Steven’s Comments (group member since Nov 15, 2008)

Steven’s comments from the The New Weird group.

Satan is the Next Cupid sounds interesting. You might want to work on your sales pitch though. Do you have a website where I can read some of your work?

Can you give us an example of some authors and/or books?

I like old weird as well. What's your best book?

What's Bizarro?

Are any of your books New Weird?

Does anyone have any suggestions for some good online fiction, New Weird or otherwise. I'm in the mood for some serialized fiction.

Has anyone been yet? I'd like to meet a girl with a steam-driven robot arm.

Cool article. You could base a good story on any concept discussed.

First, let me welcome all the new members. I hope you enjoy your stay and get loads of New Weird suggestions.

Next, I recently discovered Pod-Cast (probably way behind the rest of you on this), but the three below might be of interest to everyone.

http://escapepod.org/
http://podcastle.org/
http://pseudopod.org/

So far, I've been impressed by the quality of the fiction and the readers. The few times I was less than impressed I still got my moneys worth as it's all free.

Throw a few of those on your iPod and check them out on your next commute.

Jeffery Ford continues to impress me. His short story collections are supreme in my opinion.

He has a couple of stories you can listen to for free at http://podcastle.org/

As far as pinning New Weird down as a sub-genre, well, that's not an easy task. At its worse, it becomes "Kitchen Sink" fiction. At its best, it balances science fiction, horror, and fantasy. See China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station" where a giant, sentient robot inhabits the same city as a Spider God with an ear fetish while Lovecraft's version of moths fly around drinking the sweet nectar of our consciousness.

Anyone else have a suggestion for Mohammed?

Amanda wrote: "I'm reading quite a few books- one real interesting one is Child of the River: The First Book of the Confluence by Paul McAuley. It's very original and I'm liking it a lot. Also The Urth of the N..."

Okay, Tim Powers is next. This is like the third time he's been suggested.

It's definitely not New Weird, but I'm enjoying Yiddish Policeman's Union a lot. I'm sad you're not around for me to plunder your book collection.

Hi Doug, and thanks for joining.

I haven't read any of Ian Macleod's work, but, just reading about him on Amazon, I think he'd fit just fine.

Has anyone else read Macleod?

I finished a collection of essays by Michael Chabon recently and was very impressed. I'm 70 pages in and so far I'd have to label it as mildly enjoyable. It won the Hugo so I was expecting more. Still, I'm not very far into it, so I don't want to make any hasty judgements.

What are you reading?

I'm reading this now. Has anyone else had to the opportunity to read this?

I agree with the Mieville endings except for Perdido Street Station. That was a very satisfying ending.

Thanks for this. I'll check it out.

I agree, Amanda. Actually, any Jeffery Ford you can get your hands on is probably going to be worth reading.

Matt is a very interesting, notoriously insane person.

An expert in languages and teenage, vampire fiction.

I just realized "The City and the City" has been released. Has anyone checked that out? Maybe that could be next on our reading list?

Jonathan wrote: "I am getting a kick out of this... Now if people ask my favorite part of Pride and Prejudice, I will reply with "I loved the part when they formed the Pentagram and started kickin zombie ass!""

Pentagram of Death. It's the best defense against Zombies if you have five ass-kicking sisters available.

I haven't read King Rat yet. I'll eventually get around to everything he's written though. I haven't been disappointed by any of his books.