Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 101

Who Goes There?, The Thing, and Beyond

(Brilliant? Yes? Effing brilliant? Yes.)

We recently re-read the 1950 story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell as part of our search for weird stories for this big book of weird we're doing. The experience of encountering the story was an interesting one, in that it no longer evoked any kind of horror for us. This wasn't simply because we'd read the story before, but because we had the overlay of John Carpenter's The Thing in our minds. (The 1950s movie version of The Thing, which adheres ...

Nisi Shawl on Avatar

I've just posted Nisi Shawl's piece on Avatar over at Booklifenow. Go check it out. I think she liked it just a tad more than I did.

The Complete Review's M.A. Orthofer on Translated Fiction

Orthofer was a great interview subject, and the feature came out great, I think. Fascinating stuff. Here's a snippet:

To what extent can you forgive a bad translation of a good book? And can you see the quality peeking through?

M.A. Orthofer: A bit of forgiveness is always necessary: the process of translation always seems to entail some (and often a lot of) loss, and there are many days and books where I think it's only a matter of…degrees of badness. My personal preference is for a more...

Booklife UK

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Clearly a mock-up–note "Vendermeer"–but an interesting approach, found on Amazon UK. Out in July. (Other 2010 UK releases: Finch in August and the big book of weird, co-edited with Ann, in November, both from Atlantic/Corvus.)

Moomin Exhibit!!! Moomin Exhibit!!!

This exhibit looks amazing. (Thanks to Paul D for sending me the link.)

Updates: Clarion, Shared Worlds, Anthos

First off, just a reminder: if you're in high school and interested in being a SF/Fantasy writer or you're the parent of a high school student looking for a creative writing experience involving SF and Fantasy for your teenager this summer…consider Shared Worlds. It's two weeks of awesome fun and instruction that involves world-building, creative writing, working in teams and solo, and getting fascinating crash-courses in a number of subjects. Instructors include myself, Holly Black, Michael ...

Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward at Booklifenow

I've just added the first post from Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward over at Booklifenow, an excerpt from their great writing book Writing the Other. I love Writing the Other because it espouses in a very specific and detailed way what I've always thought about writing characters, and even about writing minor characters: you need to fully inhabit them. Which is to say, if your characters aren't going to just be carbon copies of you and your own experience of the world, you need to be able to see c...

Steampunk Reloaded…Already Reloaded!!

Well, we've reloaded Steampunk Reloaded, adding a few things at the last minute that were too cool to pass up. I'll summarize the additions here, but I've also included the entire updated TOC below the cut for those who would like it in context. The anthology, out in October, is now almost completely unbearable amazingness as far as we're concerned.

What have we added, besides our intro?

—A reprint of Tanith Lee's "The Persecution Machine," a Steampunk story originally published in Weird...

On Oscar Day: Cold Souls as the Antidote to Avatar (and Facebook tonight)

Ann saw Cold Souls for the first time last night and loved it. This was my second viewing, and it held up for me. Basically, the movie has Paul Giamatti, playing himself. Giamatti's hung up on playing a role in a Chekov play, and after seeing an advert for Soul Storage in the New Yorker decides that the answer might be to divest himself of his soul. As a result he comes into contact with a Russian mule, played brilliantly by Dina Korzun, who is carrying souls into the U.S. for resale.

What...

Weird Loot, Entering the House

(Sleeping cats for a Friday.)

First of all, happy birthday to my wonderful wife, Ann!! (Okay, so her birthday is tomorrow, but I'm not online tomorrow.)

So…we went down to one of the local used bookstores yesterday, thinking "Maybe we can pick up a couple of anthologies or author collections of use for weird and other projects"…only to find more than 200 titles, mostly in old Doubleday or Book Club editions–part of a collection sold by an elderly man moving to a smaller house.

An unseemly...