Omnivoracious

Steampunk and Jake von Slatt: Retro Tech for the Now Generation

   
The cover of Steampunk and one of Jake von Slatt's steampunk creations...

Steampunk fiction features a heady blend of influences like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and inventor-hero fiction from the American pulps of the 1800s. It typically includes some mix or mash-up of airships, mad (or, at least, heavily-invested) scientists, eccentric inventors, Victorian-era adventure, and clockwork technology of the sort that we've largely abandoned. Its godfather may well be Michael Moorcock, with his novel The Warlord of the Air, and it gained huge popularity in its first wave because of novels like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine in the 1980s and early 1990s. Other classics include Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy, K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices, and Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates.

Now, it's returned in full force through what's being called the "steampunk subculture"--a subculture my wife Ann and I have encountered and enjoyed while editing our most recent anthology, Steampunk. The book collects iconic short stories of the subgenre by the likes of Joe Lansdale, Michael Chabon, James Blaylock, Neal Stephenson, Mary Gentle, Rachel E. Pollock, and many more. Quite purely by accident, Steampunk's release has coincided with major features on steampunk in the national press, like a recent article in the New York Times. Not only has our anthology already gone back to reprint, but we've been inundated with requests for interviews (including from the Weather Channel website!), with the anthology featured recently on the LA Times blog and on Australian national radio. (For an amusing moment or two, listen to the radio interview and wait for my major brain freeze when asked about steampunk fashion, whereupon I babble about "mechanical corsets," which prompts the interviewer to ask, "What are you wearing?")

   

But the great thing about having edited this anthology is the cross-pollination. Some in the steampunk subculture--brought there by other media like comics or movies, or simply through their friends and social groups--are encountering these classic stories for the first time. Meanwhile, we're getting a crash-course in the steampunk aesthetic, which especially appeals to our tastes in art. Baroque laptops and other retro-fitted gadgetry show that functional does not have to be seamless and slick to be pleasing to the eye. Websites like Brass Goggles, Voyages Extraordinaires, The Steampunk Librarian, and Dark Roasted Blend, among others, frequently hold forth on steampunk-related subjects. There's even a Steampunk Magazine, and bands that create steampunk music, like Abney Park.

One of the best-known "steampunks" is Jake von Slatt, the driving force behind the Steampunk Workshop. He's been featured on Boing Boing and in the previously mentioned NYT article, among many others. I interviewed him recently to satisfy my own curiousity about steampunk and the surrounding subculture...

Life Sucks--or Does It?

Okay, so it's still Monday, which isn't good, but it's also another day in First Second's self-declared "Vampire Month," in honor of Little Vampire and, drum roll please, Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece. Life Suck reads as if Joss Whedon and Dazed and Confused movie director Richard Linklater collaborated on a graphic novel about a 24-hour convenience store run by vampires. Just imagine if you're the night manager for that convenience store and you're "facing an eternity of restocking beef jerky and blood brew for Radu, your crappy boss and Vampire Master." Throw in romantic complications and you've got the undead recipe for something pretty unique as far as vampire stories go. Stylish and modern, Life Sucks made my Monday worthwhile.

For another unique vampire story, you could do worse than check out Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch. This heady blend of adventure, intrigue, surreal imagery, and savage supernatural conflict set in modern-day Moscow totally re-energized the vampire subgenre. (The movie's not bad, either.)

(Also remember--the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader. And in reply to your question, no, I'm not on First Second's payroll--I just think they're one of the coolest graphic novel publishers out there.)

Vampires? In May? Why, First Second, You Are a Cheeky Publisher, Aren't You?

One of my favorite graphic novel publishers, First Second, has declared May "Vampire Month" in one of those audacious out-of-season moves that means October/Halloween is now officially "Island Vacation Month". So far, the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader.

