Carmen Maria Machado, John Joseph Adams and Seanan McGuire at the NYRSF Readings. Photo by Mark Blackman.
By Mark L. Blackman: For over two decades (this is its 25th season), the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series has presented some of the best American (and British) science fiction and fantasy. On the evening of Tuesday, November 10, 2015 (there is no Veterans Day Eve), it did so literally, spotlighting The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, and featuring two writers from that anthology, Carmen Maria Machado and Seanan McGuire.
The event, held at the Series’ current venue, the Brooklyn Commons Café, sensibly located in the borough of the same name and convenient to public transportation, kicked off as usual with a welcome from producer/executive curator Jim Freund, longtime host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy. (The show broadcasts and streams every Wednesday night/Thursday morning from 1:30-3:00 am and worldwide at wbai.org, and for a time afterwards may be heard on-demand as well as an RSS feed for podcasts. There is no escape.) Tonight’s readings, he reported, were streaming live via Livestream, where they would remain archived for a period of time. (Catch them by going to Livestream.com and searching for NYRSF.) Further thanks were due Terence Taylor, sf/fantasy writer and video producer.
Next month’s readings, held, as were November’s, on the second Tuesday, December 8th, Freund announced, would be the Series’ traditional Family Night, equally traditionally featuring the family of Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner. Finally, he thanked the audience for contributing (readings are free, but there is a suggested donation of $7), as the Series pays to rent the present space and an anticipated Kickstarter campaign to fund the season has not yet happened, then turned center stage (there are now spotlights!) over to guest host John Joseph Adams.
John Joseph Adams. Photo by Mark Blackman.
Adams, the editor of many anthologies (he’s been called “the reigning king of the anthology world”), including Wastelands and The Living Dead (which were spotlighted at past NYRSF readings), as well as the editor and publisher of the magazines Nightmare and the two-time Hugo Award-winning Lightspeed, and a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, has been absent from the Series for a while. His return was in his capacity as series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. For several decades, he explained, distinguishing it from similarly-named tomes, Houghton (pronounced “Hootin’,” like what a Southern owl does) Mifflin Harcourt has been annually publishing a “Best American” series showcasing the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. While sf and fantasy stories have been included in past editions, this is the first time that there is a volume devoted to the genre. Adams, naturally, feels that our genre can stand up to the best fiction out there, “but that’s preaching to the choir,” he paused, regarding the audience. Joe Hill, an award-winning author in his own right (whom his parents are is no secret), was the guest editor of this inaugural volume, which contains 20 stories, equally divided between fantasy and sf. (There will be a second.) Concluding, he introduced Seanan McGuire, the first reader of the night, whom he asserted is in every one of his anthologies.
McGuire is the author of more than a dozen novels and (“literally”) uncounted short stories; she was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot. (No “Puppies” were involved; McGuire has two “abnormally large blue cats.”) “I am not a subtle beast,” she declared at one point, lifting her leg to display her bright orange sneakers. Her offering was her story from the collection, “Each to Each,” which originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue. Fitting in with the theme, the story centered on a U.S. Navy all-woman crew of submariners patrolling and charting the seabeds (in this instance the Pacific), “the most valuable real estate” of the future era. For their mission, the women (dubbed “military mermaids”) have been modified for the depths, surgically and genetically altered (likely irreversibly) – their musculature has been transformed, bones have been cut away, and they’ve been given gills and some fishtails – modeled on a variety of sea creatures, from sharks to lionfish, jellyfish and eels. (Their psychology, it would appear, has correspondingly shifted away from human.) No Disney little mermaids they.
Seanan McGuire and Carmen Maria Machado at NYRSF Readings. Photo by Mark Blackman.
During the recess, there was a raffle for, appropriately, a copy of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. Adams then presented the second and final reader.
Carmen Maria Machado is a Nebula-nominated fiction writer, critic, and essayist. Her story from the anthology, “Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead,” unusually was framed as a Kickstarter campaign; aptly, its first appearance was in Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects (ed. Adams). It is not a “heartwarming sibling reunion.” The narrator is trying to raise the funds to travel to the portal to the titular realm to chase after her “ungrateful wastrel” (the campaign understandably omits that term) younger sister; she is not dead, but has, essentially, crashed a party. Oddly, the motivation for her pursuit is to tell her that their parents have died (the details of their death are also fudged for the campaign). The story was laugh-out-loud funny … until its final sad turn.
