Monthly Archives: March 2012

Feature Article

“We All Love a Good Show” by Robert Jackson Bennett

By Robert Jackson Bennett March 26th, 2012

The Troupe by Robert Jackson BennettProbably one of the first circus- or carnival-themed stories I ever read and fell in love with was Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. I was quite young, and I remember I loved it because it felt like it could happen to me in real life at any moment: I would be walking home from school one chilly autumn afternoon, and I would see a poster taped to a wall promising a traveling show of amazing wonders, and I would attend, and… Something Amazing Would Happen.

I wouldn’t know what, exactly – it would be impossible to know, because all of that would be kept veiled behind the curtain until I’d paid my fee and taken my seat. But finally the lights would go down, and then…

Well. Showtime.

That’s how these things work. We all know it. It’s a story model that’s written into our bones. It doesn’t have to be a circus, or a carnival, or even a show – consider the Faerie Market from Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, when visitors from the other side of the wall flood the town offering mysterious goods and wares. One young man buys something… and Something Amazing Happens.
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Feature Article

Was Robert Jordan a Sellout?

By Aidan Moher March 23rd, 2012

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan (eBook Edition)Earlier today, I stumbled across some interesting discussion from industry folk. In the thread, they discuss a fairly damning comment made by David Drake, another Tor author, of both Jordan’s and Tor’s handling of the middle books in the enormously successful Wheel of Time series.

Drake’s original comment:

Dear People,

What I said was that when Jim Rigney’s work became a significant part of not only the Tor but the Von Holzbrink bottom line, the plots for individual volumes were decided by very highly placed people in council with the author.

Business was expanded to a complete volume where it might originally have been one of several strands in a volume, and the action in minor theaters (so to speak) was followed when the author might have been willing to elide it.

I further said and will repeat: there were quite a lot of people who sneered at ‘Robert Jordan’ but whose own books wouldn’t have been published without the Wheel of Time to subsidize them. Since the onset of Jim’s (Jim Rigney’s) illness, he hadn’t been able to write–and a lot of those people are not being published any more.

Dave Drake

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News

What’s next for Saladin Ahmed after Throne of the Crescent Moon?

By Aidan Moher March 22nd, 2012

THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON by Saladin AhmedIn a recent discussion on Goodreads, Saladin Ahmed, author of Throne of the Crescent Moon, gave a handful of juicy details about his upcoming projects, the two follow-up novels to his successful debut.

Ahmed is currently in the midst of writing the second volume of the trilogy, which has no title yet, and expects it to be ready for a mid-2013 release. He promises that the djenn, who are only briefly mentioned in Throne of the Crescent Moon, will play a more integral role in the second novel and also says that readers haven’t seen the last between the hilarious and painfully accurate teenage romance that started to blossom between Zamia and Raseed bas Raseed in the latter half of Throne of the Crescent Moon.

Most interesting, though, are his comments on the scope of the second and third volumes. He says:

The later books will explore a fair amount of the map included with THRONE. Specifically, Rughal-ba and the off-map ‘Warlands’ will become hugely important. [They] will move toward epic fantasy in scale and scope, even as they maintain a sword-and-sorcery flavor. The main conflict of Book III will be a classic epic fantasy ‘clash of the big ol’ armies’ which is also a kind of Crusades analogue.

Ahmed’s debut was praised for its throwback nature, embracing classic Sword & Socrcery stylings of Howard, Leiber and Moorcock, and the pacing and plot structure that generally goes alongside that type of storytelling. It will be interesting to see how Ahmed maintains that ‘sword-and-sorcery flavor’ while expanding the scope of the story to fall more in line with traditional Epic Fantasies. I’ll be curious to see how this affects the word count of the novels.

Fans of Ahmed’s short fiction will also be pleased to know that more characters from his old stories will appear in the future novels. Specifically we’ll see Layla bas Layla, a female dervish who first appeared (and went renegade) in “Judgement of Swords and Souls.” Ahmed concludes by dropping tantalizing hints of everyone’s favourite semi-fictional badasses, ninjas.

You can read my review of Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.

Feature Article

“So Long, New York Times Review of Books (With Apologies to Dad)” by Myke Cole

By Myke Cole March 21st, 2012

Myke Cole, author of Shadow Ops: Control PointThis isn’t a eulogy for my father. The guy’s still around. In fact, every once in a while, he calls me and while I’m happy to hear from him, it takes me 3 hours to get him off the phone. But that’s not the point. The point is, that when my dad finally shuffles off this mortal coil (heaven forestall the day), there is one thing I will always remember about him.

When I was a young boy, dad would sit in the living room or in his study (he smoked a pipe back then, and the smell of pipe smoke still makes me comfortable) and read the New York Times Review of Books. He would disappear behind those venerable pages and emerge with a pronouncement, some minutes or hours later, that such-and-such a book sounded good.

What can I say? Kids are impressionable. Between my father (who, at the time, was the clear earthly authority on absolutely EVERYTHING) and that lauded institution known as the New York Times, if dad read the NYTROB and declared a book good, then it was GOOD, as objectively as anything can ever be considered in a matter of taste.

But, time has rolled on. Dad’s blind in one eye. I don’t trust his driving and he talks too much on the phone. I love him to death, but what is up with those pastel yellow pants? Just as I don’t want to be in a car with him behind the wheel, I don’t necessarily want him recommending me SF/F out of the NYTROB (not that they ever review the stuff anyway). I’m not a big Glenn Reynolds fan, but he was largely right in his Army of Davids. The Internet has diversified and broadened the arena of tastemakers, and I have long since turned to a bevy of blogs (the smaller and more independent, the better) to get advice on what to read next.
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News

Brit Mandelo Joins Strange Horizons as Fiction Editor

By Aidan Moher March 20th, 2012

Niall Harrison, Editor-in-Chief of Strange Horizons, announced today that Brit Mandelo was hired on to replace Karen Meisner and Susan Marie Groppi as Fiction Editor. No small task, given Groppi and Meisner’s hand in crafting Strange Horizons and positioning it as one of the premier online short fiction venues for genre readers.

From Harrison’s news post:

Communities are made by ideas as well as people, and there are some pretty important ideas shaping Strange Horizons. A belief in the radical potential of speculative fiction, in its ability to help us understand our past and imagine our future by showing us how things can be otherwise. A belief that, in the twenty-first century, speculative fiction must be a proudly global, inclusive tradition, and that Strange Horizons in particular should showcase work to challenge and delight by new and established writers from diverse backgrounds and with diverse concerns.

Which is why I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that the newest member of the Strange Horizons fiction team is Brit Mandelo. You may have read her critical writing on Joanna Russ and queer sf; you may be aware of her forthcoming Lethe Press anthology, Beyond Binary; you may also have read her fiction or poetry. Either way, you can find out a bit more about her on her website. But in everything she’s done, you can see Brit’s commitment to the ideas that underlie what we try to do here at Strange Horizons.

I have great respect for Mandelo and her work as a non-fiction writer (particularly for her work on Tor.com) and feel that her penchant for pushing fiction into uncomfortable places and expecting more from the boundaries place on it by a mainstream readership should fit well with Strange Horizons. I look forward to seeing the stories she publishes (and being rejected by her myself!)