In heavily related news, First Second is promoting Little Vampires by Joann Sfar this month. The book collects a previously published story about a vampire going to school with two new adventures. The artwork is stunning, with crisp, deep colors and genius-level compositions. These are sly, funny, often slapstick narratives that adults and children alike will find delightful--all in one neat, new trade paper edition put together with First Second's usual attention to detail.

In spirit if not style, Little Vampires reminds me of one of my favorite kid's books: Bunnicula, the tale of a carrot-draining vampiric rabbit. Both are mischievous and hilarious, for one thing. Narrated by the family dog, Harold, and enriched by the clever cat Chester, Bunnicula recounts Harold and Chester's investigations into the new rabbit in the house. When tomatoes wind up being sucked dry, suspicions arise that the the bunny might not be as innocent as it seems. Although it seems unlikely anyone hasn't heard of Bunnicula by now, definitely check it out. It's a classic.

As is Little Vampires, frankly. Sfar is just a brilliant artist and storyteller.

James Owen's Search for the Red Dragon

Some multi-talented creators can write books and produce cover art for them. That's the case with James Owen and his Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographic series for young adults. The second book, The Search for the Red Dragon, was released this year. It's a gorgeous book in addition to a thrilling adventure, in no small part due to Owen's marvelous illustrations and cover art. The sketches above showing the creation of that cover art come from a page on his website where he details the whole process. I've posted the finished cover below so you can see the full realization of his vision.

The Search for the Red Dragon has been getting great reviews, and I recommend you pick it up. Here's a little bit more about the book:

It has been nine years since John, Jack, and Charles had their great adventure in the Archipelago of Dreams and became the Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica. Now they have been brought together again to solve a mystery: Someone is kidnapping the children of the Archipelago. And their only clue is a mysterious message delivered by a strange girl with artificial wings: "The Crusade has begun." Worse, they discover that all of the legendary Dragonships have disappeared as well. The only chance they have to save the world from a centuries-old plot is to seek out the last of the Dragonships -- the Red Dragon -- in a spectacular journey that takes them from Sir James Barrie's Kensington Gardens to the Underneath of the Greek Titans of myth.

 

New Anthologies: The Starry Rift and The Del Rey Book of SF and Fantasy

                   

The prolific anthologists Ellen Datlow and Jonathan Strahan have been up to their usual creative antics again, bringing to fruition yet more unique fiction projects for hungry genre readers.

Datlow's The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy is an unthemed collection of stories by the likes of Margo Lanagan, Elizabeth Bear, Maureen McHugh, Nathan Ballingrud, Jeffrey Ford, and eleven others. Locus wrote about the anthology, "....Datlow's ambitious volume could easily be [the now defunct online fiction site] Scifiction resurrected in trade paperback. Much the same authors, much the same sensibility--edgy contemporary or near-future stories, full of good prose and suspense, with a touch of horror often evident. ...a feast of good short fiction..." Although not as focused as Datlow's previous anthology, Inferno, genre enthusiasts should enjoy this interesting selection of tales. Datlow also has a blog where she writes about a variety of topics, including her anthologies.

Strahan enters the YA world with his The Starry Rift, which collects new science fiction stories for teens by Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, and Scott Westerfeld, among others. Strahan says about the anthology, "started with the idea that when people talked about science fiction for young adult readers they kept talking about the classic juveniles of the 1950s. Those books, novels like Robert Heinlein’s A Door into Summer, are wonderful, but they were written by people born before the First World War and were published not that long after the Second. However great those books might be, I wondered if they could possibly be meaningful to someone who’d been born in 1995. It seemed to me that it would be worth asking today’s best SF writers to write new stories that hopefully would resonate with readers today. And writers responded." For more information, check out the website created for the book.

Nebula Award Winners Announced

Breaking News: Michael Chabon wins the Nebula Award for best novel. The Yiddish Policemen's Union was announced the winner last night at the Nebula Award banquet in Austin, Texas. Michael Moorcock was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. For the full list of winners, visit Locus Online.

