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...

Stephenie Meyer's The Host Invades Your Mind Today

In an interesting case of a YA author turning to the adult market, Stephenie Meyer's The Host appears from Little, Brown today in hardcover--this after selling over three million copies of her Twilight saga in the U.S.

As the press release tells us The Host "may possibly be the first love triangle involving only two bodies." Earth has been invaded by aliens who take over the minds of their human hosts, so now poor Melanie has to walk around with two minds. The "Wanderer" is surprised to find Melanie so tenacious--it had expected to subsume her immediately. So Melanie infuses the Wanderer with memories of the man she loves, leading them to both (naturally) go off on a quest to find this man. Thus, a love triangle involving only two bodies.

Sounds pretty claustrophobic to me! Check out the official book site and the author's site, too, both of which have some interesting extras.

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.

Breaking News: Richard Morgan Wins Arthur C. Clarke Award

As reported here via text message, Richard Morgan has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Thirteen (published as Black Man in England). Thirteen made Amazon's best SF/Fantasy list last year.

Now Morgan has one more reason for readers to pick up the book. Last year in an exclusive Amazon interview, we asked him to tell us what made Thirteen special. His response then? "It is, by all critical accounts, the best thing I’ve written so far. It’s stuffed full of contentious material that, whether you agree with it or not, will give you conversational ammunition at dinner parties for months to come. Shock and Awe your guests with Provocative Genetic Science! It’s my first conscious attempt at a world that is not dystopian--roll up and see a cheery(ish) future society, one you might not actually mind living in for a change. It has a very unpredictable storyline--I know this because I had no idea where my characters were going half the time, and if I couldn’t guess, it’s unlikely the reader will either. If thirteen is a thriller, it certainly isn’t what the gaming community would call 'mission-based'. It isn’t as long as "Against the Day", and is therefore both easier and lighter to hold while reading. You could take it with you on the bus, easy.

Pop Culture Report #3: James and Kathryn Morrow's European SF Anthology

Earlier this month, Tor Books released the trade paperback edition of James and Kathryn Morrow's The SFWA European Hall of Fame, a collection of sixteen stories translated from a variety of European countries. Contributors include Jean-Claude Dunyach, Panagiotis Koustas, Joao Barreiros, Andreas Eschbach, and many more. Most of these writers are well-known in their own countries but have had very little work translated into English. Our Pop Culture Report #3 (above) gives you more information on this intriguing, some would say essential, anthology. I conducted the interviews with the editors and Greek contributor Koustas in Nantes, France, last year, at Utopiales, a wonderful speculative fiction festival.

From Publishers Weekly's starred review: Wondrous worlds await U.S. SF fans in this sensitively chosen, impeccably translated anthology of Continental European science fiction stories, ranging from 1987 to 2005. Offering "emotional satisfaction and cerebral excitement," as James Morrow puts it in his introduction, highlights include Johanna Sinisalo's "Baby Doll," a Finnish denunciation of materialistic exploitation of children; Romanian Lucian Merisca's "Some Earthlings' Adventures on Outrerria," an excruciating political satire; Valerio Angelisti's "Sepultura," which offers a neo-Dantean Infernoscape; and W.J. Maryson's "Verstummte Musik," a Dutch near-future Orwellian nightmare. A French twist on human-machine interface lifts Jean-Claude Dunyach's "Separations" into a meditation on the nature of artistic creativity, while Elena Arsenieva's "A Birch Tree, a White Fox" exquisitely illustrates the quintessential Russian soul. These "disciplined speculations" by European writers and their painstaking translators not only excite the mind, they move the heart.

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.

The Martian General's Daughter: Military SF with a Heart

Sometimes you come across a novel that doesn't quite fit your expectations of a genre--in a good way. The Martian General's Daughter, set two hundred years in the future in a world very much like Imperial Rome, is military SF told through the viewpoint of, well, a general's daughter. Steeped in historical and emotional resonance, this slim but satisfying novel is often willfully didactic in the way it treats political/military issues--but it works because of the context. These are the issues the characters are dealing with, this is the way they would talk about them. It's rare that a book will make you think and make you feel in quite this particular way.

