 |  |  |
News, Reviews, Resources, and Perspectives of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror |
 |
|
|
|
Tuesday 6 May 2008• Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary:
The net is an unending NOW of moments and distractions and wonderments and puzzlements and rages. Asking someone riding its currents to undertake some kind of complex dance before she can hand you her money is a losing proposition.
Wednesday 30 April 2008• Locus Magazine: May Issue
The May issue of Locus has interviews with Theodora Goss and Catherynne M. Valente, remembrances of the late Arthur C. Clarke, news of the Stoker and Nebula awards, reports from World Horror Con and ICFA, and reviews of new books by Walter Jon Williams, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Lou Anders, Jonathan Barnes, and others.
Monday 28 April 2008• Locus Magazine: Terry Pratchett: Acts of GodExcerpts from Locus Magazine's April Issue interview. 
I think SF will end up getting subsumed into mainstream fiction. Mainstream steals more and more from it, without a shadow of a doubt, while at the same time screaming at the top of its voice that it's not science fiction. It's astonishing what convoluted logic they will apply.
• Locus Magazine: Sarah Monette: Tangents and CurlicuesExcerpts from Locus Magazine's April Issue interview. 
I find reality very boring. I have never had an idea for a story that did not somehow involve the supernatural, the science-fictional, or the fantastic in some way. But psychological realism is what I'm here for. If a story is going to provide anything more valuable than a couple hours' entertainment, it has to be psychologically true.
Sunday 30 March 2008• Locus Magazine: April Issue
The April issue of Locus has interviews with Terry Pratchett and Sarah Monette, essays celebrating Discworld's 25th and Locus's 40th anniversaries, an obituary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and reviews of books by Ursula K. Le Guin, Felix Gilman, Jonathan Strahan, Alastair Reynolds, and others, plus Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column on H.G. Wells.
Friday 28 March 2008• Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews
Faren Miller reviews James Morrow
...Enlightenment notions can have very little relevance in a particularly mad sector of a mad, mad world. Of course Morrow himself knows this all too well, and keeps escalating the weirdness and the mind games that surround his hapless hero until the plot achieves a degree of insane improbability that's the hallmark of Swiftian satire. Call it fantasy, SF, or some mixture of the two, it's perfectly suited to expose humankind's pretense of rationality for the delusion it really is.
Graham Sleight reviews Iain M. Banks
Matter, Banks's first SF novel since The Algebraist, and first Culture novel since Look to Windward, is told by the merry chatterer for most of its length. Indeed, much of its story doesn't feel like SF at all. It has more to do with the dynastic intrigues you might find in the fantasy novels of, say, George R.R. Martin.
Wednesday 26 March 2008• Locus Magazine: Charles Stross: Spung!Excerpts from Locus Magazine's March Issue interview. 
I set out to write a modern late-period Heinlein novel. You've got to play by the Heinlein rules. To be canonical, it has to have a red-headed heroine with a nipple that goes 'spung.' This was a first and obvious anchor point. I thought to myself, 'Oh my god, how am I going to have a heroine with a nipple that goes spung?' • Locus Magazine: Peter Watts: Lesser EvilsExcerpts from Locus Magazine's March Issue interview. 
The evolutionary significance of consciousness is not a theme that lends itself well to a dramatic tale. I went into Blindsight fearing I'd bitten off more than I could chew: 'There's a kick-ass story in here -- I'm just not up to telling it.' I was hoping to get by on the strength of the ideas. Still. Shit needs to blow up real good at some point, or you're not telling a story; you're writing an essay.
Tuesday 4 March 2008• Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary:Put Not Your Faith In Ebook Readers
I'm skeptical about selling ebooks as a business model, but if I had to bet on a future for e-books, I would take long odds against a hardware reader catching on in any meaningful way. • Locus Magazine/Future History: Forthcoming BooksSelected US and UK titles scheduled for March through December 2008, from Locus Magazine's March issue, are listed here by month. Friday 29 February 2008• Locus Magazine: March Issue
The March issue of Locus has interviews with Charles Stross and Peter Watts, lists of forthcoming books through the end of 2008, a new essay by Cory Doctorow, the latest publishing and awards news, and reviews of books by Cory Doctorow, Ursula K. Le Guin, Iain M. Banks, Jeffrey Ford, and others.
Thursday 28 February 2008• Locus Magazine: Lucius Shepard: LandscapesExcerpts from Locus Magazine's February Issue interview. 
Stories spring to me from landscapes, from settings. When I go to a place like Honduras or Nicaragua, and a story occurs to me, I'm not going to take it out of its context, because it's a story particular to that place and time.
• Locus Magazine: Maureen F. McHugh: Filling the VoidExcerpts from Locus Magazine's February Issue interview. 
A lot of my fiction today is less genre than Michael Chabon's, but I sold my first pieces in the late '80s and there was no McSweeney's, so I'm now genre. Derrida's essay on genre begins, 'There is unease at the heart of genre.' It's an argument I've been at so many times, I just don't want to have it anymore.
Tuesday 26 February 2008• Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews
Gary K. Wolfe reviews Kathleen Duey
Skin Hunger is one of the more accomplished and original fantasy novels of the year, and the trilogy it inaugurates might well constitute a major work (the narrative here is too truncated to claim that quite yet). ... [I]f the remainder of the Resurrection of Magic plays out at this level of intensity, it will easily take its place among those YA trilogies that ought to earn the attention of fantasy readers of any age.