Friday Night Videos: Hidden Cities versus Toddler Reading a Dinosaur Encyclopedia

Tonight on Friday Night Videos, we bring committed bibliophiles across the world a clear choice--a clash of Titans that pits the brand-new Hidden Cities series by rising star Tim Lebbon and best-seller Christopher Golden (Mind the Gap, book one, out in May) against over five minutes of mind-numbing dinosaur name-reading by an anonymous toddler.

Yes, it's what you asked for in the non-stop phone calls, emails, and missives sent through my window with bricks. Lebbon and Golden beating up on a defenseless child. Enjoy!

(And remember: If you're here on a Friday night, you're not alone. There's at least one other.)

T.A. Pratt's Poison Sleep Might Just Infiltrate Your Dreams

T.A. Pratt's Marla Mason urban fantasies, Blood Engines and now Poison Sleep, relate the adventures of a "smart, saucy, slightly wicked witch of the East Coast" who combats murderous hummingbirds, weird frogs, and all kinds of human enemies in these lively, imaginative supernatural thrillers with elements of humor and whimsy. I talked to Pratt recently via email about this evolving series...

Amazon.com: You have tentacles of fungus in your latest book--and that's the first page I flipped to, oddly enough, given my fascination with both squid and mushrooms.
Pratt: There's even more fungus in the fourth book--a whole sorcerer dedicated to things fungal, who worships the giant honey mushroom colony in eastern Oregon as a god...

Amazon.com: Okay, now you're just pandering! However, if you had to pitch your book to Hollywood in two sentences, what would you say?
Pratt: "Ass-kicking sorceress fights plague of nightmares. She also gets laid." Speaking of Hollywood, a company called Phoenix Pictures optioned the series a few months ago, and, without getting into specifics, it looks like cool stuff might potentially be happening, barring the usual sorts of distractions and derailments. Though, this being Hollywood, it'll be a while before anything definitively materializes--or definitively dissolves in a puff of vapor. I try to cultivate an air of detached optimism...

What's the Fuss About Patrick Rothfuss?

   

Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, recently released in mass market paperback, is an Amazon staff favorite--and, really, what's not to like? Rothfuss doesn't write down to his audience, takes on epic themes, and manages to be original at the same time. He's also a down-to-earth, no-nonsense kind of guy, as evidenced by this new interview on SF Site, which fans should definitely check out. For example, asked about working on The Name of the Wind, Rothfuss says, "For more than a decade I worked on the book knowing I was more likely to be hit by a bus than get published...I do remember that fairly early on someone pointed out that I used the word 'alloy' and 'counterpoint' in the same sentence. That person pointed out that some people wouldn't actually know what an alloy was. I made a conscious decision right then that my book was written for people who either knew what that word meant, or were willing to look it up."  That's the kind of attitude that, perversely enough, more often than not produces great novels.

The next book in the trilogy is due out next year.

Tiptree Award Winner: Sarah Hall's Daughters of the North

The James Tiptree Jr. Award has been announced, and the winner is Sarah Hall for Daughters of the North (published in 2007 in England under the title The Carhullan Army). The winner will be celebrated on May 25 at Wiscon, a convention held in Madison, Wisconsin, and receives $1,000. The jurors for the award were Charlie Anders, Gwenda Bond (chair), Meghan McCarron, Geoff Ryman, and Sheree Renee Thomas.

As stated in the press release for the award, "The James Tiptree Jr. Award is presented annually to a work or works that explore and expand gender roles in science fiction and fantasy. The award seeks out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating. [It] is intended to reward those women and men who are bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles, a fundamental aspect of any society."

Judge Bond wrote of the winning novel, also a winner of European literary awards, “Hall does so many things well in this book – writing female aggression in a believable way, dealing with real bodies in a way that makes sense, and getting right to the heart of the contradictions that violence brings out in people, but particularly in women in ways we still don't see explored that often. I found the writing entrancing and exactly what it needed to be for the story; lean, but well-turned.”

"James Tiptree Jr." was the pen name of Alice Sheldon, whose short stories were, as the Tiptree administrators point out, "notable for their thoughtful examination of the roles of men and women in our society."

