Hal Duncan's Blog, page 27

Future Nostalgia

Thirty one days in Alef, Daleth,Zayin, Yod and Mem,Thirty one days in Ayin tooAnd Qof and Tav. And then?All of the rest have thirty days,But one year every fiveThere's three more daysFor us all to playCause the leapfest has arrived!(Trad.)

Lambda Winner

Congratulations to Sandra McDonald, who just nabbed herself a Lambda Award for her collection, Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories. Which is, I might note, available as an ebook from Wizard's Tower Press.Now, what was it I said about this book when Steve Berman sent me an ARC on the off-chance of a blurb? Oh, yeah, it was:''In that grand tradition of the fantastic that runs from Ray Bradbury

Translation Awards Press Release

Just in. Figured it was as easy to give you the whole thing as to quote.***Finalists for the 2011 SF&F Translation AwardsThe Association for the Recognition of Excellence in Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation (ARESFFT) is delighted to announce the finalists for the 2011 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards (for works published in 2010). There are two categories: Long Form and Short

Ghosts of the Past

Via this thoughtful post by Juliette Wade on architecture in worldscape, I discovered some awesome images by Sergey Larenkov, palimpsesting photos of the same scene from WWII and the present day.Note that there's more (like the image above) under the cut on a couple of the entries. All very cool.

An A-Z of the Fantastic City

Now available for pre-order from Small Beer Press:No. 10 in the Small Beer Press chapbook series is An A-Z of the Fantastic City. Compiled and Arranged by Hal Duncan and illustrated by Eric Schaller it also features an introduction by noted academic Henry V. Duncan.Table of ContentsToward a Geological Methodology in the Cartography of Fantasia: An Address to the 31st International Symposium on

Spectrum Award

A wee piece of awesome news: my story, "The Behold of the Eye" just picked up a Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction. Which is awesomesox in part because it's great to see the LGBT community respond to it and in part because it's one of my favourite (and most personal) stories. You can read it online at Lone Star Stories, where it was first published. You can pick up a copy in Wilde

Those Fine Finns

Have you missed the fact that Jeff Vandermeer has been blogging like crazy about the Finnish SF/F scene, doing features on Amazon, interviewing writers and editors, you name it? Did you miss, perchance, in particular his SF Signal interview with Toni Jerman, editor of Tähtivaeltaja and all-round rock 'n' roll motherfucker? Did you?Well, go on then. Click the links. Find out about the Tallahassee

GetFanged Interview

Turns out that interview I did a whiles back with the lovely folks at GetFanged.com is no longer available outside the community. Fear not though! They did say, feel free to make it available to yer readers however; so, since I've been asked about it, and since I really liked the questions they came up with, I'm happy to oblige.So, here we goes:1) The concepts (and consequences) of mythology and

A Response With Ponies

The Story So FarUp to date? OK, so, taking Martin's comment in chunks:On Dates and DebtsI don't think it is wrong (or even controversial) to suggest the relationship the between artist and consumer is far more transactional than that between potential sexual partners.Not at all. That's why I'm cutting straight to the chase in terms of the intersection of commerce and leisure and talking about the

A Date With Dragons

Over on The Speculative Scotsman, Niall Alexander posts about the whole thing with George R. R. Martin's delays, the fan backlash thereof, and the deal with the devil involved in suchlike projects. Me, I think Neil Gaiman said it pretty succinctly, but sadly, people still don't seem to get the whole "not your bitch" thing. So the first response, from Martin Lewis, drives me to try... turning that