As customary at these Readings, the Jenna Felice Freebie Table offered giveaway books, and cheese and crackers were on hand, along with leftover Hallowe’en candy and even Hallowe’en-themed fortune cookies (“A creepy crawly will be on your shoulder tonight” – does a housefly count?). For beverages and other wants, the Café was a few steps away. Copies of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy were available for sale and autographs, as were McGuire’s CDs.
The capacity crowd of about 65 included Melissa C. Beckman, Richard Bowes, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Amy Goldschlager, Barbara Krasnoff, John Kwok, Wrenn Simms and Terence Taylor. Following more photos and schmoozing, Freund, the guests and some members of the audience adjourned to the Café.
(1) “It appears there’s a Northwesteros football team,” reports Tom Galloway. “Personally, I find this amusing given that when he was at Northwestern, George R.R. Martin was a mainstay of, not the football team, but the chess team (he’s written a story where the starting point is a real life match against the arch-rival UChicago team).”
This film doesn’t exactly hide its place within Lovecraftian mythology. You really think that creature on the ring is just an octopus? Uniquely for a Bond film, it starts with an epigraph of sorts, the words ‘the dead are alive’ printed over a black screen – a not particularly subtle allusion to the famous lines from the Necronomicon: ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie/ And with strange aeons even death may die.’
The new list, called John Joseph Adams Books, will begin in February 2016 with print editions of three backlist Hugh Howey titles. Adams will serve as editor at large for the line. He began his association with HMH when he became series editor for the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series, launched this year.
(6) Buddy’s Antique Auction in Arab, Alabama might not be the first place you’d look to buy a genuine Lunar Rover — but it should be! That salvaged LRV recently in the news will be there for sale to the highest bidder on November 21 at Noon.
We are proud to announce that we have been commissioned to sell at public auction this very special piece of historical value. This Lunar Rover or “Moon Buggy” as it is comonly called is a prototype from the mid 1960s. NASA engineers were studying ways for the astronauts to be mobile while on the moon. This buggy never went to the moon but has been authenticated by a retired NASA scientist and he believes Wernher Von Braun was photographed on this buggy. “Moon Buggies” were used on the moon and three are still there. This is definitely a piece of history some space enthusiast could lovingly bring back to its original glory….
This is a special auction and will be for the Moon Buggy. This will be the only item in this auction and will be held at 12:00 Noon at the Worley Brothers Antiques building.
I saw a lot of praise this year about conventions that had sign language interpreters in attendance, and I thought, “Good. I’m glad that conventions are finally getting this accommodation, but what does it say about us that this is something to be praised rather than part of our normal convention going experience?”
That’s the thing that really irks me about this issue. Accommodation is still something to be praised rather than a normal thing. It’s an event rather than an occurrence. Furthermore, there are still times when there are problems and people get excluded or edged out due to these problems. The dialogue about this is still minimal in the genre. There is still almost no discussion about these problems until something happens and there is a small outcry.
(8) Roger Tener gave permission to reprint his account of Nancy Nutt’s memorial service from Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol.
Saturday [November 7] was the Memorial Service for Nancy Nutt.
David and Sherrie Moreno, Cathy, and I drove up to Kansas City It was an opportunity to spend time with friends to comfort each other and remember Nancy.
There was a couple of tables set up in a small room with pictures that Nancy had taken over the years. Nancy’s family told us to take any of the pictures we wanted. There were several pictures of Fans and airplanes. More specifically airplanes that I had flown Fan gatherings.
During the service many us fans told various stories of Nancy that brought a smile. (Like Mickey Mouse committing suicide in the back 52 Tango while flying over Walt Disney World.)
After the service many of us gathered at Genghis Kahn for supper. After we ate we stood outside the restaurant and talked and talked and talked in the finest Fannish tradition.
(10) Misty Massey says there are reasons for not“Breaking the Rules” at Magical Words.
And one more that’s happened recently (and been done by more than one person) “If you’re new to us, send us a writing sample of the first five pages of your published work.” And instead, you send us a link to your website. Sure, that website may have oodles of your work on it, but you just showed us that you can’t follow simple instructions. Why would I believe I should work with you?
