Some interesting news from around the SF Blogosphere:
Hugo Finalists to be Announced on Easter
According to Cheryl Morgan, the finalists for each category in the 2010 Hugo Awards will be announced this Sunday at the British SF convention called, appropriately enough, Eastercon. No word at this time if Terry Goodkind will also announce that he will be present in Australia this summer to collect the Best Novel award that he most assuredly will win, according to his former associate, Ron Wilson.
New "Literary Movement" Announced
As we near the 10th anniversary of the moment/movement/whatever you want to call it New Weird, one of the authors associated with weirdism of all sorts, Jeff VanderMeer, apparently has had enough. In an email that I received Wednesday night, VanderMeer discussed how he was considering exploring new boundaries and he is thinking about editing a reprint anthology of the most mundane, totally not-weird fiction to be gathered from issues of magazines and journals such as Reader's Digest and Good Housekeeping that will be called The New Prosaic.
"While weird fiction, with its strange dreamscapes and odd characters will always be close to my heart, there is something appealing about anthologizing stories about staid, respectable people doing responsible, totally unsurprisingly things in a stolid fashion. We believe there is room for a literary movement that will embrace the most mundane, uneventful "slices of life" and that readers will relate better to characters that remind them just how wonderful it is to lead a prosaic life."
Reportedly, the VanderMeers' cat, Neo, hacked up a huge furball at this announcement.
New Blogger Reading Clubs Forming
Although I have not been as active as I would have wished in several blogger discussions, I did find it interesting to learn that there will be two reading clubs forming in the next few months, where the participating bloggers will read and review on a scheduled date particular series by authors.
The first such "blogger club" will be for Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Participating bloggers will be Harry Markov, Niall Alexander, Mihai Adascalitei, and Amanda Rutter.
Not to be outdone, Patrick Saint-Denis, Adam Whitehead, and Ken/Neth will be reading and reviewing Robert Stanek's novels from May-September. In addition, Pat is reportedly in negotiations to secure exclusive excerpts from Stanek's novels and possibly may be working on an interview with Stanek that will be published later this month.
Online Cover Art Symposium Planned for May
After being involved in a series of discussions about the merits of good and bad cover art, Mark Newton, James Long, Aidan Moher, and the duo from The Book Smugglers, Ana and Thea, will be hosting an online symposium on their blogs in early May devoted solely to cover art.
Among some of the rumored topics will be, "Should One Judge a Book by Its Cover?", "Swords and Hoods: Phallic/Clitoral Imagery?", and "Walter the Farting Dog: High Art or Just All Fart?"
Blogosphere News Merger
Genre Reader and NextRead have announced that they are pooling their resources together and will be teaming up to provide syndication for all the blog posts they didn't write themselves. Rumored names include "GenreRead," "Next Reader," and "Blogosphere Pornomania."
And with that, this news feed will now be outsourced.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
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5 comments:
This news is true, but the attempt unfortunately had to be abandoned when I discovered to my confusion that every time I tried to get more than three paragraphs into Stanek's masterwork the page had become obscued by a significant covering of my own vomit.
I continue to await your own 20,000 treatise on THE EYE OF ARGON with bated breath, however ;-)
I actually finished that book a year or so ago and sent it to this girl I know, who loved Theis's sparkling prose.
I know some very interesting people.
If I ever buy a printed copy again, I might just review it. But not 20K words. Longest thing I've ever written was just over 10K and was a novelette.
But keep at it! Maybe between you, Pat, and Ken, you can finish a page a week and get that discussion rolling!
The Stanek one would be amazing.
yes, now the cat is out of the bag. I have high hopes that Stanek will compete with Terry Goodkind, Michael Crichton, and Orson Scott Card. I think he just may have the potential to beat them out.
I've also been considering a guest post series by Stanek - I'm especially interested in his thoughts on how squirrels have influence the development of western civilization, eventually leading him to write his masterpiece.
Wait are you waiting on, Ken? MAKE IT SO!
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