Yearly Archives: 2011

Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette KowalFrom the SFWA website:

Short Story

Novelette

Novella

Novel

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

  • Despicable Me, Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud (directors), Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul (screenplay), Sergio Pablos (story) (Illumination Entertainment)
  • Doctor Who: ‘‘Vincent and the Doctor’’, Richard Curtis (writer), Jonny Campbell (director)
  • How to Train Your Dragon, Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders (directors), William Davies, Dean DeBlois, & Chris Sanders (screenplay) (DreamWorks Animation)
  • Inception, Christopher Nolan (director), Christopher Nolan (screenplay) (Warner)
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Edgar Wright (director), Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright (screenplay) (Universal)
  • Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich (director), Michael Arndt (screenplay), John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, & Lee Unkrich (story) (Pixar/Disney)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

For more information, visit www.nebulaawards.com or www.sfwa.org

Glad to see some love for Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (REVIEW) and Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey (REVIEW). Five of the six novels nominated are penned by women. Hobson’s The Native Star, which I’ve mostly ignored until now, has moved onto my radar. Most interesting to me is the novella section, which features Bacigalupi, Chiang and Swirsky, all three of whom greatly inspire my own short fiction.

THE SACRED BAND by David Anthony Durham

With the first two books in the Acacia Trilogy, Acacia and The Other Lands, David Anthony Durham has created a vast and engrossing canvas of a world in turmoil, where the surviving children of a royal dynasty are on a quest to realize their fates—and perhaps right ancient wrongs once and for all. As The Sacred Band begins, one of them, Queen Corinn, bestrides the world as a result of her mastery of spells found in the ancient Book of Elenet. Her younger brother, Dariel, has been sent on a perilous mis­sion to the Other Lands, while her sister, Mena, travels to the far north to confront an invasion of the feared race of the Auldek. Their separate trajectories will converge in a series of world-shaping, earth-shattering battles, all ren­dered with vividly imagined detail and in heroic scale.

David Anthony Durham concludes his tale of kingdoms in collision in an exciting fashion. His fictional world is at once realistic and fantastic, informed with an eloquent and dis­tinctively Shakespearean sensibility.

Another Epic Fantasy that looks to be wrapping itself up quite nicely in three volumes, all released at a reasonable pace. I haven’t yet read The Other Lands, so I can’t suppose too much about the synopsis here, but, damn does it make me want to get to finishing Durham’s series.

Tentative release date for The Sacred Band is October 4th, 2011.

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

“You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large,” Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. “But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite.”

“Wow,” Elodin said after a long pause. He leveled a serious finger at the Lenatti man. “Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.”

Name a more anticipated novel releasing this year? Tough, ain’t it? Whether you’ve read The Name of the Wind or not, it’s hard to get out from under the shadow cast by the looming release of Patrick Rothfuss’ long-awaited sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear.

In anticipation, Tor.com has posted an excerpt from The Wise Man’s Fear. Only a couple of weeks to go!