The point of all this is to make sure you guys who DO follow the rules and who DO read the guidelines carefully know that we on the other end of those guidelines appreciate the effort you take. We may not open our next letter to you with the words “I see that you followed our guidelines” but you can just bet that you’re even hearing from us because you did. And one other thing to remember…publishing is a tightly-knit business. If you behave in a jerkish manner, breaking rules and skipping guidelines for one editor, don’t be surprised when another editor seems uninterested in working with you. Word gets around.
(11) Rachael Acks’ contribution to SF Signal’s MIND MELD: Must hear audio fiction, accidentally left out of the main article, appeared today.
I listen to a lot of audio books, because I’ll have them playing while I’m describing core, processing data, or driving. (And I tend to listen to them over and over again, since I will miss things sometimes.) The two authors whose audiobooks I own the most of are Lois McMaster Bujold and NK Jemisin. I’m not sure if that’s because their work lends itself particularly well to the format, or just because I love everything they write anyway. I actually didn’t own a written copy of any of Bujold’s books until this year, and reading it normally felt weird—so many things weren’t spelled the way I thought they would be. This also made reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms after I’d listened to it first a slightly odd experience.
(12) Jim C. Hines says it’s time for a “NaNoWriMo Pep Talk” about hitting the wall.
This is the time in Jim’s writing process where, like Charlie Brown kicking at that elusive football, I lose my footing and end up flat on my back, staring into the sky and wondering what the heck just happened.
My shiny new idea isn’t quite so shiny anymore. I’ve gotten lots of words down, but they don’t exactly match what I was imagining. And this next part of the outline doesn’t make any sense at all, now that I think about it more closely. Good grief, the Jim who was outlining this thing last month is an idiot. And now I have to fix his mess….
(13) Today’s Birthday Boy
Born November 9, 1934 – Carl Sagan
(14) Today In History
November 9, 1984 – Silent Night, Deadly Night premieres. To protest the film, critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel read the credits out loud on their television show saying, “Shame, shame, shame” after each name.
One, he’s perfectly fine, merely not at the center of my public discussion of cats in the last week as he neither a) a kitten, b) a newly-passed on senior cat. You should be aware that Zeus has been perfectly fine not being the center of media attention in the last several days, as he is a cat and has not the slightest idea either that I write about my cats here, or that any of you have any idea who he is. But he is alive and well and doing what he does.
If there’s one toy that defines cheap and mass-produced, it’s those buckets full of tiny green plastic army men. They really stop being desirable once you turn six, except when those plastic soldiers are replaced with tiny white stormtroopers led by an equally tiny Darth Vader.
Through that summer, I collected complete sets of both the blue and red-bordered bubble-gum cards. In that autumn, as I started at The Big School (Pencoed Comprehensive, where I still help out with creative writing workshops) I got hold of George Lucas’s novel of the film. Yes, it was amazing, wasn’t it, that George Lucas had not only found time to make this film, but also scribble down a novelisation of it? It was only later that Alan Dean Foster was credited, but not on my edition. It was a shiny paperback with a yellow cover and a set of colour photos stitched into the middle. It was a holy relic, as far as I was concerned, and when I accidentally dented one of the corners, I felt as if my world had ended. I also got the 7″ disco-funk version of the Star Wars music:
Which was only the third record I’d ever bought, after the Jaws theme and Queen’s We Are The Champions.
(18) If Reynolds doesn’t know these 12 facts about Yoda already, he soon will.
When Stuart Freeborn, the make-up artist who was tasked with creating Yoda, looked into a mirror, he saw Yoda. No, it wasn’t a Disney magic mirror, but rather it was Freeborn’s own reflection that inspired Yoda’s final look.
When Freeborn modeled himself and started sculpting Yoda, he emphasized his bald scalp, wrinkles, and pointed chin in order to bring Yoda into the world. According to Freeborn, the only part of Yoda that wasn’t based on himself was the upper lip, in which he removed the famous mustache of Albert Einstein and ported it onto Yoda’s face. This move was meant by Freeborn to trigger a subconscious association in the audience with Einstein’s intelligence and wisdom, thus making Yoda appear intelligent before he even spoke a word of advice in his lovable, fractured English.
2) When We Thought Bat People Lived On The Moon Ah, 19th century New York City: a place where the lanterns burned all night, Bill the Butcher and his gang of Know-Nothings spattered the streets with blood, and four-foot tall bat people looked down upon it all from their home on the moon. What, you don’t know about the flying lunar bat people? That’s because they were the invention of a master troll named Matthew Goodman, editor of the Sun newspaper.
