• 25 – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

• 24 – The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester

• 23 – Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

• 22 – Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

• 21 – It by Stephen King

• 20 – Legend by David Gemmell

• 19 – Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

• 18 – The Stand by Stephen King

• 17 – Hyperion by Dan Simmons

• 16 – Magician by Raymond E. Feist

• 15 – Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

• 14 – I am Legend by Richard Matheson

• 13 – Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

• 12 – The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

• 11 – Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

• 10 – A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

• 9 – His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman

• 8 – The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

• 7 – American Gods by Neil Gaiman

• 6 – Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

• 5 – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

  All of the Harry Potter books received a fair number of votes, but by far the most popular was the third book, with it time travelling shenanigans and werewolves. The book probably marks the perfect balance between the rollicking children’s adventure stories of the earlier books and the growing angst and complex plots of the later books. It’s also the last Potter book you didn’t need a fork lift truck to get it home from the book shop.

• 4 – The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

  The oldest book in this top 25, and it fully deserves its top five position. Not just because of its historical importance – the first alien invasion novel, you realise – but because it is full of the most amazingly evocative imagery: the Martian ship landing on Horsell Common; the Martian slowly emerging; the three-legged war machines; the attack on the Thunder Child (a ship full of escaping humans); the red weed. This was blockbuster science fiction in literary form. And all written in such splendidly Victorian prose.

• 3 – Dune by Frank Herbert

  The glory of Dune is that it’s so clever, so full of ingenious ideas, so packed with exciting set pieces, so blessed with colourful characters, that even if you plough through the increasingly dire sequels, nothing tarnishes your memories of the original. A space opera on an audacious scale, with plots that have been hatching for centuries, political intrigue and some mindboggling SF concepts, Dune is a milestone in science fiction. When the desert planet of Arakis – so tangibly evoked you can almost feel the heat and dust on your cheeks – becomes the battleground for an intergalactic power struggle, the young heir to a dynasty in decline goes native. Oh yeah, and there are some space nuns who can predict the future who’ve set up a very special breeding program in the hope of creating a saviour.

• 2 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

  Adams is funny. Really funny. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly funny he is. You may think Red Dwarf is the height of comedy sci fi, but that’s just peanuts compared to Adams. On the other hand, don’t let the fact that Adams is probably the wittiest writer ever to have turned his attention to spaceships and all that gubbins get in the way of the fact that he’s also a damned fine SF author too. Behind the gags about digital watches, towels and morphing whales in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are some pretty weighty SF concepts of which Philip K Dick would be proud. The main difference is that Dick could write an entire novel based on a concept that Adams throws away in a passing comment. As we all know, Hitchhiker’s started as a radio show, but it was the books based on the series (six in all, or five and a half if you don’t consider Salmon of Doubt – a posthumous collection of previously uncollected material by Douglas Adams – a proper book) that really extended Adams’s bonkers universe and fired the imagination of his fans.

• 1 – The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

  Yes, it’s won again. Though Hitchhiker’s put in a valiant effort, The Lord Of the Rings remains SFX readers’ favourite book. Or trilogy. Or six books if you’re a real LOTR pedant. The power of Tolkein’s folly to enchant readers just never seems to fade, and the Peter Jackson movie trilogy cleary hasn’t done its reputation any damage. The breed of sniffy, snobby literary types (many of whom you suspect haven’t even read his work) who dismiss Tolkein as nonsense, are, frankly, missing the point. Tolkien wasn’t interested so much in writing great literature – he wanted to create a modern myth. And in this regard he succeeded spectacularly – Middle-earth is so fully realised that it feels just as authentic and ancient as Greek mytholgy or stone circles. So, with this in mind, perhaps his finest work is actually The Silmarillion, published posthumously in 1977 (and edited by his son Christopher), as it details the legends and history of Middle-earth in prose so evocative that it’s hard to picture any other book reaching such heights – Tolkien even constructed new languages. It was a labour that, thankfully, the readers also loved. When it comes to epic fantasy Tolkien wrote the rule book, and any new fantasy author can either embrace Tolkien or kick against him. What they can’t do is ignore him.

“Show, don’t tell” is a beginner’s strategy. Dramatize when it’s time to dramatize, summarize when it’s time to summarize. Knowing the difference is the job description.

Be concrete and specific.

Don’t fear infodumps; telling people what’s going on includes them in on the story. Just don’t make them boring.

Withholding information breeds confusion. Providing information builds tension. (“The essential fact is to get real suspense you must let the audience have information.” –Alfred Hitchcock)

Gentle emotions are more powerful than violent ones.

Think about how things smell and taste.

