Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 85

Books of Present and Future: Angela Slatter's Sourdough and Steampunk Reloaded

(Two very different titles, two related but autonomous approaches to excellence in book design.)

Order Sourdough and Other Stories by Angela Slatter

Preorder Steampunk Reloaded, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Today, I'd like to talk about, and show off, two books: one by Australian writer Angela Slatter and one that features her fiction.

Sourdough and Other Stories

"In the cathedral-city of Lodellan and its uneasy hinterland, babies are fashioned from bread, dolls are given souls and wishes...

Perilous Admission: Feeling Slightly Nauseous

So…after more than nine months of reading for The Weird, Steampunk Reloaded, and other projects, I'm officially sick of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Some parts of it make me more physically ill than others. I can still read weird, or certain types of it, but at the moment, I can't read steampunk without feeling nauseous. For real–like, I feel ill. It's just a function of being force-fed so much of it, and it'll fade, but it's clearly time for a change.

What am I reading over the...

The Past, Present, and Future of Ambergris

A number of stimuli have me thinking about my Ambergris novels, past, present, and future. The first was this stunningly nice Black Gate article by Matthew David Surridge about the series as a whole. It's nice when a reader gets what you intend. (And, yes, the simpler style of Finch is intended to allow more room for the reader, in part because between the lines of the novel all of this backstory from the other books is streaming in and filling up the space.) And Bookmunch's review of Finch, ...

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Micro Submissions!

(Not the cover–just the cover of the original proposal.)

Cabinets of curiosities (also known as Wunderkammer, Cabinets of Wonder, or Wonder-rooms) were encyclopedic collections of types of objects whose categorical boundaries were various. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings) and antiquities. — From Wikipedia

The...

Raise a Glass to Guest Bloggers and Clarion

(Photo by Greg Bossert.)

Thanks to all of the guest bloggers who contributed to Ecstatic Days while I was traveling. Some really amazing posts.

Also, raise a glass to the Clarion class of 2010, documented here.

Cyclonopedia: Best Horror Novel You've Never Heard Of

Reza Negarestani's first novel Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials is among my favorite books of the aughts, and the most original piece of fiction I've read in ages. I have to thank China Mieville for bringing Negarestani to our attention. We're excerpting the novel in our anthology The Weird, and Reza is a contributor to our forthcoming Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities anthology, working off of an illustration by Mieville.

Think Borges by way of Lovecraft by way of William...

The Utter Squee! That is Finch in the UK Corvus Edition

My Nebula and Locus award-finalist novel Finch is finally out in the UK, in hardcover this month, from Atlantic/Corvus—and it looks amazing. I'm squeeing all over the place.

To be honest, after awhile it's easy to get jaded about receiving the actual book, but I'm going to say this new arrival made me act like I'd never been here before.

I'm not sure that any photos can do justice to the way this cover pops, but I'm gonna try…

First of all, the tendrils on the front are slightly raised and...

BAF: 65 Stories to Seek Out from Viet Dinh, Amit Majmudar, Melanie Rae Thon, Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, and More

Larry Nolen has now posted his shortlist for the Best American Fantasy vol. 4 that will, unfortunately, not be published. BUT, the list is worth reposting here since it points to a lot of great fiction that readers of fantasy should seek out. It also sort of points to the rationale behind publishing BAF–it's difficult to seek out all of the literary magazines out individually, especially if you want just the good fantasy from them. Although Conjunctions, Tin House, Black Clock, and a few...

Best American Fantasy Series to End

After three volumes, we're discontinuing the Best American Fantasy series founded by me, Ann VanderMeer, and Sean Wallace, along with Matthew Cheney. The amicable move from Prime to Underland following the publication of BAF2 was meant to rejuvenate the series and to finally achieve stability for it. Unfortunately, this didn't occur, for a variety of reasons. BAF did not having a wide margin for error. A cross-genre fantasy year's best that focused not just on genre magazines but also on...

On the Magpie Mind and the (Mis)Uses of Research

This evening I had the weekly write-club session with my writing buddy Peter M. Ball (the man who committed the novella Horn). I went back over the novel, which I've not touched for about a month for a multitude of reasons (PhD, proofing short story collections and stories for various anthologies, fear, laziness, etcetera). I re-read the last chapter I'd written just to get a feel for it, to put myself back into the story (so I can distinguish the pseudo-fairytale German-like setting from...