Russell Letson reviews Chris Roberson
Here, as in The Voyage of Night Shining White, character, character relationships, and cultural background are at least as compelling as the melodramatic action in the foreground. In fact, those are the qualities that would have me return to this charming and oddly-retro-feeling alternate future.
Thursday 7 February 2008• 2008 Locus Poll & Survey
The 2008 Locus Poll & Survey ballot is now online. The deadline for voting is April 15th.
Wednesday 6 February 2008• Feature:Yesterday's Tomorrows: Ray Bradbury Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column from Locus Magazine looks at classic works by Ray Bradbury. 
I don't think a critic should go on too much about their own personal experiences, because the point of criticism is after all to get past the personal and find responses to a work that are of more general use. But I can't do that so easily with Bradbury...
Saturday 2 February 2008• Locus Magazine: February Issue
The February issue is Locus' annual Year In Review issue, with the 2007 Recommended Reading List, essays on the year's best books, and summaries of the year in publishing. Plus: interviews with Lucius Shepard and Maureen F. McHugh, a celebration of Philip José Farmer's 90th birthday, the latest publishing and awards news, and reviews of books by James Morrow, Sarah Monette, Jeffrey Ford, Chris Roberson, and others, as well as Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" column, on Philip José Farmer.
Wednesday 30 January 2008• Locus Magazine: Sample Reviews
Gary K. Wolfe reviews Paolo Bacigalupi
If Bacigalupi challenges SF's traditional valorization of reason, he's very much an SF writer in the particulars. One can hear echoes of everyone from Harlan Ellison to David Bunch, Geoff Ryman, and even H.G. Wells here — there are shadows of Morlocks and Eloi all over — but Bacigalupi is mostly the spiritual heir of C.M. Kornbluth, one of the few classic-age SF writers with a similarly grim and mordant view of human nature.
Faren Miller reviews Ekaterina Sedia
With a mix of blunt, colloquial language, wry humor, a generous dollop of psychological traumas, and some fine descriptive passages (whether setting a scene, showing moments of self-understanding, or producing both in one decisive moment), Sedia moves effortlessly from a '90s Moscow where the world seems to have gone "upside-down overnight," to its magical counterpart where weirdness is the norm...
Saturday 26 January 2008• Locus Magazine: Brian Aldiss: Above GroundExcerpts from Locus Magazine's January Issue interview. 
If you want to make money, you don't attempt anything new. You start a series that can go on and on, whereupon the publishers don't have any crisis of decision to resolve. I don't want to work like that. It always seemed to me that one of the principles of writing is you should enjoy the actual writing, the feel of something evolving under your fingers, under your keys.
• Locus Magazine: M. Rickert: The Right ShapeExcerpts from Locus Magazine's January Issue interview. 
It's a tremendous gift to be a writer, because everywhere I go there are teachers. The library is full of them. In the library or the bookstore, I make sure to walk the shelves, not just to go to a particular shelf every time. I like to explore, and to take home books by people I've never heard of. In the field, I still feel a bit like an outsider.
Sunday 6 January 2008• Locus Magazine: Cory Doctorow Commentary: Artist Rights
There's one artist's right that's more important than all the rest combined: the right to free expression. No one gives out awards for writers who bring copyright suits — but we do give out awards to the brave writers who publish in the teeth of censorship and state oppression.
Tuesday 1 January 2008• Locus Magazine: January Issue
Locus Magazine for January has interviews with Brian Aldiss and M. Rickert, a celebration of Arthur C. Clarke's 90th Birthday, a new column by Cory Doctorow, and reviews of new books by Paolo Bacigalupi, Alan Lightman, Michael Swanwick, Peter F. Hamilton, and many others.
|
|
April 2008
The April issue of Locus Magazine -- mailing March 27th to subscribers -- features interviews with Terry Pratchett and Sarah Monette, essays on Locus's 40th anniversary by Robert Silverberg, Joe Haldeman, and others, an obituary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and reviews of new books by Ursula K. Le Guin, Greg Egan, Alastair Reynolds, Leigh Brackett, and others, plus Graham Sleight's "Yesterday's Tomorrows" look at H.G. Wells. Table of Contents Locus Bestsellers New & Notable Books
March 2008
The March issue of Locus Magazine -- mailed February 28th to subscribers -- has interviews with Charles Stross and Peter Watts, listings of forthcoming books through December 2008, news about this year's SF Hall of Fame inductees, a new commentary by Cory Doctorow, reports on SF in Germany and India, and reviews of new books by Cory Doctorow, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Morrow, John Varley, Iain M. Banks, and others. Table of Contents Locus Bestsellers New & Notable Books
February 2008
The February issue of Locus Magazine -- mailing January 31st to subscribers -- has interviews with Lucius Shepard and Maureen F. McHugh, a celebration of Philip José Farmer's 90th birthday, reviews of new books by James Morrow, Sarah Monette, Chris Roberson, Jeffrey Ford, and others, plus the annual Year in Review, with summaries of books and magazines, essays, and the 2007 Recommended Reading List. Table of Contents Locus Bestsellers New & Notable Books
January 2008
The January issue of Locus Magazine -- mailing December 27th to subscribers -- has interviews with Brian Aldiss and M. Rickert, a celebration of Arthur C. Clarke's 90th birthday, a column by Cory Doctorow, and reviews of new books by Paolo Bacigalupi, Alan Lightman, Michael Swanwick, Peter F. Hamilton, and many others Table of Contents Locus Bestsellers New & Notable Books 
|
  |