As Philip K. Dick Award finalist Adam Roberts says, "The novel is a wonderfully judged character study, a highly readable narrative, often witty, sometimes cruel...but best of all is the narrator, the general's daughter herself--a diffident and modest individual who is nonetheless vividly and marvelously alive, strong and likeable."

You can read an excerpt from the novel here. Go forth and check it out!

 

Liz Williams' Near-Future Detective Inspector Chen Novels

Looking for something different? Something immensely entertaining and yet with some depth? Something you can sink your teeth into? Well, I've got just the books for you: the new mass market paperback editions of Liz Williams' Detective Inspector Chen novels: Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, and Precious Dragon. (Night Shade Books)

In these near-future occult mystery novels set in Singapore, Chen and his demon sidekick Zhu Irzh--one of the Underworld's vice-detectives!--explore cases that involve ghosts, Chinese mythology, feng shui, martial arts, and travel between Heaven and Hell.

Booklist says readers looking "for something uniquely imaginative will find it in Williams' surreal fusion of Chinese mythology, paranormal high jinks, and satisfyingly suspenseful sleuthing," while Publishers Weekly praises the unique storylines, "colorful characters and imaginative settings extrapolated from ancient Chinese mythology...that fans and new readers will enjoy."

Whatever makes you tick as a reader, you'll something to like in this unique, well-written, and fast-paced series.

Author Fact: A British novelist with a background in magic, Williams is a past Philip K. Dick Award finalist.

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."

What Do You Find at a SF Convention? Ernie Hudson and Corrupted Science, That's What!

As guests of I-Con at Stony Brook University on Long Island this last weekend, my wife and I participated in the literature track of this sprawling multi-media SF convention that features over 100 writers, actors, gamers, artists, and comic book creators. When you have a science fiction convention this big, part of the appeal is the interplay of subcultures, whether it be Trekkies and anime fans hanging out together or actor Ernie Hudson appearing at the same convention as respected author Peter S. Beagle. The dealer's room at such events is a maelstrom of different influences, with the Long Island Advanced Rocketry Society sharing space with graphic novel vendors, jewelry makers, and clothing sellers, among others. Seeing Hudson was definitely a treat--especially signing autographs for amateur ghost-busters, as above. I've always been a fan of his acting, and think Congo is an overlooked gem of a movie.

But the real treasures of interest to Amazon readers were two books by John Grant, Corrupted Science and Discarded Science, which I found nestled between heroic fantasy trilogies and space operas at one of the book dealer tables...

                             

Book Preview: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, Coming in May

(Author photo by Bart Nagel)

Author and Boing Boing contributor Cory Doctorow makes his YA debut in May with Little Brother, a novel Doctorow told Amazon is "enormously" influenced by dystopian/fascist regime classics. "The genre fascinates me; the novel 1984 is one of my favorite and most re-read. Adolescents are the perfect protagonists for these stories, too--hence Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Kindness."

In the novel, Doctorow's teenage protagonist, Marcus, finds himself caught up in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on San Francisco, with civil liberties suspended and the Department of Homeland Security conducting merciless interrogations. "Marcus...is a smart-alecky, brainy kid who loves showing off what he knows (I was that kid)." Some of these same qualities lead Marcus to try to take down the DHS.

Little Brother comes with glowing praise from the likes of Neil Gaiman, Scott Westerfeld, and Brian K. Vaughn. And the publisher, Tor, has a novel approach to promotion: the book will be sent out to high school newspapers for review. Doctorow says this idea came from "the brilliant people at YPulse, which is probably the best site on the net about marketing and communications for young people. They were an enormous help in formulating the publicity strategy for the book."

Can't wait until May for Little Brother? Doctorow has released a podcast excerpt, which you can listen to here.

Pump Six: A Conversation with Paolo Bacigalupi, a Next-Generation SF Writer

                    

Paolo Bacigalupi isn't the most prolific writer, but like another talented SF creator, Ted Chiang, he makes each story count. His fiction has appeared in High Country News, Salon.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. It has been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best SF short story of the year. Bacigalupi's new (and first) collection, Pump Six and Other Stories, contains all of his short fiction (as well as "Pump Six," original to the book) and is getting raves, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly. PW wrote in part "Deeply thought provoking, Bacigalupi’s collected visions of the future are equal parts cautionary tale, social and political commentary and poignantly poetic, revelatory prose." In short, Bacigalupi is the real deal. I talked to Bacigalupi earlier this year via email...