Win a Weekend with J.K. Rowling's "The Tales of Beedle the Bard"

Calling all Harry Potter fans!
Want to get your (gloved) hands on J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Amazon.com wants to send you and a friend to London, England to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course), handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself. Open to muggles ages 13 and older in 24 countries, the Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest challenges you to creatively answer one of the following three questions in 100 words or less:

• What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
• What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
• What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

An Amazon.com committee will select 10 semi-finalist submissions (based on creativity and writing style) from each of two age categories: 13-17 and 18-and-over. Amazon.com customers will determine the two finalists and Grand Prize winner by voting for their favorites. But hurry--submissions will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. PDT April 22, 2008. 

If you haven’t already, take a look at The Tales of Beedle the Bard:

Bravo TV's Top Writer, Flying Penguins, Vollman's New Children Book: It Must Be April 1

             
    (Squidpunk--a new genre? And the cover of William Vollman's new children's book...)

Ah, April. The full flush of spring, fields overburdened with wildflowers, birds singing, trees a thousand shades of green, and, of course, a sudden seasonal outpouring of very creative nonfiction on the internet. Even Information Week is reporting on it this year. So, here's a short selection of the weird and the silly, all of it as true as you want it to be...

Ed Rants reports on a number of fascinating news items, including William Vollman's new children's book and the creation of a new "pretentious fiction" category in the bookstore.

Locus Online gives us an inside look at Bravo TV's new Top Writer series, tells us that Cory Doctorow is releasing himself under Creative Commons, reveals that George R.R. Martin turning in his final manuscript has caused mass suicides at Bantam Books, and much else.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that scientists have discovered flying penguins:

Elsewhere, J.K. Rowling moves to trademark the words "Harry" and "Potter", Brandon Sanderson's The Way of the Kings stirs controversy, and, finally, some weirdo in a squid hat tries to start a new literary movement from his living room. Enjoy! And feel free to link to more in the comments section.

Thanks to Shaken & Stirred and Antick Musings research assistance.

Jim C. Hines Brings the Fantasy Funny

     

Jim C. Hines is the comic mastermind responsible for the Snort-Fest Trilogy--my name for it--consisting of Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, and, now, Goblin War (DAW). In these hilarious novels, Hines pokes fun at anything and everything while still maintaining a tight plot arc and creating believable characters. The result, to an old fantasy buff like me, is both entertaining and oddly nostalgic. I interviewed Mr. Hines via email recently to see what makes him tick, and to ask that all important question, "Ogres or goblins."

Amazon.com: How hard is it to do humorous heroic fantasy that also spoofs or satirizes serious heroic fantasy? There’s Shrek, there’s bad serious heroic fantasy, there’s all kind of competition.
Jim C. Hines: Actually, this is the kind of writing that's always come naturally to me. My first big sale was a story called "Blade of the Bunny." I whipped that story out in a week, and it won first place at Writers of the Future. Then my insecurities took over, and I spent years trying to write deep, serious, award-winning literature. One of my proudest moments was the first time I made someone in my writer's group cry with one of my stories. (On purpose, I mean.) I still do serious stories sometimes, but I've finally gotten comfortable with the lighter side of the genre. Heck, if a Campbell award winner like John Scalzi can write chapter-long fart jokes, I can certainly get away with a nose-picking injury...As for the competition, I've found that there's a pretty wide range of silly. I don't want to do outright parody, because I like keeping my own characters and stories at the core of the books. And to be honest, I'm not smart enough to do the kind of wickedly sharp satire you get from someone like Pratchett. Mostly, I just try to have fun with the story. If I'm making myself laugh, I figure most of my readers will be amused as well.