Singer and actress Mariah Carey has joined the cast of The LEGO Batman Movie.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, she’ll voice the mayor of Gotham City. This report is contrary to a Deadline report that she would be playing Commissioner Gordon — which only works if she’s playing Commissioner Barbara Gordon from the animated Batman Beyond. Of course, that’s completely possible, too, given how the first LEGO Movie mashed up characters from all over the story multiverse….
The LEGO Batman Movie is scheduled for release on February 10, 2017,
(21) This just in – eight years ago.
Alrugo Entertainment, bring you: ITALIAN SPIDERMAN Unearthed for the first time in 40 years and lovingly restored at Alrugo Studios Milan, this rare theatrical trailer for the 1968 Italian classic ‘Italian Spiderman’ is a real treat. Featuring Franco Franchetti of ‘Mondo Sexo’ fame in his last ever role before being killed in a spear fishing accident in 1969. Alrugo entertainment will be releasing the FULL, remastered ITALIAN SPIDERMAN film on the web starting MAY 22. STAY TUNED
Italian Spiderman is an Australian film parody of Italian action–adventure films of the 60s and 70s, first released on YouTube in 2007. The parody purports to be a “lost Italian film” by Alrugo Entertainment, an Australian film-making collective formed by Dario Russo, Tait Wilson, David Ashby, Will Spartalis and Boris Repasky.
Ostensibly an Italian take on the comic book superhero Spider-Man, the film is a reference to foreign movies that misappropriate popular American superheroes such as the Turkish film “3 Dev Adam”, and licensed series such as the Japanese TV series “Spider-Man”, both of which alter the character of Spider-Man for foreign audiences. Other notable entries include the Indian version of Superman (1987), I fantastici tre supermen(3 Fantastic Supermen) (1967) and La Mujer Murcielago (The Batwoman) (1968).
(22) A Robot Chicken video, “The Nerd on The CW,” parodies Arrow and The Flash.
[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, DMS, Tom Galloway, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peter J.]
Carmen Maria Machado is a Nebula-nominated fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, AGNI, The Fairy Tale Review, Tin House’s Open Bar, NPR, The American Reader, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her stories have been reprinted in several anthologies, including Year’s Best Weird Fiction and Best Women’s Erotica. She has been the recipient of the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, a Millay Colony for the Arts residency, and the CINTAS Foundation Fellowship in Creative Writing. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and lives in Philadelphia with her partner.
Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire is the author of more than a dozen novels, and uncounted short stories. Her latest work, A Red-Rose Chain, was released in September 2015. Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.
John Joseph Adams
John Joseph Adams is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as many other anthologies, such as Wastelands, The Living Dead, Brave New Worlds, Operation Arcana, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych. He is also the editor and publisher of the magazines Nightmare and the two-time Hugo Award-winning Lightspeed, and is a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor—a leading writer in the field—then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.
The event at the Brooklyn Commons Cafe (388 Atlantic Avenue) begins at 7:00 p.m.
Repurposing existing Space Ghost images from the original cartoons, Lazzo created the first animated late-night talk show in 1994. Operated in tandem with Keith Crofford, a fellow Southerner with whom Lazzo shared an office as well as seemingly a brain, the show boasted a premise that was somehow both simple and endlessly, mutably ridiculous. Now retired from the business of fighting intergalactic evil, Space Ghost (real name: Tad Ghostal) and a support staff consisting of his imprisoned enemies Zorak (anthropomorphic mantis/bandleader) and Moltar (gravel-voiced lava man/director) flies face-first into show business, interviewing pop-culture luminaries through a monitor screen lowered into the chair where a guest would normally sit. Interviews with the celebrities involved were filmed separately, in largely improvisational fashion, then combined with the cartoon characters’ dialogue — often producing results diametrically opposed to the context of the original questions.
Congratulations on having a short story accepted for publication in the anthology Rusted, Lusted, Busted: Contemporary Southern Fiction, edited by myself and my good buddy Richard Head!
Richard and I, both of us straight cisgender nominally Christian white males, have put a shit-ton of work into this anthology, mostly over beers and hot wings at the local Tilted Kilt while our wives assumed 100% of the burden of watching our kids. Now this baby we’ve labored over is out and it’s time to party!
