Unexpectedly, I’ll be attending LonCon3, this year’s WorldCon, hosted in London, England. The convention administrators were foolish kind enough to schedule me on some panels during the convention, and so my schedule for the weekend is posted below. If you’re at LonCon3 (and it seems that half of the SFF fans in the world will be there), I hope you’re able to come by for the panels. They’re all very interesting, and my panel-mates include some humblingly intelligent and amazing people. (And some guy named Justin Landon…)
Outside of these panels, I’ll be around the convention floor (well, wherever they allow you to drink beer, at any rate.) So, if you see me, come say “Hi!”
Note: The listed panelists are preliminary and subject to change. Read More »
Tor.com announced this morning that Lee Harris, Senior Editor at Angry Robot Books, will be joining their new short fiction imprint as Senior Editor. Harris will join Publisher Fritz Foy, Associate Publisher Irene Gallo, and Editorial Assistant Carl Engle-Laird at the imprint. They are still searching for a Publicity Manager, Marketing Manager, and Designer.
“The Tor.com role is full-time,” Harris revealed to me. This means that his time as Senior Editor at Angry Robot Books is coming to an end. This news comes just days after Osprey Media announced the closure of two of Angry Robot Books’ sister imprints: Strange Chemistry and Exhibit A. Harris maintained through his website that the timing is entirely coincidental. “The new role is an amazing opportunity for me, and if it had been advertised six months ago, or six months from now, I would still have applied. In a note to my authors I said that in many ways it’s the role that Angry Robot had been preparing me for over the last five years.”
Harris has been a part of the Angry Robot Books team since its earliest days, and leaving the imprint was not an easy decision for him. “Handing in my notice to Angry Robot was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was a genuinely emotional meeting – Angry Robot is more than just my job, it’s my baby, and it always will be.”
With Harris moving to Tor.com in August, Angry Robot Books is on the search for a new Senior Editor. “Marc will need to find a replacement for me at Angry Robot. And you know what? Whoever gets that gig is going to have the time of their life.” Do you have what it takes? Read More »
I’m a working futurist, so I’m supposed to know all about it. The problem was, I didn’t really have any answers.
Madeline Ashby’s debut novel, vN, caught a lot a readers by surprise with its sophisticated take on humanity’s convergence with the technology we’ve created. Stefan Raets of Tor.com lauded it for examining “a fairly complex future almost exclusively from the limited perspective of an immature and confused non-human character,” and Cory Doctorow said, “Ashby’s debut is a fantastic adventure story […] It is often profound, and it is never boring.”
The sequel, iD, established Ashby as one of the genre’s most exciting young writers. Now she’s back with a new novel, a standalone called Company Town.
“After I wrote the most fucked-up book about robot consciousness ever, followed by an even more fucked-up sequel, people started asking me about the Singularity,” Ashby told io9 when they asked about the inception of Company Town. “I’m a working futurist, so I’m supposed to know all about it. The problem was, I didn’t really have any answers. So I decided to write a fucked-up book about it. And sex work. And serial killers.”
Erik Mohr‘s cover design is as gritty and darkly attractive as Ashby’s description of the book. Read More »
So, the first shot at a cover for Steven Erikson’s upcoming science fiction novel, Willfull Child, was a bit of a whiff. This new one is… better, at least?
Voting for the 2014 Hugo Awards opened on Friday, June 6th. I’m using this opportunity to reprint the introduction to A Dribble of Ink’s collection included in the voter packet provided to all eligible voters. Whether you’re a voter or not, you can download the collection below -ed.
Over the past several years, vast change has come to many of the fan categories at the Hugos.
The “Best Fanzine” category has seen a dramatic shift in the past two years, since SF Signal’s first nomination, and traditional zines are being replaced by blogs and online magazines. “So never the twain shall meet…,” said Mike Glyer, of the many-times nominated File 770, describing the seemingly impassable gulf that exists between the online community and the traditional fan community. I don’t believe Mr. Glyer. While this divide between the two fan communities is undeniable, genre fandom is ripe with opportunity for creating a global fan community that embraces diversity—of voice and publishing platform—and challenges readers, authors, and publishers to become more inclusive and welcoming than ever before. Read More »