Amazon.com: Where are you, right now, as you're writing these answers?
Paolo Bacigalupi: I'm sitting in my office. It's a one-room work space above the local bookstore. I rent it for $150/month. Its got mauve walls. Carpeting with a green twining vines and pink vaginal flower patterns. The place used to be a rooming house; I gather that's where the carpet comes from. It's poorly heated, so I've got a space heater. The window view is of our local grocery's parking lot: a lot of gray snow, pickup trucks, and some rich person's Land Cruiser. The bookstore has a deck off the front that overhangs the sidewalk, so I can go out there and watch dump trucks drive by.

Are You Infected? A Comprehensive Interview with Author Scott Sigler

Scott Sigler, author of Infected, released today by Crown, is known by some as the world's most successful podcaster, with more than 30,000 fanatically devoted subscribers per book. He's also been profiled in The New York Times, among others. Sigler's background is as a reporter, marketer, and project manager, although he was "writing the whole time." Infected is pulse-pounding suspense fiction with horror and SF elements, involving radical personality shifts and parasites. The novel has already received NPR coverage and an enthusiastic endorsement in Entertainment Weekly. When I asked Sigler if the book had a soundtrack, since he seems to bring a very punk feel to his fiction, he told me: "It runs from metalcore to Frank Sinatra to the blues to AC/DC and The Donnas. Killswitch Engage can pop up next to the Bee Gees then Evanescence. Lately I'm really into American melodic metal influenced by the 'Sweeds' (Killswitch Engage, Trivium, Bullet for my Valentine, etc.). I interviewed Sigler via email recently to give Amazon readers more of a sense of both him and his writing--including his insights about podcasting, parasites, fans, and secret fears...

Amazon.com: Let's pretend for a second no one knows who you are. How did you get started doing podcasts, and was it always fiction you were podcasting?
Scott Sigler: I started podcasting fiction in March, 2005, with my first novel Earthcore. The book was originally going to be published by AOL/TimeWarner in May 2002, but they shut down the imprint the book was on, and I was back on the slush pile. It took my agent a few years to get the rights back, and by the time we did, we'd lost interest and momentum. I'd had enough. When I discovered podcasting, I went looking for fiction novels, as it seemed like a great way to revive the weekly serialized fiction of 50s radio--but I couldn't find anything of the kind. No one was podcasting fiction at the time. Once I realized I could be among the first, I figured out how to record, edit, make an RSS feed and scrambled to get an episode up.

Amazon.com: Do you find that writing fiction for podcasts is any different than writing fiction with the idea of a "book" in mind? And did this come into play during the editing process with your editor at Crown?
Scott Sigler: Fiction writing and podcasting fiction is the same for me, because I write a manuscript first, then podcast. I write, edit, re-write, re-write some more, then when the book is finished I podcast it. So the process is the same, but I get some great feedback from the Junkies and that lets me tweak the story in ways that will appeal to the fans. It's like market-testing your fiction. The changes are usually subtle, but significant. I find out what characters they like, or when they do NOT like my main character, plot holes, factual errors and more. I consider this a job, and my employer is my listening audience. I work hard to make stories that entertain them, so if they can point out problems I'm always listening to whatever they have to say. This makes the final print version much, much stronger. The Crown editor (Julian Pavia) brings another level of analysis to the story. He rocks the house. Between Julian and 30,000 avid listeners making suggestions, the story is forged into something cohesive and logical with a big payout at the end.

It Must Be Something in the Air: Science Fiction Awards Frenzy!

Wow. You turn your back for one second and SF award announcements pop up like colorful exotic weeds.

First, the Philip K. Dick Award goes to Omnivoracious favorite M.J. Harrison for Nova Swing, then the British SF Association Awards in London announce another favorite Ian McDonald as the winner for best novel with Brasyl. (Those crazy Brits also annointed Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop as Best Novel of 1958, marking a really odd trend in SF of literary time travel.)