Write fast, edit ruthlessly.

Trust your readers to be as smart as you are, but don’t assume they can read your mind.

Narrators aren’t evil, nor are they sinless. Tell the story in a voice, but not about the voice.

Get out of the way. The more I use fiction to show everyone how clever I am, the more I compromise my story.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 9, 2010

Pyr Celebrates 5th Anniversary With Essay Contest

Grand Prize Winner Embarks on a ‘Pyr and Dragons Adventure’

Amherst, NY — To celebrate their 5th anniversary, Pyr, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books, will sponsor a contest that incorporates things they hold dear: creative and powerful writing, a passion for reading genre fiction, and this year’s special number, five.

For their Pyr and Dragons Adventure 5th Anniversary Contest, Pyr invites readers and fans to submit a short essay on the theme: Five reasons why science fiction and fantasy is important to you.

Eligibility requirements follow*. Any essay submissions that do not meet these guidelines will be disqualified:

- Entrants must reside in the Continental United States and be at least 21 years of age.
- Essays must be no longer than 1500 words.
- Essays must be emailed to publicity@prometheusbooks.com as a Word document attachment, with the subject line “Pyr and Dragons Adventure Essay Submission.”
- The body of the submission email must clearly identify the entrant’s full name, address (within the Continental United States), phone number and email address.
- All submissions must be received between April 1, 2010 and June 1, 2010.

*For complete list of rules and regulations see http://www.pyrsf.com/.

All eligible essays will be read and reviewed by publishing staff at Prometheus Books. Not all of these preliminary readers will be science fiction and fantasy fans, so outstanding essays will likely be those that pique their interest in the genre and make them want to read it too. The top twenty-five essays as determined by these industry professionals will be read by Pyr Editorial Director Lou Anders, who will select the top three.

The writer of the Third Place essay will win a commemorative Pyr 5th anniversary keepsake and five complimentary books of their choice from the Pyr catalog.

The writer of the Second Place essay will win a complete set of Pyr books as published by the contest end date of June 1, 2010 (one copy of each title, without duplicating those that appear in more than one binding) and a commemorative Pyr 5th anniversary keepsake.

The Grand Prize Winner will embark on a “Pyr and Dragons Adventure” that includes*:

The grand prize winning essay will be posted at the Pyr-o-mania blog, and may be promoted by the publisher by other means, including but not limited to their other blogs, websites, e-newsletters and social networking pages.

Prometheus Books—a provocative, progressive and independent publisher of nonfiction since 1969—launched Pyr in March 2005 to complement its strength in popular science. The imprint rather quickly earned acclaim, awards, and loyal fans, including Pulitzer Prize–winning author Junot Díaz, who called Pyr “the imprint to beat in the science fiction and fantasy fields.”

With an emphasis on quality, Pyr helped to introduce readers to some authors then little-known in the U.S., such as John Meaney, Ian McDonald, Joel Shepherd, Justina Robson, and Joe Abercrombie. Pyr has also published such established authors as Mike Resnick, Robert Silverberg and Michael Moorcock. Pyr Editorial Director Lou Anders has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Editor Long Form for three consecutive years. In 2009, Prometheus Books and Pyr launched a major e-book initiative, with titles available on Kindle and programs with many different e-reader platforms in the works. In 2010, in addition to celebrating its five-year anniversary, Pyr will publish its 100th title.

# # #

For a complete list of contest rules and regulations see http://www.pyrsf.com/

So, let’s talk about your blog for a bit. You’re pretty connected to the news of the fantasy world, able to get interviews with such greats as Blake Charlton and even deign to speak with such no-names like Joe Abercrombie, your reviews tend to be viewed as honest and affable and you’re a writer yourself. You’re officially one of the big names in blogging. Do you think your success is undeserved? And if not, don’t you think you should? What’s next for A Dribble of Ink?

Okay, first I should clear some things up about Abercrombie. He came to me. Both times, on hands and knees, no less. I don’t know why he was so desperate, his books are pretty popular, but he hounded me excessively, begging me to allow him on the blog.

One night, at three in the morning, I got a phone call. On the other end, through the static of the trans-atlantic phonelines, I could hear heavy breath, like the person was breathing only through their mouth, and the gentle scrape of a comb running through a well-tended neck-beard.

He uttered a single phrase, which I will not appear here, that sent a chill down my spine and haunting my dreamscapes with visions of Logen, Friendly and Ferro having unending threesomes. Ever since then, he’s been allowed to come on my blog and rant, in hopes that the dreams may one day cease.

