There’s nothing I don’t like in the December issue of F&SF, and Lucius Shepard’s Films column tops it off: “The sole value of movies like Rise of the Silver Surfer,flavorless, odorless, soulless product, is that they provide a register for the flatlining of our culture–not of its intelligence, really, but of its will to excel and [...]
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Despite two complete stinkers, the October/November double issue has some real pleasers. It’s also the first time my name has appeared in F&SF. Appropriately, it’s as a dishonorable mention. For the Adapted contest I spliced Star Wars and Of Mice and Men. What can I say? The thought of smushed Ewoks amuses me.
I suppose most people will be more interested [...]
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Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show is offering stories for free. Great news for hypocrites like me who would like be paid for their stories but have a hard time paying for other peoples’. (I don’t have much of a personal library because I sit 9 to 5 in a 665,000 square foot library with 6.5 [...]
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I’ve spent the last couple days attending Life, the Universe, & Everything, a small regional con that’s been running for 26 years at Brigham Young University. Every year this con attracts a couple A-list authors, a number of B-listers, and the local C-listers.
This year the big names were Gail Carson Levine, who impressed me with her demure [...]
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The January 2008 issue of Asimov’s seems to have a theme of fate and regret. My favorite story was Tanith Lee’s, “The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald,” which touches both themes, focusing on the fate of a quarantined city. The plague in question displays some far-fetched but intriguing adaptations to encourage contagion, but the real interest [...]
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The September issue is fairly strong, with a good number of shorter stories and no honking big novellas monopolizing the page count.
Ted Chiang’s eagerly awaited “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” is the centerpiece. While it didn’t leave me mentally gobsmacked the way his stories usually do, I actually found more enjoyment in its 1,001 Arabian Nights savor than I [...]
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