[Friends who don’t care about s.f., skip this post and get five minutes of your life back.] I’m halfway through Gardner Dozois’ The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction and I’ve made an interesting discovery. First, some background: Short fiction is my favorite form, whether reading or writing. I read…
If I am not mistaken, today is ANALOG/ASTOUNDING’s 79th birthday. For those who don’t know, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION is the longest continuously running science fiction magazine around. It started up in 1930 (when my Grandpa was 10 years old!) and is still going strong today. (In the 1960s, the name was changed to ANALOG). It is usually considered to…
The February 2009 issue of ASIMOV"S has a great "Reflections" essay by Robert Silverberg called, "It Wasn’t All That Easy", in which he talks about the the time when he was a young, would-be writer, seeing all of his heroes sell stories and become famous, while he collected rejection after rejection. He wondered if he’d ever…
I’ve passed the quarter way mark in my reading of The Hard SF Renaissance, having read the first 10 of 41 stories in the book. It seems that this would be a good time to collect my thoughts on the first 10 stories.
I neglected to check the mail yesterday, but when I went out to check it this morning, I found the March 2009 issue of ANALOG waiting for me. This issue contains the conclusion of Robert J. Sawyer’s serialized novel, Wake. Now I can take all 4 issues and read the whole thing straight through before the book hits…
A pleasant surprise when I got home today: I had in my mailbox the December issues of ASIMOV’S and ANALOG, both in their new size and format. I am particularly looking forward to relaxing to Part II of Robert J. Sawyer’s serial Wake.
I just finished reading part one of Robert J. Sawyer’s serialized novel Wake. As usual with Rob’s stuff, it’s outstanding. It pulls you in, and keeps hold of you, and entertains you and makes you think, and makes you crazy for the fact that you have to wait nearly a month before part 2 comes out!…
A character in my workshop story is a fan of D. D. Harriman, for purposes that become more clear as the story progresses. Anyway, I was doing some brainstorming tonight, some mind-mapping (since the writing really wasn’t working) and I decided to go back and read Robert Heinlein’s story "Requiem", in which Harriman is the…
I finished Old Man’s War early this afternoon. It was terrific. It was just what I hoped it would be, and I think it easily holds its own with books such as Starship Troopers and The Forever War.
Up at 6:30 after a good night’s sleep and into the office a little while later. It wasn’t a terribly busy day at the office, but there was still stuff to do. I did 5 of 6 workshop critiques that came in today. The sixth one came in late this evening and I won’t get…
There are occasionally harvests in science fiction and I love when they arrive. Unlike a traditional harvest, science fiction harvests can arrive at varying times of the year. One arrived today, in the form of four books that I ordered from Amazon just a few days ago. I haven’t been reading much science fiction these…
First, congratulations to all the winners. This was my first time voting for the Hugos. One of the stories I voted for won a hugo, matociquala‘s “Tideline”. I also voted for Rob Sawyer’s Rollback, Stanley Schmidt for Best Editor, Short Form, and Barry N. Malzberg’s excellent Breakfast In the Ruins. None of these won, and…