Jeff VanderMeer's Blog, page 95

The World Cup…of Fiction?

I'm a huge World Cup fanatic–planning on watching at least part of every match. For those of you who aren't, or just need more to do :), there's always the World Cup of Fiction. Which I just made up.

How do you play? Take one or more of the countries below and do a blog post about your favorite fiction/books from that place/those places. Perhaps leaving out the obvious suspects like the US and England. As for any rules other than that, I'll leave it up to you.

I'll tackle a few of these on...

An Abundance of Riches: Books from Okorafor, Gray, Swirsky, Mieville, and More

(Two books of potential awesomeness–I've already started talking about the Alasdair Gray, with an interview today on Omnivoracious.)

I've been resisting doing "books received" posts because, well, the numbers are alarming and such posts would quickly become white noise. But today I received such a proverbial cornucopia of goodness that I can't resist–in part because I'm blissfully happy to be living in a world that could bring such amazing and different books to my door simulteaneously.

The...

Finch in the UK

A close-to-final of the Atlantic/Corvus British Commonwealth edition of Finch, out in August–I captured the screenshot a little off-center. The UK edition will be hardcover followed by oversized mass market, while in the rest of the commonwealth it will be a trade paperback. You can preorder the hardcover here.

This is my first trade hardcover in the UK. City of Saints was tp with a limited hc.

Translation Fund, Anyone?

In my spare time—ha!—I am thinking about setting up, or helping oversee the setting up of, a translation fund driven by donations.

Here's a hypothetical model.

Using carefully vetted translators, strong centralized oversight, and soliciting the opinions of experts in non-English-speaking countries (editors, etc.), we'd oversee the translation of short stories into English, our only focus being "non-realist" fiction (or whatever term denotes the totality of fantasy/SF/horror/surrealism/magic r...

Empty Your Heart on Angela Carter's Fireworks

(My Angela Carter collection; for a larger version, click here; I have Burning Your Boats, too, but it's in the bookshelf holding our weird antho source material.)

Paul Charles Smith plans to cover all of Angela Carter's fiction, and his first post is on her first collection Fireworks. I found Fireworks to be fascinating because it's somewhat uneven and shows Carter finding her voice. Many stories are also clearly affected by her divorce and feeling isolated in another country. I'm not sure I ...

Squidpawned

So I was just gearing up to write my next novel, which I was going to call King Squid, Esq., when I look up from all of my deadlines to notice that there's this other novel out there called Kraken by this Mieville guy.

WTF? My novel was all about a squid cult hiding in a museum in a kind-of London setting and this guy named "Philly" Barrow, and all of the bizarre things that happen to him because of that situation. This Mieville joker's novel seems, on the face of it, to be similar. Only...

What Goes into Anthology Editing? What Should You Be Aware of?

Sometime in the next week or so I'll post some thoughts on editing anthologies.

But I thought it would be interesting to get some feedback from readers first, in answer to any or all of the following questions. You can note whether you're referring to original or reprint anthologies if that's important for context.

(1) What do you personally look for in a fiction anthology?
(2) What do you feel are the top five constraints on anthology editors when putting together an antho?
(3) What do you...

Reversing Damage

Cat Rambo posted notes from Gwyneth Jones's speech on reducing world machismo. All makes good sense to me. I find this bit especially interesting because it also applies to fiction:

The Overton Window – the extremes of conversation determine the continuum of the discussion. This is why it's important to have voices at the extreme left, helping expand the window, which has shrunk in recent years to a point where something previously considered moderate can be considered liberal.

Fiction...

The Oil Spill: Hold Them All Accountable

As I said on facebook a few days ago, I think BP executives should have to live on floating rafts of debris in the middle of the oil and exist on the raw flesh of dead marine life in the area. And then anyone who suggests lifting the temporary ban on offshore drilling should join them, first and foremost Sarah Dipshit Palin. I'm serious.

All of us who know this area, the Panhandle region of Florida, are in a state of shock over this, hoping the oil isn't going to come this way, that the...

The Three Quests of the Wizard Sarnod–for Capclave

This is now available for pre-order for those attending Capclave this year, where Ann and I will be guests of honor along with Connie Willis. Ignore the "sold out" notice. But you can only order, for now, if attending the convention. The sales of the book benefit the organization that funds and runs the con.

John Coulthart is doing the cover and interior design. I've contributed an intro and Ann has done a tell-all afterword that compares me to Grod, which as this description from the book...