As for the success of my blog, well, I work hard on it and pour a very substantial part of myself into it, so in that respect, yeah, I think the success is deserved. That said, my official answer is: ‘I’m nothing more than a humble guy just doin’ his thing. I didn’t even know people read my blog, I guess that’s kinda neat!’. There, now I don’t sound like an asshole.

What’s next? Onwards and upwards. This year I hope to cover more short fiction and conduct more interviews. Hopefully there’s good news on my own writing, also. Then I can turn A Dribble of Ink into a platform to shill my own material. That would be good, no?

The sea is full of saints. You know that? You know that: you’re a big boy.

The sea’s full of saints and it’s been full of saints for years. Since longer than anything. Saints were there before there were even gods. They were waiting for them, and they’re still there now.

Saints eat fish and shellfish. Some of them catch jellyfish and some of them eat rubbish. Some saints eat anything they can find. They hide under rocks; they turn themselves inside out; they spit up spirals. There’s nothing saints don’t do.

Make this shape with your hands. Like that. Move your fingers. There, you made a saint. Look out, here comes another one! Now they’re fighting! Yours won.

There aren’t any big corkscrew saints any more, but there are still ones like sacks and ones like coils, and ones like robes with flapping sleeves. What’s your favourite saint? I’ll tell you mine. But wait a minute, first, do you know what it is makes them all saints? They’re all a holy family, they’re all cousins. Of each other, and of . . . you know what else they’re cousins of?

That’s right. Of gods.

Alright now. Who was it made you? You know what to say.

Who made you?

Winter is, indeed, coming.

HBO has greenlighted highly anticipated fantasy series “Game of Thrones.”

The premium network has picked up the project for a first season debut next spring (below is the first released photo from the series). Nine episodes plus the pilot have been ordered. Production will begin in Belfast this June.

From the moment the project was first announced in development, the series based on the George R.R. Martin novels has generated enormous, perhaps unprecedented, online interest for a series at such an early stage.

The sprawling tale set in the mythical land of Westeros tells the story of the noble Stark family who become caught up in high court intrigue when patriarch Eddard (played by Sean Bean) becomes the king’s new right-hand man. The four-and-counting books in the series would each be used as one season of the series.

Unlike many fantasy novels, the “Thrones” series largely avoids relying on magical elements and instead goes for brutal realism — think “Sopranos” with swords. Martin, a former TV writer (“Beauty and the Beast”), writes each chapter as a cliffhanger, which should lend itself well to series translation.

This manuscript is about 200 pages longer, and about 500 pages different than the last one I took a picture of. I’ve fixed plotting, tweaked characters, cut scenes, added scenes, re-written, re-organized, re-read, and re-re-organized sections of it so many times that I couldn’t even begin to give you a number of versions it’s been through.

Now last time I posted up a picture of a manuscript on the blog, people got all twitterpated. They saw that big stack of papers and said things like, “Yay! That means the book will be out next month!!1!” and “Wow! How are they going to bind something that big?!?”

So before we all go leaping to a bunch of unfounded and erroneous conclusions, let’s talk about a few things.

First, this manuscript is printed in….(wait for it) manuscript format. That means it’s one-sided, double spaced, and printed in courier new font. That’s what makes it look so big. Typesetting the book comes later in the process. That’s one of the many, many steps that comes later.

That said, The Wise Man’s Fear is going to be bigger than The Name of the Wind by at least 100,000 words or so.

Second, let’s discuss what a draft is. A draft is a version of a piece of writing. Almost always it is an early or preliminary version. You can have things like a rough draft, which is… well… rough. A second draft, which comes after the first draft. Or you can have things like a final draft, which is… well… final.

Is this going too fast for anyone?

This is not the final draft of book two. If it were, I would have said something like, “This is the final draft of book two.” But I didn’t. So it’s not.

But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

This draft is tighter, cleaner, and all around better. I’m really pleased with it, but it’s not quite perfect. Not yet.

…

What happens now?

This manuscript goes to my editor, Betsy. She reads it carefully, maybe twice. She makes notes, then we talk about what she thinks might need to be changed/tweaked/fixed.

Then, depending on how much work we think it needs. We put it into the production schedule. That means we’ll have a publication date. Which I will tell you. On the blog. With words.

Then I do another set of revisions. Or more likely, several smaller sets of revisions, as I’m a freak like that. Luckily, these next sets won’t be nearly so extensive as my last round.

In metaphorical terms, the last round of revisions was like an organ transplant. Invasive, complex, labor intensive, and with a long recovery time. The revisions I do after this will probably be more like cosmetic surgery. Or an appendectomy at worst.