Thunderin' Felix Gilman's Thunderer

      

Felix Gilman's epic urban fantasy Thunderer was published in hardcover by Bantam Spectra earlier this year, to a rousing round of praise from the likes of Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and SciFi Weekly. Realms of Fantasy reviewer Paul Witcover wrote in part, "Gilman exuberantly plunders sources literary, historical, and mythological in bringing his protean labyrinth of a city to life, and the mysterious act of creation by which the imaginary is made real, and the real imaginary, becomes one of the novel’s main themes...This masterly first novel is as stunning and unexpected as a thunderclap out of a clear blue sky..." I recently interviewed Gilman via email about being a first-time novelist, our mutual contacts, and much else.

Amazon.com: Can you describe where you are while answering these questions?
Felix Gilman: In the day-job office, on a weekend. I am somewhere near the top floor of a very tall jet-black building. Through porthole-thick pressure-sealed windows I can see fog, wintry haze, the topmost parts of the Brooklyn Bridge, hundreds of thousands of other, more distant windows. Inside the office things are mostly beige, with some patches of grey or powder blue and highlights of brushed steel and glass. Document heaps flourish in the corners. Computers are hunkered down on every flat surface, whirring, watching. Beetle-like BlackBerrys rustle through the carpety undergrowth, foraging for scraps of unoccupied Time. Beware! There are lawyers here.

Amazon.com: Is being a published novelist everything you thought it would be? What didn't you expect?
Felix Gilman: I don't know what I expected, particularly. I'm very psychologically self-defensive, so I went into this with cringingly low expectations. I was genuinely surprised to see the book On Shelves! In Stores! Like A Real Book! But of course one’s expectations only ratchet up. I believe social scientists call this the "hedonic treadmill." Before you're published, you think if only I can get this turkey published, that'll be OK, I don't care what happens after that because I will be PUBLISHED and then everything will be OK forever. That lasts about three days, then you get used to being PUBLISHED, and it starts to seem normal, just an unremarkable background fact about yourself, like height or gender.  And then you start thinking screw this, why haven't I got a bestseller? Life is so unfair.

Amazon.com: What's the most absurd thing that's happened to you since the book came out?
Felix Gilman: All the pressure to join the Scientologists. You know how it is, I'm sure--your name gets out there a bit, you've got a bit of a public profile, you’ve given one or two interviews, next thing you know the bloody Scientologists come calling. "Tom," I keep saying, "I'm sorry, I just don't think it's right for me." He won't take no for an answer, and he's so eager. I always end up letting him leave some literature and saying he can come back next week, just to be polite, you know, but I haven't read any of it yet and it's getting really embarrassing.

Amulet: The Fantasy Worlds of Kazu Kibuishi

                  
            (The cover of Amulet, and author self-portrait from Scholastic's Amulet site)

One of the great pleasures of reading is coming across a book that surprises you and exceeds your expectations. Amulet, Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi is one of those books, a graphic novel from Scholastic that is aimed at children and young adults, but which rewards adult reading as well. Right at the beginning of the book, a family loses its father. The mother, son, and daughter relocate to an old ancestral home, only to be immediately engulfed by a rich, fantastical world beneath the house.

Kibuishi, who edits the magnificent Flight series for Villard, does several things incredibly well in this opening volume: he raises the stakes from the beginning and makes it clear to the reader that this is serious and that actions have consequences. He also manages to create a vivid, deeply imaginative fantasy world that is evocative of his influences but not derivative of them. From the strange house underground to be-tentacled assailants and bizarre tick-like creatures, the setting comes alive and seems deeply believable. Scholastic has an amazing interactive webpage for Amulet that explains even more--definitely something to amuse and entertain you for more than a couple minutes. Curious about the origins of what seems to have all the makings of a modern classic, I recently interviewed Kibuishi via email...

Amazon.com: Please describe where you are while answering these questions.
Kibuishi: I am sitting in my studio where I work, located in Alhambra, California.  It's a fairly large loft with hardwood floors and lots of natural light.  A few of my friends work here with me on their own projects, and when we're at the final stretch of production on an Amulet book, a few more artists are working in here to help me get it done.  Today, my wife Amy and I are the only ones working in here.

