Nov 13, 2006
Books for Busia
I've mentioned this before, but now there is new bloggy goodness associated with it. Go to Books for Busia, and see what good you could do with a couple of bucks or a box full of books you don't want anymore.
Nov 9, 2006
Leetle Update
I've added links to my short fiction that's available online. Look in the sidebar, below the book covers.
Nov 3, 2006
We Have to Invite Him, He's Family
The current SF Site offers an "article" by Algis Budrys that purports to be a history of L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contest. I put the word article in quote marks because it carries with it some connotation of truth and objectivity, or at least rational judgment, and Budrys' piece demonstrates none of those qualities.
Only the last paragraph has anything to do with the Writers of the Future contest. The rest is what can only be characterized as a posthumous blowjob for Hubbard, who is in the first sentence compared with Melville, Twain, London, and Hemingway...all of whom are presumably spinning in their graves (except maybe Twain, who would appreciate the absurdity of this rhetorical gesture and the assumptions about human gullibility that provoked it).
Budrys goes on to paint a typically Sciento-hagiographic (which is to say fragmentary and larded with omissions and statements of questionable veracity) portrait of Hubbard's life. By the end of it, the reader who has succeeded in keeping his gorge down will be wondering by what cosmic injustice Hubbard was never awarded the Nobel Prizes for literature, peace, physics, and his legacy as "explorer and prospector, master mariner and daredevil pilot, philosopher and artist."
Why, oh why, does science fiction (by which, in this case, I mean a fairly well respected fan and review site like SF Site) continue to offer Scientology proselytizers a platform? All this does is give ammunition to the legions of snobs SF fans want to see lurking around every corner. If you want people to take you seriously, don't let yourself be used as a forum for crackpots.
Contests (free ones, anyway) which encourage young writers and give them a platform are terrific. So the Writers of the Future contest should be applauded on that basis; but the contest (as its website makes clear) is also a fig leaf for more Hubbard-worship. And Budrys' "article" doesn't even name any of the now-successful writers who gained entry to the field by means of the contest--which one presumes might have been a useful selling point were the "article" really about the contest. But it isn't. It's a Scientology recruiting pamphlet--nothing more, nothing less--and it doesn't belong on a website that takes itself seriously as an outlet for discussion, critique, and devotion to the literature of SF.
Only the last paragraph has anything to do with the Writers of the Future contest. The rest is what can only be characterized as a posthumous blowjob for Hubbard, who is in the first sentence compared with Melville, Twain, London, and Hemingway...all of whom are presumably spinning in their graves (except maybe Twain, who would appreciate the absurdity of this rhetorical gesture and the assumptions about human gullibility that provoked it).
Budrys goes on to paint a typically Sciento-hagiographic (which is to say fragmentary and larded with omissions and statements of questionable veracity) portrait of Hubbard's life. By the end of it, the reader who has succeeded in keeping his gorge down will be wondering by what cosmic injustice Hubbard was never awarded the Nobel Prizes for literature, peace, physics, and his legacy as "explorer and prospector, master mariner and daredevil pilot, philosopher and artist."
Why, oh why, does science fiction (by which, in this case, I mean a fairly well respected fan and review site like SF Site) continue to offer Scientology proselytizers a platform? All this does is give ammunition to the legions of snobs SF fans want to see lurking around every corner. If you want people to take you seriously, don't let yourself be used as a forum for crackpots.
Contests (free ones, anyway) which encourage young writers and give them a platform are terrific. So the Writers of the Future contest should be applauded on that basis; but the contest (as its website makes clear) is also a fig leaf for more Hubbard-worship. And Budrys' "article" doesn't even name any of the now-successful writers who gained entry to the field by means of the contest--which one presumes might have been a useful selling point were the "article" really about the contest. But it isn't. It's a Scientology recruiting pamphlet--nothing more, nothing less--and it doesn't belong on a website that takes itself seriously as an outlet for discussion, critique, and devotion to the literature of SF.
Oct 31, 2006
Batman and the Russians
Batman: Inferno is out, and available at better bookstores.
In other news, A Scattering of Jades will appear in a Russian translation from AST. When? Who knows?
Oct 29, 2006
Oct 26, 2006
Couple more SoS interviews/reviews
An interview with Sam Moyerman at Broken Frontier; a review at the same site; and a Photon Torpedoes review. Someone mentioned somewhere that using a character called Son of Satan might get certain of our Biblical-literalist brethren riled up, and there's a slight indication in the comments to my previous post that this is beginning to happen. I should be so lucky.
Oct 18, 2006
The Son of Satan is loose...
...so get thee to the comic shop. And here's a Wizard interview to whet your appetite, and wherein we digress to talk about the Batman book as well.
Oct 16, 2006
Le Soleil du Nouveau Monde
...is the title of the French edition of A Scattering of Jades, out just now from Fleuve Noir. Wish I could read French, since it turns out that the most recent edition of Fiction has a translation of "The Golems of Detroit," previously seen in the May 2005 F&SF.
When, oh when, am I going to get a translation I can read? (Which would be German. Sort of. Or Spanish, if the book was rewritten at a Dick-and-Jane level.)
Sep 17, 2006
A Few Tidbits...
At left, a thumbnail of Mark Texeira's cool variant cover for Son of Satan #1. See the full-sized version on Marvel's news page.The Bangor Daily News recently interviewed and profiled me, and somehow convinced Gordon Van Gelder to say all kinds of nice things.
Also, Pictures from an Expedition is out! Get 'em while they're hot!
(Link is to order directly from Night Shade, but you can get the book at Amazon etc. too...and by the way, Cinescape's Weekly Book Buzz says you should read it. Isn't that good enough?)
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