But first, I get to relax. I’ve been working on this fucker nonstop for months. And now, finally, I get to take a break while I wait for Betsy’s feedback.

…

So…. that’s the news. The book is going well. There are parts of it that I’m so proud of that I almost can’t help but talk about them here. It’s coming. Be patient. And rest assured that I’m not just lounging around, doing whippets and eating the cotton-candy underthings off nubile young catgirls.

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

- Elmore Leonard

You don’t always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they’d be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it’s the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

- Diana Athill

Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

- Margaret Atwood

Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

- Roddy Doyle

Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.

- Helen Dunmore

Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

- Geoff Dyer

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

- Anne Enright

Don’t drink and write at the same time.

- Richard Ford

Never use the word “then” as a conjunction – we have “and” for this purpose. Substituting “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many “ands” on the page.

- Jonathan Franzen

A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn’t spin a bit of magic, it’s missing something.

- Esther Freud

Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

- Neil Gaiman

Never complain of being misunderstood. You can choose to be understood, or you can choose not to.

- David Hare

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

- PD James

Defend your work. Organisations, institutions and individuals will often think they know best about your work – especially if they are paying you. When you genuinely believe their decisions would damage your work – walk away. Run away. The money doesn’t matter that much.

- AL Kennedy

TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT is going very well. I’m very pleased with how it’s turning out, and I’m confident it will be ready in time for a release later this year as promised. It will be longer than THE GATHERING STORM, which is another reason the progress bar stopped. I’m just not sure how long the book will end up being, so a percentage is harder to judge right now. The actual length of the book right now—after putting together all the pieces I’ve been working on over the last six months—comes to 291,294 words. THE GATHERING STORM was around 300,000 words. I estimate this one at around 320,000 or so after revisions and edits. (It might get as high as 350,000, then get sliced back down. I always trim a lot off books in later drafts when I tighten up the language.)

…

[Another] thing that happened in December to slow me is that production from Tor started to get anxious because they didn’t have THE WAY OF KINGS (book one of my new series, The Stormlight Archive) in final form yet. So I had to spend a lot of time working on another draft of that book, along with getting some of the interior artwork done.

SHADOWHEART is scheduled for hardcover release in November, simultaneous with the trade paperback for S’rise….

Anne Groell (senior editor) told us we will–hopefully–be seeing Scott Lynch’s REPUBLIC OF THIEVES #spring2011

I’ve left the Isle of Cedars behind, at least. 1261 pages and counting.

The timeline of this monster is going to drive me mad. I know perfectly well that as soon as DANCE is published, some of you out there are going to attempt to correlate its chronology with that of A FEAST FOR CROWS, fit all the parts together to suggest an appropriate chapter order for a (hypothetical, and largely impossible) combined book, something like what the “Big Feast” might have been, before the split.

Well, good luck with that. I’m glad you’re doing it, not me. With all these characters scattered over my entire world, some chapters that span hours and others many months, various journeys and voyages to account for, not to mention the demands of the dramatic chronology, an entirely different matter than the literal chronology… well, it may well make your head explode. It did mine. The DANCE timeline alone is a bitch and a half.

Just musing aloud here, so don’t anyone get all hysterical… but depending on how long the book comes out, moving some of these finished chapters into WINDS OF WINTER may make sense. Structurally you could make a good case for making DANCE a perfect parallel to FEAST; different cast of characters, but exactly the same time frame, so both books end on the same approximate date. Then WINDS could pick up the action for both sets of characters the following day.

That’s not the way I have been doing it, however. As written, I’ve covered the FEAST time frame in the first 800 pages (manuscript pages, the printed book pages will be different) of DANCE. Everything that follows is post-FEAST, so that’s where some of the cast from the last book start popping up again. Not the most elegant structure, I admit… but given how late this one is, I wanted to resolve at least a few of the cliffhangers from FEAST… (if only to set up the new cliffhangers). So…

These are the kinds of things I grapple with. No comments necessary, really. I am not looking for advice, and in fact I seldom talk about such issues precisely to AVOID unsolicited advice. These sorts of things are best resolved by me and my muse, sometimes assisted by my editors. Just felt like rambling a little.

Anyway, there we are. Back to the grindstone tomorrow.

1. Purchase a dedicated website address.

In my own history, I have had two web addresses. The first was hosted by a friend’s hosting agency and it was at otter.covblogs.com. When I first got the site, I was new to blogging, had no idea what I was doing or where I planned to take my blog so it served me just fine. But once my readership began to increase, it became clear that having a dedicated web address would be a good idea, though I still waffled about for some time, something I still regret.