Science Fiction/Fantasy Cornucopia for a Lazy Tuesday

For your Tuesday reading pleasure, the Omnivoracious Paper Parrot presents a selection of recent SF and Fantasy--a little something for everyone, really, in terms of your reading tastes, from cult to bestsellers and everything inbetween. Starting at the top of the stack...

Bruce Taylor's Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity - As blurbed by award-winning author Jay Lake, this latest book from cult author Taylor, sometimes known as "Mr. Magic Realism," is "Steal This Book, The Anarchist's Cookbook and Jonathan Livingston Seagull...written by the love child of Tom Robbins and Philip K. Dick." It's definitely pretty wild.

A. Lee Martinez's The Automatic Detective - Mack the robot must investigate the kidnapping of his neighbors, leading him into a strange quest through Empire City, and even stranger conspiracies. From the Alex Award-winner. Funny and delightful.

Wade Tarzia's The Sorceror's Chain - Underrated writer Tarzia chronicles the life of the city of Fenward in this complex and interesting swords-and-sorcery tale. A hammer-wielding wizard comes to Fenward, with disastrous consequences. Curses, shunned houses, and a young prophetess all feature in this very original novel.

Robin Hobb's Renegade's Magic - Perennial reader favorite returns with the thrilling conclusion to her Soldier Son Trilogy. Some people have indicated they think this series is slower than her previous efforts. It may be, but it's also deeper and more satisfying.

L. Timmel Duchamp's The Blood in the Fruit - The latest book in the Marq'ssan Cycle might just be the best yet, part of a series that is the most important political SF published in the last decade. Praised by the likes of Cory Doctorow and Samuel Delany, Duchamp's accomplishment here is deadly, sharp, emotional, and intelligent.

Final Harry Potter Picture Now Twice As "Deathly"

Harry Potter fans will be seeing double as word is out that the film version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final volume in J.K. Rowling's bestselling series, will be split into two pictures. Both movies will be filmed concurrently with Part 1 scheduled to be released in November 2010 and Part 2 arriving in theaters May 2011. David Yates is directing and Steve Kloves returns to write the screenplay.

--BTP

Apocalypse Wow: Wastelands Conquers All

Wastelands: Stories of Life After Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams, has been one of the great success stories of the early part of 2008--selling out its initial print run (and going back to reprint), garnering rave reviews, and just generally conquering all in its path. Given the volatile nature of anthologies, which have a high failure rate, that's quite an accomplishment. But it's no surprise, given the careful editing and packaging of Wastelands, which has its own website (including free downloads of some of the fiction) and includes reprinted stories from the likes of Orson Scott Card, Jonathan Lethem, George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, and many other luminaries.

Why wastelands, why now? According to Adams, the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction is that "it allows us to strip away the artifices of civilization and take a long, hard look at ourselves--to speculate about how we would think and act if we had to do it all over again, and knew what we know now."

In the wake of recent environmental disasters and looming world-wide threats to civilization, it makes sense that readers would be fascinated with an anthology of this nature. "There's certainly a good dose of horror to be found--which to me is really the most potent form of horror in fiction, since the world really could end, and we really could end up in a scenario like one of the ones in the book."

But Adams also says there's an adventure fiction factor, too: "Post apocalyptic fiction typically contains elements of the Western...but what post-apocalyptic fiction most closely resembles is epic fantasy or swords-and-sorcery: there's often a lone protagonist on a quest to save his village and he finds himself confronting forces he doesn't quite understand."

So what's a typical Wastelands story like? Here are some first lines from stories by Jonathan Lethem, Stephen King,  Catherine Wells, Octavia Butler, George R.R. Martin, Elizabeth Bear, and Richard Kadrey to jump-start your imagination. If you want to find out who wrote which ones, you'll just have to read the book!

