Jared Shurin's Blog, page 124

Speculative Fiction 2012: Out now!

We interrupt a week of imaginary musings for something very real - Speculative Fiction 2012 is now available on Amazon. 

This collection contains over fifty of the year's best online essays and reviews, from Tansy Rayner Roberts on Supergirl to Lavie Tidhar on China Miéville to Aishwarya Subramanian on My Little Pony to Joe Abercrombie on, er, himself. It is a diverse collection of some of last year's best and most interesting writing. We fully expect - and hope - it will cause discussi...

The 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Shortlist: An Imaginary Judgement

There are lots of great pieces already about the Clarke Award.Strange Horizons has donea round-up or two that highlights some of this year's discussion. I think Chris Gerwel's piece comparing the Clarke discussion to the Hugo discussion is particularly interesting. To brutally summarise what I took out of it: for the Hugo awards, people blame the award. For the Clarke, people blame everything else.

I've already written about the Hugo awards, my imaginary ballot and why I, as a non-voter, nee...

The 2013 Hugo Shortlists: An Imaginary Ballot

The point of this isn't to beat a dead horse. I think Jonathan McCalmont and Chris Gerwel have both written very good posts summarising aspects of the discussion surrounding this year's Hugo Awards, and I recommend reading those. Although Jonathan's post was slightly derailed by the comments, I think the ultimate conclusion of his post was a surprisingly inspiring call to action: register, read, vote and discuss.

Last year I found the Hugo so demoralising that I didn't bother to vote this y...

Cover Reveal and Interview: Charlie Human's Apocalypse Now Now & Joey Hi-Fi

Baxter Zevcenko is your average 16-year-old-boy. If by average you mean kingpin of a smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, and a possible serial killer who suffers from weird historical dreams. He’s the first to admit that he’s not a nice guy, but then, in high school, where’s the percentage in being nice?

That is until his girlfriend, Esme, is kidnapped and all the clues point toward strange forces at work. Faced with navigating the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town’s supernatural un...

Post-script: Gosh! Bristol!

A week on the road, but, if anything, that seemed to encourage the book shopping.

I had ten minutes spare while in Bristol and, with unerring accuracy, managed to find a second-hand bookshop in the middle of a massive food-market-thingy. That resulted in five paperback Westerns (woo!) and A History of the Ancient Egyptians. The latter, from 1908, is already proving useful - nicely organised, compact and pretty, pretty maps.

Of course, since I was on the road all week, that justified a bit of...

Late April and Early May(hem)

Holy cow.

April 22nd: Jesse Bullington, Paolo Bacigalupi and Lauren Beukes are doing a Google Plus Hangout Conversation 2.0 Webchatthing. I have no idea what it is or what will happen, but the idea of Lauren Beukes and Jesse Bullington in the same place(even virtually)? Good lord. I expect, nay, demandmadness. If this takes off, next time they'll do the "C" authors.

April 24th: Lavie Tidhar interviewed by Edward James for the BSFA. Free entry, but there's a chance that Lavie will rewrite your...

Week o' Filler: Goodreads

I accidentally joined Goodreads last month. Stop smirking, it really wasan accident. I logged in to... something... trying to fix a typo in a Pandemonium title, and next thing I knew, it had sent invitations to everyone on Facebook. Evil.

Still, I've been screwing around, and here's what I like...

- Being able to tinker with the Pandemonium titles, and make sure the information is right. Cross i's and dot t's and all athat.

- Tracking my reading. For the past two years, I've kept a silly spre...

Last Week's New Releases: Farnsworth, Ness & Smythe

The week of filler continues with three books that all deserve better treatment. But Farnsworth, Ness and Smythe sounds a bit like a Dickensian lawfirm, which is some small comfort.

Normally I'm not so bothered about shirking my frontlist duties, but last week was one hellof a week for new genre books, and I'm a little upset that I'm slack in reviewing. Whatever sort of science fiction you're in to, last week was packed with red letter days.

I did review Christopher Farnsworth's Red, White an...

Week o' Filler: Noir Recommendations

[Disclaimer: on the road for most of the week plus wrapping up SpecFic. This week's posts are going to be filler cursory discursive.]

Great authors I've appreciated recently – Christa Faust and Megan Abbott – so I figured I'd look for recommendations for more great female contemporary noir authors.

Fortunately, Twitter had some answers:

Hard Bite by Anonymous9 (@FaustFatale) (er, q.v.)

Hilary Davidson(@GregMcCambley)

Gone Girl byGillian Flynn (the Guardian - backed by @SamsykesSwears, @holli...

Post-script: Hoards and Collections

A great week for encouraging the obsessions, with a stack of finds that all slot neatly into existing collections.

The Jeff Noon signing one of the longest queues I'd seen in a while, which worked in my favour - despite being late, I managed to sneak in at the very end. Mr. Noon was really lovely and chatted to everyone. As a result: signed Vurt, signed Pollen and a new copy of the signed, er, Vurt. (Shop: Forbidden Planet. Collection: Arthur C. Clarke Award winners.)

Forbidden Planet also h...