Monthly Archives: January 2009

Cover Art

Cover Art & Synopsis | Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

By Aidan Moher January 10th, 2009

Jeff VanderMeer released the (almost) final cover art and a synopsis for his upcoming novel Finch

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Cover: By the amazing John Coulthart. For a larger version, click here. An interesting fact–John tells me the cobblestones in the picture are from a photo he took while we were walking through Paris together; er, sans blood. (This design is semi-final, in that a blurb will probably occupy the space under my name.)

Publisher: Underland Press, October 31, 2009, trade paper

Description: A noir thriller/visionary fantasy set in the failed state of Ambergris, 100 years after Shriek: An Afterword. The gray caps, mysterious underground inhabitants, have re-conquered Ambergris and put the city under martial law, disbanding House Hoegbotton, and controlling the human inhabitants with strange addictive drugs, internment in camps, and random acts of terror. The rebel resistance is scattered, and the gray caps are using human labor to build two strange towers. Against this backdrop, John Finch, who lives alone with a cat and a lizard, must solve an impossible double murder for his gray cap masters while trying to make contact with the rebels.

Nothing is as it seems as Finch and his disintegrating partner Wyte negotiate their way through a landscape of spies, rebels, and deception. Trapped by his job and the city, Finch is about to come face to face with a series of mysteries that will change him and Ambergris forever.

You can find VanderMeer’s blog HERE.

News

An Aside | 2008 Nebula Award Longlist

By Aidan Moher January 10th, 2009

It’s that time of year again, the 2008 Nebula longlist has arrived and I’m glad to see several friends of the blog make the list! One has to wonder how many times Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind will keep showing up on these lists, even two years after first being published!

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. Founded as the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1965 by Damon Knight, the organization began with a charter membership of 78 writers; it now has over 1,400 members, among them most of the leading writers of science fiction and fantasy.

The Nebula Awards Weekend will be held April 24-26 at the Luxe Hotel Sunset Boulevard, with the awards presentation banquet to be held on the UCLA campus to tie in with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Novels:

Abraham, Daniel: A Betrayal in Winter (Tor, Jul07)
Barzak, Chris: One for Sorrow (Bantam, Sep07)
Bull, Emma: Territory (Tor, Jul07)
Doctorow, Cory: Little Brother (Tor, Apr08)
Goonan, Kathleen Ann: In War Times (Tor, May07)
Le Guin, Ursula K.: Powers (Harcourt, Sep07)
McDevitt, Jack: Cauldron (Ace, Nov07)
McDonald, Ian: Brasyl (Pyr, May07)
Pratchett, Terry: Making Money (Harper, Sep07)
Rothfuss, Patrick: The Name of the Wind (DAW, Apr07)

Novellas:

Asaro, Catherine: The Spacetime Pool (Analog, Mar08)
Benford, Gregory: Dark Heaven (Alien Crimes, SFBC, Jan07?)
Eskridge, Kelley: Dangerous Space (Dangerous Space, Aqueduct Press, Jun07)
Finlay, Charles Coleman: The Political Prisoner (F&SF, Aug08)

Novelettes:

Bowes, Richard: If Angels Fight (F&SF, Feb08)
Flynn, Michael F. : Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo (Analog, Aug07 (Jul/Aug07 issue))
Gardner, James Alan: The Ray-Gun: A Love Story (Asimov’s, Feb08)
Goldstein, Lisa: Dark Rooms (Asimov’s, Nov07 (Oct/Nov 07 issue))
Kessel, John: Pride and Prometheus (F&SF, Jan08)
Kosmatka, Ted: The Prophet of Flores (Asimov’s, Sep07)
Moles, David: Finisterra (F&SF, Dec07)
Sinisalo, Johanna: Baby Doll (The SFWA European Hall of Fame, Tor, Jun07
(trans. from the Finnish by David Hackston))
Wentworth, K.D.: Kaleidoscope (F&SF, May07)

Short Stories:

Allen, Mike: The Button Bin (Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, Oct07
(Reprinted in Transcriptase)
Cassutt, Michael: Skull Valley (Asimov’s, Nov07 (Oct/Nov 07 issue))
Finch, Sheila: Stranger Than Imagination Can (The Guild of Xenolinguists, Golden
Gryphon Press, Sep07)
Ford, Jeffrey: The Dreaming Wind (Coyote Road, Trickster Tales, Viking Juvenile, Jul07)
Henderson, Samantha: Bottles (Realms of Fantasy, Apr07)
Hobson, M. K.: The Hotel Astarte (Realms of Fantasy, Jun07)
Johnson, Kij: 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss (Asimov’s, Jul08)
Jones, Gwyneth: The Tomb Wife (F&SF, Aug07)
Kelly, James Patrick: Don’t Stop (Asimov’s, Jun07)
Nestvold, Ruth: Mars: A Traveler’s Guide (F&SF, Jan08)
Plante, Brian: The Astronaut (Analog, May07)
Rickert, Mary: Holiday (Subterranean #7, Sep07)
Scholes, Ken: Summer in Paris, Light From the Sky (Clarkesworld Magazine, Nov07)
Van Pelt, James: How Music Begins (Asimov’s, Sep07)

Scripts:

Stanton, Andrew: WALL-E (Pixar, Jun08)

Congrats to all the nominated! You can find the web site HERE.

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News

Free Readin’ | The People’s Machine by Tobias Buckell

By Aidan Moher January 9th, 2009

Tobias Buckell, author of Crystal Rain, has recently released one of his 2008 short stories with a creative commons license and that’s good news for us.

A snippet from his website:

Inquisitor, warrior, and priest Ixtli’s fast-paced journey by airship began in Tenochtitlan, facing the solemn row of white robed pipiltin. The rulers of the grandest city of the world had roused him from his house, burly Jaguar Scouts with rifles throwing open his doors and shouting him awake.

“I’m to go to New Amsterdam?” Ixtli could hardly keep the distaste out of his voice. The colonies were cold now, and filthy, and smelly.

Mecatl, the eldest of the pipiltin and rumored favorite of the Steel Emperor, explained. “There has been a murder there.”

“And have the British lost the ability to police their own?” Ixtli had little love for the far north.

“The murder is of a young man. His heart has been removed in what looks like an Eagle sacrifice. Find out the truth of the matter, and whether apostate priests have immigrated to New Amsterdam.”

This was news to Ixtli. Followers of the sacrifice usually inhabited border lands between cities, scattered and un-united. None of them tried to keep the old ways in any Mexica city.

But in the chaos of a savage, foreign city like New Amsterdam, maybe they could rebuild their followers.

“And if I find it’s so?” Ixtli asked the pipiltin.

“Find the truth,” they told him. “If it is true, then we will have to root out the heresy from a distance. But if it is not true, we need to find out what is happening.”

And seven hours later Ixtli was passing out of his father country and into the great swathe of territory the French called Louisiana, the large airship he’d booked passage on powering hard against the winds.

Take a gander at The People’s Machine HERE or download a copy HERE.

Videogames

Videogames | 1up.com and EGM (more or less) Shuttered

By Aidan Moher January 6th, 2009

The news spread around the Gaming Press like wildfire earlier today, the Ziff Davis Game Group (consisting of 1UP.com, Gamevideos.com, Gametab.com and Mycheats.com) was purchased today by publishing juggernaut Hearst Media (owners of UGO.com) and big changes have come one of the top faces in the Videogame industry.

From Eat. Sleep. Game.

The internet hummed quietly this morning on inauspicious word that the rumored buyout of 1UP.com and Ziff-Davis game group by Hearst Media (owners of the high-traffic but surprisingly low profile UGO gaming portal) had gone through this week. Originally, word was seen on news portal PaidContent.org, and though the story was quickly pulled down this morning, it remained indexed in Google’s cache and RSS feeds. However, it was thought that this would likely mean a few layoffs while UGO attempted to fit 1UP.com within their content stable.

From Joystiq

Based on Twitter and forum posts by (now former) 1UP staff, it appears all but certain that the 1UP Show video podcast and 1UP Yours audio podcast are no more.

