Jared Shurin's Blog, page 117

Nine Worlds and Porno/Kitschiness

Next weekend is Nine Worlds, a sprawling new convention set out in London's Heathrow hinterlands.We'll be running around playing games, watching films, hassling English PEN and propping up the bar (not sure how all of this will take place simultaneously, but we'll try).

Nine Worlds will also be crawling with Kitschies judges, including Will Hill, Kate Griffin and Barry Nugent, as well as previous judges Rebecca Levene and Lauren O'Farrell. Bribes will be accepted through all the standard cha...

Friday Five: Five (More) Books that Read Like Games

Neal Tringham, author of the terrificScience Fiction Hobby Games was our guest for Friday Five two weeks ago, talking about books with connections to tabletop games. Without further ado, here's Neal again, with five more books with connections to the world of gaming...

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In a previous post I made here, I wrote about books I found intriguing that were not licenses from tabletop games, but were (or might have been) inspired by them. Once I'd finished the piece, however, I kept finding more...

Review Round-up: Apocalypse Now, Now and No Return

Two new fantasy debuts, each doing interesting - one could say bonkers- things: Zachary Jernigan's No Returnand Charlie Human's Apocalypse Now Now.

Zachary Jernigan's No Return(2013) is weird. No, make that Weird. Three different warriors travel the length and breadth of a world to fight in a prestigious (and lethal) tournament. There's a background of political, racial and religious unrest, with the winner in a position to influence hundreds of thousands of bloodthirsty fans. Meanwhile, Adr...

Post-script: Alas, poor Harrogate

First, links and whatnot:

Justin and I did our transatlantic double act on the Skiffy and Fanty Showto talk about Speculative Fiction 2012.Shaun has dubbed us a "criticabal", which is kind of fun. If you're up for an hour of hand-waving and unfounded assertions about blogging, criticism and the state of SF, you can listen to it here.

I've wrapped up The Folding Knifeover on Tor.com. 19 blog posts - approximately 35,000 words on a, what, 90,000 word novel? I feel that's value for weight, if n...

Friday Five: David Gemmell Legend Award Predictions

We still have a few days left to vote for the David Gemmell Legend Awards for the year's best epic fantasy, but I figured I go ahead and make my predictions now. The shortlists will be announced at Nine Worlds (early August) and the winners at World Fantasy (late October).

[DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!]

I'll be taking part in the newly-declared annual tradition of reviewing all the shortlisted titles on Pornokitsch, so, in a way, I feel I have a vested interested in the results of the voting...

Whi...

Er...

The Hard Case Crime Read: The First 20(ish) Titles

I figured it was time for a quick recap. Since the beginning of the year, I've reviewed the first twenty Hard Case Crime novels, plus three new releases (Seduction of the Innocent, Web of the City and Joyland).

You can find the full list here.

That's 23 books (10 original, 13 reprint) and 24 covers (Joyland had two). Which were my favourites? Least favourite? Most surprising? (The management reserves the right to change these answers at any time...)

Favourite setting: Richard Aleas' New...

Post-script: Full house

Last week's book purchases:

Edward Whittemore'sJerusalem Poker, Kate Milford's The Broken Lands, Sarah Monette's Mélusineand the annotated The Phantom Tollbooth. Mélusine, recommended by Liz as part of this thing, may have the worst cover I've ever seen. And, as a lifelong fantasy and science fiction reader, that's saying a lot.

Jurassic updates:

The Guardianhad very nice things to say about The Lowest Heaven, with specific references to a half-dozen stories, including those by Sophia McDoug...

Friday Five: The Best of Baldur's Gate

This week's Friday Five features James Long, iron-stomached Oreo-addict, hard-nosed editor, and tender-hearted cat lover, as well as the co-founder of J for Jetpack, the glorious new geekery website that has sworn to bury us all in its enthusiasm. Amongst his many virtues (kind to animals, buys me beer), James is a shameless fan of that great - nay, greatest - of fantasy RPGs.

I'll let him take it from here...

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Baldur’s Gate
(1998) and Baldur’s Gate 2 (2000)
remain two of the most infl...

What is science fiction?

This comes - rather laterally - out of a conversation I was having with James Smythe. What is "science fiction"?

There's a practical definition ("Whatever that individual bookseller puts in his or her Science Fiction section"), numerous academic ones, an evasive one ("Genres don't exist!") and a sort of commonly-held gut feel ("I'll know it when I see it. Also, rockets.")

My own background is in marketing, so let's approach it that way: if "Science Fiction" was a product that we wanted to s...