And, finally, the Prometheus Awards for "best Libertarian SF" of 2007 announced their finalists. It's a virtual monopoly, with all five novels published by Tor: Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell, The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod, Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven & Edward M. Lerner, The Gladiator by Harry S. Turtledove, and Ha'Penny by Jo Walton. Apparently, there's not a single libertarian at Eos, Bantam, and Del Rey, et al.

What this means for Tor isn't clear, but I would expect startling effects. As the libertarian infiltration continues, the publisher will no doubt seek readers without the tyranny of bookstores or printed pages. Editors will declare their desks separate sovereign territories and render them tax-free. The Flat-Iron Building Tor occupies--narrow enough as it is--will become a libertarian stronghold, with the hundred thousand different libertarian flags flying overhead.

Which is another way of saying awards season has me delirious. (But, seriously, what's up with the BSFA awarding a best novel from 1958? Did they forget to do it...in 1958?)

Hugo Award Finalists Announced

The 2008 Hugo Award finalists have been announced on the website for the 2008 World SF Convention. The nominees in the novel category are as follows:

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)

Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)

Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007)

The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)

Halting State by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)

The Hugo Award is perhaps the most venerable of the science fiction awards and tends to provide a core sample of the "center of genre" in any given year, sometimes with what might call "celebrated outsiders" getting a nod (in this case Chabon). The best book on the list, for my money, however, is Brasyl by Ian McDonald and I'll be crossing my fingers that the Scotsman gets the win. The winners will be announced at the World SF Convention in Denver, held August 6-10 this year. Congratulations to all of the finalists!

Arthur C. Clarke: An Appreciation of a Life Well-Lived

                     

Arthur C. Clarke led at least three different, extremely successful lives. As a scientist, his work with satellites led to the coining of the term a "Clarke orbit." As a visionary award-winning science fiction author he influenced several generations of writers, became an icon of the SF subculture, and had an award named after him. And, in his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke also became part of movie and pop culture history.

Over his lifetime, Clarke received many honors, including being knighted and having the Apollo 13 Command Module and the Mars Orbiter both named "Odyssey" in appreciation of his work. Clarke remained a vital force up until his death. He authored books, made appearances via videophone from his home in Sri Lanka, and continued to deny the polio that had kept him mostly wheelchair-bound for two decades.

Chris Schluep, Clarke's editor at Del Rey for his last few books, was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when he heard the news: "It's a very, very sad, and a strange place to find out about Sir Arthur's passing. I can't help but think that without his ground-breaking work on satellite technology, it wouldn't even be possible to have heard the news and provide such an immediate reaction. Somehow, I know he would have twisted a joke out of that. He was a very nice man with a wonderful sense of humor."

Arthur C. Clarke's fiction embodied a fundamental optimism about the future, tempered by a healthy skepticism about the human condition and an ongoing fascination with certain forms of spirituality. Unlikely to indulge in dystopic visions, but rarely sentimental or unrealistic, Clarke was, quite simply, curious about the world.

Schluep met Clarke on his last visit to New York City, a decade ago, and remembers that curiosity vividly. "He was staying in the Chelsea Hotel, where he wrote 2001 with Stanley Kubrick, and...the first thing that struck me was how excited he seemed about everything. People he had encountered on his trip, books, various meetings he'd had about issues he thought were important. Despite the fact that he was already in his eighties and wheelchair-bound, he glowed with optimism. I remember thinking that he seemed like a man from another era."

Science Fiction Giant Arthur C. Clarke Dies at Age 90

Sad news today, that Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction visionary, and collaborator with Stanley Kubrick on the iconic movie 2001, has passed away at the age of 90. He leaves behind a prolific record of accomplishment, with more than 70 novels, short story collections, and nonfiction books, as well as a science fiction award that bears his name.

I still remember my first encounter with Clarke's fiction. The story "The Star," with its mix of anthropology, interstellar travel, and awesome ability to convey the vastness of space (not to mention its horrific ending), absolutely stunned me when I first read it--as did 2001 when I first saw it in the theater. Clarke often had under-estimated range and versatility in his science fiction, able to deliver close, personal portraits of characters and situations but equally able to zoom out and give readers mind-bending glimpses of space and time.