Speaking to MTV Multiplayer, 1UP editorial director Sam Kennedy could not confirm changes to its products / programming. “Will we have as many shows as we have in the past? Probably not, but we have – we’ve had – a lot of ideas for future shows and we’re pretty excited about what we’ll do in the future,” Kennedy told MTV. “Right now, we’re going to go through the process of really figuring out what kind of shows and products we want to keep going in the future. Our intention is to keep as many going as we can.”

1UP staff affected:

At present, the following 1UP staff have indicated — either in tweets, forum posts, or directly to us — that they have been let go: Andrew “Skip” Pfister, Matt Chandronait, Ryan O’Donnell, Jay Fresh, Cesar Quintero, Philip Kollar, Nick Suttner, Anthony Gallegos, Shane Bettenhausen, James “Milkman” Mielke.

Add to this the audacity that UGO.com had when they posted this right before laying off 40 1UP.com/EGM employees and gutting the entirety of the network:

UGO acquired 1UP today. That’s one hell of a way to kick off the New Year.

First of all, let me come out and say that there is no other gaming site like 1UP. Unlike some of the lumbering, impersonal behemoths out there, 1UP is all about its personalities, and its fans are awesome, passionate and willing to fight to the death over whether Final Fantasy X2 was an abomination or a triumph. It’s an honor to bring that passion into the UGO fold. We are like-minded in our love of video games and I plan on welcoming them to the family by kicking their collective asses in Street Fighter IV.

Speaking specifically of the team over there, Sam Kennedy and his crew at 1UP are the most hardcore of hardcore gamers. Cut them and they bleed pixels. There isn’t a better site out there to help UGO realize our vision of being the definitive voice in gaming.

Sam and I are already talking about all the cool things we can do together between epic Dhalsim v. Zangief matches. I can tell you that we’re going to own E3 this year. Our shared goal, our sole mission, is to make your head explode over and over again as we bring you the best video game coverage on the web. At the heart of all this madness is a desire to help 1UP do what they do best…”owning the conversation” when it comes to video games.

Uh, yeah, sure. If that isn’t a dagger in the back I don’t know what is. It’s one thing to take over a company and incorporate it (and most of its employees) into your own. That’s worth celebrating. Gutting it and leaving dozens of good, skilled journalists without jobs? Excuse me while I boo.

RIP 1UP

In a matter of hours many of the aspects that separated 1UP from their competitors – the 1UP Yours podcast, the 1UP Show, a slicky produced weekly video podcast, and EGM magazine – were thrown aside like so much rubbish. One has to wonder what UGO’s motives are when they fire the majority of the well known personalities, shutter the three things that defined 1UP’s success and more or less turn the community of hardcore gamers against them in the matter of hours.

Truly this is a sad day for Videogames journalism. Best of luck to those who lost their jobs today.

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Review

Review | Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

By Aidan Moher January 6th, 2009
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Altered Carbon

Author – Richard K. Morgan

Paperback
Pages: 544 pages
Publisher: Gollancz
Release Date: September 9, 2002
ISBN-10: 057507390X
ISBN-13: 978-0575073906

In the six or so short years since Richard Morgan hit the SF scene, he’s become synonymous with hard edged Science Fiction. Hell, he is probably one of the sole reasons that ‘gritty’ has become such an overused descriptor in the SF publishing universe. He made further waves earlier this year when he took the leap from Science Fiction into Fantasy with the release of The Steel Remains. Wanting to see what all the fuss was about, I decided to go back to the source and start with his debut novel, Altered Carbon.

Immediately I was struck at how evenly Altered Carbon delivered a mix between hard edged Science Fiction and a dusty old detective novel. As with any good first person narrative driven novel, the strength of Altered Carbon rests on the shoulders of its main protagonist and Takeshi Kovacs (not pronounced KOE-vacs, but rather KOE-vash, if you know what’s good for you) more than delivers. On the surface he’s a hardened killer, straight out of the future’s version of prison, and simply bent on doing what he needs to to survive. Over the length of the novel, though, Kovacs grows through Morgan’s brisk, evocative prose and shows more layers than I ever expected of him.
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