>>Nostalgia For Infinity

It’s a while since I reviewed anything from British genre publisher Abaddon Books (see here), and indeed since I read anything from them. I’ve got a certain measure of admiration for what they’re trying to accomplish but the fiction I’d read from them to date had not exactly blown me away. However, I didn’t count on a friend pressing this book into my hands and insisting that I must read it. “I thought it would be rubbish,” she said. “But it has zombie elephants!” She did, originally, pick it up on the basis of the barely-clothed “barbarian” woman on the cover (check out that underboob – now that’s what I call a literary quality, phnarr phnarr).

I think these two facts tell you just about all you need to know about the unique selling points of Anno Mortis.

Oh, sarcasm aside it’s fun enough. Here’s how it goes: in the age of Emperor Caligula (casual mass murderer and serial fucker of all things with holes), the barbarian warrior Boda (as in Boudica, get it?!) is brought to Rome to fight in the coliseum as a gladiator. She quickly gets caught up in some shady business involving dark rites and the bodies of dead gladiators. Around the same time, the feckless playboy and wannabe playright Petronius is forced into the apprenticeship of the Senator Seneca, who it turns out is involved in some shady business involving dark rites and the bodies of dead gladiators. I hate to spoil it for you, but they toootally end up sharing some adventures and unlikely chemistry!

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Del.icio.us links for May 19th through May 21st:

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So here’s a post I wrote half of last October (Hub is now up to #108). The fact that I didn’t find the time or inclination to finish a short and simple review of a short weekly SF e-zine for three months pretty much sums up the creative death that was Q4 2009 for me. Thanks a fucking bunch, my life last year.

But it wasn’t all bad, particularly if you’re not me, because British SF & fantasy e-zine Hub Magazine published its hundredth issue. If you’re not in the know about the general life expectancy of magazines built around genre fiction it may not be clear what an achievement this is, particularly given that Hub boasts 10,000 subscribers (or, at least, is sent to 10,000 email addresses, which is not quite the same thing) and thanks to sponsorship deals with publishers is both solvent and a paying market for writers.

I’ve written about Hub before (#12-18 here, and #35-38 for The Fix Online) and have generally found it an entertaining if hit and miss read since then. So, as a landmark issue what does #100 exemplify about its run to date and what does it indicate for the future?

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I’ve not bought many new SF or fantasy books in the last three or so years and I’m sure there’s a lot of good material I’ve missed. Now, obviously I will be rushing to the bookshops to buy the complete Stephanie Meyer, but what else have I missed that is held in high regard?

Here’s a list of books that have been recommended to me that I can remember…

Older

• Joe Hill – 20th Century Ghosts
• Kelly Link – Magic For Beginners (how have I not read this yet?!)
• David Marusek – Counting Heads
• Ian McDonald – River of Gods
• Geoff Ryman – Air
• Charles Stross – Accelerando
• Peter Watts – Blindsight

2007

• William Gibson – Spook Country
• M. John Harrison – Nova Swing
• Cormac McCarthy – The Road
• China Miéville – Un Lun Dun
• Richard Morgan – Black Man
• Sarah Hall – The Carhullan Army

2008

• Stephen Baxter – Flood
• Nick Harkaway – The Gone-Away World
• Ian R. MacLeod – Song of Time
• Ken MacLeod – The Execution Channel
• Ian McDonald – Brasyl
• Richard Morgan – The Steel Remains
• Alastair Reynolds – House of Suns
• Neal Stephenson – Anathem

2009

• Paolo Bacigalupi – The Wind-Up Girl
• Stephen Baxter – Ark
• Anne Berry – The Hungry Ghosts
• Ursula le Guin – Lavinia
• Jonathan Littell – The Kindly Ones
• China Miéville – The City & the City
• Patrick Ness – The Knife of Never Letting Go
• Adam Roberts  – Yellow Blue Tibia
• Kim Stanley Robinson – Galileo’s Dream
• Ellis Sharp – Dead Iraqis: Selected Short Stories
• Bruce Sterling – The Caryatids
• Conrad Williams – One

More recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

(Though given that I can’t read everything I’d prefer to hear about the novels you thought were great or particularly important rather than merely good. I’d like to try reading some books published in 2010 as well, yes?)

Del.icio.us links for October 5th through October 18th:

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Originally published in Vector at the beginning of the year.

October, and a storm is coming. A travelling lightning rod salesman arrives and alerts two young friends to what he senses on the horizon. Throughout the town, others feel the tension in the air. Something is coming. And that night, 3 am, that something is come. Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show: a travelling carnival, promising rides, freaks, wonders and delights. But Will and Jim watch the carnival arrange itself outside town, and what they see unfold that night is not the rosy funfair that the townsfolk find the following day. Soon enough the carnival folk, the twisted slaves captured by Mr. Cooger and Mr. Dark over their timeless centuries, are led by their masters in a hunt for the boys who alone grasp at the truth. Alone, that is, but for Will’s reclusive father Charles, a man half-lost in his own past.

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I’ve never been particularly fond of following award ceremonies or prize schemes, usually happy to instead meander along my own exploratory routes through culture old and new. By which I mean I tend to have rarely read more than one book on any given shortlist before voting season rolls up, and thus don’t feel particularly qualified to choose what I think is best. Nonetheless I’ve found the nominations and winners of various past awards interesting, and sometimes I’ve even gotten involved despite myself.

I sat in on the 2007 and 2008 British Science Fiction Association award ceremonies, having voted, and watched genre luminaries win endearingly DIY trophies. I have the blurred photos of Ian McDonald to prove it. Sometimes I’ve experienced the momentary flush of anger when it turned out that the views of the majority didn’t correspond with my own. The Interzone readers poll is one that I’ve sometimes participated in since I’m a subscriber who reads every story. Of course I’m also absent-minded with a poor long-term memory, so sometimes I opt not to vote as it would involve re-reading a half-dozen magazines.

It’s great to see friends do well with polls and awards – such as Gareth Powell’s excellent ‘Ack Ack Macaque’ topping last year’s readers’ poll – and the one time a short story of mine was nominated for an award’s longlist ranks among my warmest and fuzziest of writerly memories.

But for the most part I’ve not gotten involved and stood instead on the sidelines, as an observer. There are a lot of anecdotal reasons to be cynical about awards. » Read the rest of this entry «

On the Guardian website today:

Let’s stop sneering at fantasy readers

They might be the zit-ridden little brothers of science fiction geeks, but fantasy readers still deserve our respect

Making a good start there, then.

I wonder if this byline policy is also going to be extended to other subjects. Perhaps we can also look forward to Time for the violence in Tehran to end – even if those crazy brown folks do enjoy a spot of barbarism, or Calling for an end to rape – although she was totally asking for it, wearing that tight little miniskirt.

On the positive side of things it’s under a half-dozen comments into the thread that names like Mieville, Vandermeer, Swainston et al start getting mentioned. So we know that Guardian readers are capable of adult dialogue even if the paper’s editors may sometimes fall short.

Del.icio.us links for June 15th through June 20th:

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I forgot to mention this at the time, but the most recent issue of Vector featured my review of Ray Bradbury’s reissued classic Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Vector is the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association and is only available to members. The main BSFA site is here, Vector’s rarely-updated site is here, and the much more happenin’ Vector editor’s blog is here.