Tomorrow, Omnivoracious will run a longer piece commemorating the legacy of Arthur C. Clarke. In the meantime, readers can be in equal measure sad at his passing and appreciative of his long and lasting legacy.

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.

Apocalypse Redux: The World of Justin Taylor

    
(The Apocalypse Reader cover and Justin Taylor in his "bomb shelter".)

Last week I blogged about Wastelands, an anthology of contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction. This time, because Monday is all about post-weekend devastation, we here at Omnivoracious bring you some historical, and sometimes hysterical, perspective to the subject via the multi-talented Justin Taylor. His The Apocalypse Reader, published last year by Thunder's Mouth Press and featured on National Public Radio, is the perfect companion volume to Wastelands. It contains a rich mix of stories from a wide variety of time periods, from Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Kelly Link, Michael Moorcock, Tao Lin, Steve Aylett, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The range of tone is quite remarkable. Taylor, who recently edited a second anthology (Come Back, Donald Barthelme, published as part of McSweeney's 24) has done a great job of including everything from black humor to extremely serious and unsettling views of the way the world ends. I recently interviewed Taylor via email, to find out just how serious he is about this whole apocalypse thing...

Amazon.com: For the edification of our readers, can you describe where you are right now, while you're answering these questions? Are you in a bunker or other shelter, for example?
Justin Taylor: I'm writing to you from my special bunker, which is craftily disguised as a bedroom with good natural light on the 3rd floor of a small apartment building with bad pipes. It's all really high-tech next-gen kind of stuff. In the event of Apocalypse, my bedroom will float here in space while the rest of the building and/or world crumbles around it. Oh and the pipes stay connected too, so I'll be floating in space but still able to use the bathroom and shower and stuff, though nobody really knows if I'll be able to get hot water or for how long, though that won't be much of a change from how the water situation is now. Of course the exact location is confidential, but I can tell you it's in Brooklyn.

Amazon.com: Does an apocalypse, by your definition, have to be society-wide or can it be singular and personal?
Justin Taylor: It can definitely be either, or both at once. Not to get philosophical on you, but reality is only ever experienced by individuals, so in that sense all Apocalypse is personal. If God returns to earth later this afternoon and Judgment Day begins, that will be something that happens to every person who ever lived, including me, you, Christopher Hitchens, Oprah, Stalin, and every member of the Ming Dynasty. But my experience of Judgment will be my own; it's not something I can share with Oprah.

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!

Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalists Announced

The Arthur C. Clarke Award finalists have been announced, and they are:

Matthew de Abaitua – The Red Men – Snow Books

Stephen Baxter - The H-Bomb Girl – Faber & Faber

Sarah Hall – The Carhullan Army – Faber & Faber

Steven Hall – The Raw Shark Texts – Canongate

Ken MacLeod – The Execution Channel – Orbit

Richard Morgan – Black Man (published as Thirteen in the US) – Gollancz

Former winners of the United Kingdom's most prestigious Science Fiction award have included China Mieville, Geoff Ryman, and Pat Cadigan. This is only the second time in the award's existence that the shortlist has been composed solely of UK authors. The annual award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.

From the administrators: "Featuring visions as diverse as a dystopian Cumbria and a future Hackney, time-travel adventures in 1960's Liverpool and an alternate world British Isles in the throes of terrorist attack, through to tech-noir thrillers and a trawl through subconscious worlds where memories fall prey to metaphysical sharks, the Clarke Award has never been so close to home and relevant to the British literary scene."

I'm thrilled to see so many books on this list that I haven't read, to be honest. Half of the nominees couldn't be called the "usual suspects" at all, while Richard Morgan richly deserves his nomination for Black Man. MacLeod's The Execution Channel was too didactic for my tastes, but a worthy attempt to inject politics into fiction. One glaring omission from this list, however, is the lyrical, daring, satirical, and just plain brilliant The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. (US readers are just now having a chance to experience this novel, as it will be published in North America next month.)

Congratulations to all of the nominees. The winner will be announced on April 30th

Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void

As I reported at the beginning of the year, bestselling author Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void is scheduled for publication this month, whereupon it'll no doubt be snatched up by his legion of fans. Here's a preview: It's the start of a new series, set in the same universe as