2. Decide what you plan to review.

If you are planning on writing reviews – which should be your bread and butter –then you need to decide if you are going to focus on a specific genre or subgenre. I chose to be rather broad and I cover just about anything in the science fiction and fantasy category, though I avoid horror and read only select stories of the paranormal subgenre. Some bloggers, like Jeff at Fantasy Book News and Reviews, focus on epic fantasy and the eBook market, or you could be like Tia at Debuts and Reviews – who covers new authors breaking into the market, and whose reviews are primarily coverage of paranormal, romance, and some general fantasy. Aidan at A Dribble of Ink rarely even write reviews, but has found readership by always being on top of the latest goings on in the SF/F field and writing responsive essays to other’s ideas that are cogent and entertaining.

3. Stats matter, but only to a certain extent.

Be sure to install a tracking plug-in onto your website like Wordpress Stats or Google Analytics. There are lots of options out there, choose the one that tells you want you want to know. Pay attention to your stats; realize where the traffic is coming from. In the early days, be sure to go thank those who link to your posts. (This is good practice always, but as you get bigger, you will find you have less and less time to devote to this, even though you wish you could comment everywhere.)

…

Go look at what others are doing. Look at the big dogs and see what they are doing right. A word of caution – be sure that you are comparing apples to apples. Comparing a blog with a single author to a group blog like SF Signal (with its thousands of readers) or Fantasy Book Critic (with its thousands) is a waste of time and effort. You might be able to come away with some neat ideas on what you could do at your site, but there is now way a single author blog can compare to the sheer number of posts that those folks produce. Look at the single author or one or two author blogs that are more in your range. Obviously, I myself would be a comparable, and perhaps am some evidence of what four years of consistent blogging can bring you.

4. Publicize, publicize, publicize!

You are new to the book blogging game. The hard truth of that is that no one, absolutely no one, is going to find your blog by accident. It is only through using publicity that you are going to find readers. Make sure you add yourself to various blog aggregators. Sign up for services like Goodreads, Librarything, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. and integrate your blog posts into those feeds. Comment on other blogs in your field of interest regularly, and go join forums like SFFWorld or Westeros. Make sure your signature has your web address in it – if allowed by the forum. Join just about anything you can that will help automate your promotion, but at the same time be sure to participate in discussion and not just be a fly by night I-am-only-here-for-promotion-member. Read favorite author blogs regularly and add your commentary. Use Search Engine Optimization services on your self-hosted blog to increase your reach in Google and Bing. Whatever it takes, do it, but enjoy the community that such publicity efforts can bring as well. Some of my best internet friends have been made through joining in discussions on blogs and as a result, we link to one another fairly regularly and so only increase our reach.

5. Want to get books to review? Start with the authors.

First, build a small library of reviews. You don’t need a lot, but start with books you have read recently, bought and plan to read, are favorites, or that exist in your home library. Get some reviews out there, spend some time arriving at your style (this is fluid and will always change – but it is a good idea to think about layout etc. so that readers have a sense of consistency) and developing a voice that may be similar to others but is also uniquely your own. If you look at my Year of Reading 2007, every review on there up until September is books that I purchased and reviewed. I had, at this point, been consistently writing reviews for a year and a half. There are some quite successful bloggers who still refuse to take publisher copies, preferring to buy and read books of their choice so as not to bear the burden of obligation toward the publisher. This may be something worth thinking about, especially if you are doing this solely as a hobby and occasional creative outlet.

Fallout: New Vegas and Neverwinter Nights 2 developer Obsidian Entertainment will join Red Eagle Games in working on its video game adaptations of Robert Jordan’s acclaimed fantasy novel series ‘The Wheel of Time,’ the pair announced today.

“The Wheel of Time is one of the greatest and well-received fantasy series of all time,” said Obsidian chief creative officer Chris Avellone. “Games set in Robert Jordan’s universe have the chance to deliver on the epic storylines and the complex characters that the series is known for – and this is one of Obsidian’s strengths. It’s a natural fit.” Obsidian was founded by veterans of Fallout and Planescape: Torment dev Black Isle.

Red Eagle Games has been planning to make a Wheel of Time MMORPG as well as tie-in games for the movies its parent company Red Eagle Entertainment is making.

It’s not entirely clear what Obsidian’s involvement in the projects will be, as a press release merely states that the two have signed a “services agreement which provides a comprehensive framework for Obsidian Entertainment to work closely with Red Eagle Games’ in-house development team to create new video games for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 based on Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy series.”

‘Wanted’ screenwriter Chris Morgan has signed on as story director for the games, serving on an “advisory council” with others including Tom Frisina of EA Partners–who are distributing the series. There’s still no word on when the first game will arrive.