Hal Duncan's Blog, page 28

The Ephemera

While, as I do believe, Mr Williamson is off at Eastercon, I thought I'd give some pimpage for the new e-book edition of his short story collection, The Ephemera. As Neil says:Even if you bought the book first time round, we thought we might be able to persuade you to take another look at it by adding some interesting new material, including:- lovely new cover art by Vincent Chong- a fab new

New BSC Review Column

The appetence for alterity… The desire for Diversity Victor Segalen called it in his posthumous, fragmentary Essai sur l'exotisme. I prefer my terms, for the sense of affinity versus lust, deviance versus variety. And I'm not one for the pomp of concepts rendered as proper nouns, unless in a metaphor of domain — the ghetto of Genre, the city of Writing. But what Segalen's suggesting is

Some Humour

Saw this on Queerty and thought it was excellent:

GetFanged Interview

The very nice people over at GetFanged.Com invited me to do an interview a couple of weeks ago, asked me some damn fine questions too. The result, of typically Duncanian length, is now up on their (log-in required) site, but also usefully up on their Facebook page and on their blogspot. So if you fancy reading my thoughts on archetypes and personal semiotics, the evolution of the vampire trope,

In Other News...

You want to be reading N.K. Jemison's open letter to Hollywood, if you haven't already. The truth be spoken.But, hey, if yer fed up with all my kvetching about segregaton, on the plus side, in terms of international cinema, we have this news:Malaysia's first ever gay themed movie has hit the ground running, becoming a box office hit in its homeland and earning back its production costs in less

Shortlists and Shouting

Awesomeness! I am, it seems, up for the Tähtivaeltaja award again this year! I feel almost guilty about keeping my fingers crossed for this one, cause it's just being greedy. But, hey, I'm not really known for my self-control, am I? Anyways, congrats to the other nominees:Herran tarhurit (The Year of the Flood) by Margaret Atwood (Otava)Description of an apocalypse of biblical proportions that

Steampunk

Over on his blog, Neil Williamson confesses that he just doesn't get steampunk, invites people to explain what he's missing. My own glib response when the GSFWC email list was chatting about this was that it all comes from too many viewings of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in childhood. Glib as that is though, there's a serious point, so I ended up going into it a bit more on his post. Figured I'd

Um No

Memo to all students:Sorry, kids, but for unavoidable personal reasons I was distracted when marking your papers, so I only really checked 50 out of the 100 questions. Some of you did pretty well though (I guess.) At least one of you got 45 of those 50 right, so if we made allowances for my failure to pay attention, that would probably be, like, 90% -- 4.5 stars out of 5. (Well done, Hannu!)But,

East Bloc Love

East Bloc Love Trailer from Logan Mucha on Vimeo.

Of Ginger Kids and Straw Men

Thought I'd link the SFWA blog thing again, since the last few days I've been responding (at my usual length) to a few comments there. So here's a wee quote, a parable of sorts, then some further thoughts:Imagine a kindergarten teacher telling the children in her care a story every afternoon, a story of fabulous adventures by a group of kids in some wonderful Neverland. For characters in this