction; I certainly bought it before last year's debate about the tainted Solaris brand, and without looking inside the front cover where the dismal gender ratio (one female author out of 18) might have put me off ( Read more... )

I noticed John Scalzi's challenge to his readers to read this year's Best Short Story nominees, and thought that this would be as good a day as any to get through them myself. They are all short, they are all available for free online, and three of them are very good. My preferences will be allocated as follows (in traditional reverse order of ( Read more... )

This is a collection of written dialogues between two well-established sf writers, originally published over the last ten years in the SFWA Bulletin. I was surprised by just how interesting I found it to be. I have an inkling of the problems facing the professional sf writer from reading their blogs and talking to them, but Resnick and Malzberg ( Read more... )

Finally, rounding up my reviews of the Hugo written fiction nominees, here is my rating of the candidates for Best Short Story, as before in reverse order of preference ( Read more... )

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  Meeting a king (and running out of things to say) | Charlemagne's notebook | Economist.com
  The Economist confronts Swedish royalty
  (tags: eu)
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  A Literary Theory : Uncertain Principles
  Why so many awful Mike Resnick stories end up getting shortlisted for awards
  (tags: sf)

This being the quickest category to read, there are already a number of summaries of the entire ballot out there - Matt Hilliard, Ian Sales, Abigail Nussbaum, Steven Klotz, Rich Horton and Coderyder. There is considerable consensus about which is the best story on the list; there is universal consensus about the worst. My preferences, in reverse ( Read more... )

Five - well, four - decent stories in this line-up. For further opinions see Rich Horton, Abigail Nussbaum, and the readers of Vector (with links to other reviews, here, here, here, here and here). [ETA: also Ian Sales.] As before I'll list them in reverse order of preference:

5) Alistair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders, by Mike Resnick: two old men ( Read more... )