Toby Barlow's Poetic Responses About Sharp Teeth

                         

Toby Barlow has converted many with Sharp Teeth, his "werewolf" novel in poem form, published in January. It's been getting great reviews and I can report happily that, despite not being fond of either werewolves or long poems, the result is not only delightful but exciting, intense, oddly tender, and complex. To get more insight into Barlow's book, I interviewed him via email. (I have already received a special pardon from the International Council of Real Poets for my questions...)

Amazon.com:
There once was a man from Detroit
Who found he was quite adroit
At writing with poetical pen
About territorial wolf men.

"What? No vampires or witches,
Ghosts, ghouls, or liches?"
I asked with a fanged and carious smile.
His reply? "Wolves haven't been done for awhile."

Toby Barlow:
Seems like every era has its beasts,
Reagan's unnatural youth
and that dark 80's culture of cocaine
gave birth to the Orlean's vampires of Anne Rice.
But here in this new century,
as we begin seeing things heading south
and as the seams in our civilization
become slowly unstitched,
the vibe is getting a little more feral, a little wild,
and people are starting to look 'round for the pack
they can curl up
and keep warm with.
These seem like they're werewolf days.

Amazon.com:
the dark chill howl
a shadow in the trees
Idea blossoms

Toby Barlow:
I was mulling over writing a love story when
I came across an article about a dogcatcher
which then reminded me of a pack of dogs I once saw in L.A.
So I made it a love story about animals
of a kind
'cause after all, that's what we are.
We like to kid ourselves
that we're more interested in the Platonic ideals
than a plate of steak
but really, that ain't the case.
We're animals, through and through.

I hadn't been thinking about it for years
it just sort of came to me.
Though once I started
I realized
dogs had been nipping at my heels
for most of my life.

Jonathan Barnes' The Somnambulist is Nothing to Sleep Through

   

Set in Victorian London, The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes is the kind of fun book that I couldn't resist blurbing when Barnes' editor at William Morrow asked me to a few months ago. This is what I said: "Sneaky, cheeky, and dark in the best possible way, this massively entertaining book manages to make the familiar daringly unfamiliar. I enjoyed the heck out of this novel." The Somnambulist has just been published in hardcover in the US, and I highly recommend you pick up a copy. It's received a starred review in Publishers Weekly as well as a lot of other praise. I think you'll find the exploits of, among others, the odd detective Edward Moon and his even odder sidekick, the Somnambulist, well worth your time. It's one of those books that both fantasy and non-fantasy readers should enjoy.

Nebula Finalists Announced

As reported on writer Jay Lake's livejournal and elsewhere today, the finalists for the Nebula Awards, one of science fiction's top honors, have been announced, with winners revealed in April. In the novel category, they are:

Odyssey - McDevitt, Jack (Ace, Nov06)
The Accidental Time Machine - Haldeman, Joe (Ace, Aug07)
The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Chabon, Michael (HarperCollins, May07)
The New Moon's Arms - Hopkinson, Nalo (Warner Books, Feb07)
Ragamuffin - Buckell, Tobias (Tor, Jun07)

Congratulations to all of the finalists. It's worth pointing out that each of these books is, to some extent, completely different from the next. I don't envy the voters picking one, since it's almost impossible to compare them, but I think anyone handicapping the race would have to put some money down on the Chabon. That said, how do Amazon readers rate these books? Well, Odyssey gets the lowest ratings, followed by The Accidental Time Machine and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, with Ragamuffin and The New Moon's Arms tied at the top with a ranking of four-and-a-half stars.

I mention Jay Lake above not only because he's generally johnny-on-the-spot with this kind of news, but because his Mainspring was on the long list for the Nebula, and I've just acquired an advance copy of a loose "sequel," Escapement, which features one of the most interesting protagonists I've come across in awhile: Paolina Barthes, a young female genius stuck in a small village shadowed by the huge clockwork wall that figures so prominently in Lake's post-steampunk milieu. I wouldn't be at all surprised, based on my reading thus far, if Lake got another shot at the Nebulas next year. This is a very close-in character study, richly detailed. --JeffV

Moomin Moomin Moomin: Bliss for the Whole Family

 

Ev