That’s why we’re hosting an all-male, all-white panel tomorrow at Lily White Books in Mansfield, SC, to celebrate the anthology’s release and your contributions to it. We’d love it if some of you could come be part of the panel!
Given the twelve-hour notice, however, along with our inability to compensate you in any way, and our unwillingness to compensate you even if we could, I completely understand that most of you — including all our woefully underrepresented contributors who do not identify as heterosexual white men — will not be able to participate in this seminal event, except perhaps as late-arriving, paying audience members ($5 at the door).
(3) SF Signal’s latest Mind Meld, curated by Paul Weimer, taps the contributors’ autobiographies.
For each one of us, there is a book, or a series, that hooked us on genre fiction. Maybe it was the first SF book you read, maybe you had to read a couple before you hit the one that hooked you.
Tell me what book got you to become a fan of SFF, and why?
So instead of going over the AJ stuff again–what is a person? Who is anybody anyway?–I instead give you the Ancillary FAQ. These are all questions I’ve actually gotten (or oveheard) at one time or another.
Q: How can you possibly wrap the story up in one more volume? There’s too much going on; I don’t see how you could manage it.
A: The easiest way for me to answer that is to actually do it. Which I have, and you can see the answer for yourself wherever fine books are sold. Or at a library near you. I love libraries. They’re awesome.
Q: Will there be more books after this one?
A: There will be more books, and certainly more books in this universe, but not books about Breq. Nothing against her, I’ve had a lovely time these past three books, but it will be nice to do something different.
(5) Brian Fung’s article for the Washington Post, “’The Martian,’ NASA and the rise of a science-entertainment complex”, looks at the extensive cooperation between NASA and the producers of The Martian, and notes that NASA hopes to get more out of this film than other projects with which it has extensively cooperated (like the Transformers movies).
When Navy flyboy Tom Cruise got too close for missiles and switched to guns in the spring of 1986, what seemed like an entire nation got up to follow him. Military recruitment booths popped up in theaters, eager to attract young Americans who’d just seen Maverick tell Charlie about the inverted dive he’d done at four Gs against a MiG-28.
To say “Top Gun” was a boon for recruitment would be an understatement. That year, the Navy signed up 16,000 more people than it did the entire year before, according to the author Richard Parker, writing for Proceedings, the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine. Other estimates suggest that among naval aviators alone, this spike in registrations amounted to growth rates of 500 percent….
With “The Martian,” NASA has the same opportunity defense officials had in the 1980s, only now with additional social media superpowers. By highlighting everything from the real-world technologies depicted in “The Martian” to explaining the science behind Martian dust storms to calling on young women to take after the fictional Ares III mission commander, Melissa Lewis, NASA’s hoping to turn moviegoers into the nation’s next generation of scientists, technologists and the other all-around bad-ass eggheads celebrated in the film. In the run-up to the movie’s release, NASA even made a major announcement about the discovery of liquid water on Mars that some believed was simply too conveniently timed to be a coincidence.
Humans have thoroughly wrecked Earth’s environment, now it’s time to move on to using the natural resources of another planet.
Fresh off the discovery of flowing, liquid water on Mars, NASA said Wednesday it wants ideas for how to best exploit the natural resources of the Red Planet for human survival…. NASA plans on giving away modest $10,000 and $2,500 prizes to people who can come up with potentially viable ideas for Mars resource use.
Because some of the most exciting American writing is happening in the fields of science fiction and fantasy right now, I hopped on the phone with the book’s two editors, Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams, to hear their picks for the 10 best science fiction and fantasy stories ever written.
They included stories from Malamud, Tiptree, LeGuin, Keyes, Harlan Ellison, Link, Bradbury, Borges, and others.
(8) Today In History –
October 7, 1849 – Edgar Allan Poe succumbs to a mysterious condition, days after having been found delirious in the streets of Baltimore. Tragically, only seven people attended his funeral. Quoth the Raven: Nevermore.
Now that Superman (and Clark) are taking the heat for Lois’ story leaking his alter-ego, Kal-El has had to go into hiding and lay low. Fired from the Daily Planet when his co-workers discover they’d been in grave danger simply by being in Clark’s vicinity all the time, and facing persecution from the Government, Superman has vanished… and replaced himself with a mild-mannered trucker.
Yes, Clark Kent is now Archie Clayton! It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?
(10) The Today show reunited the Rocky Horror cast for an interview, including Susan Sarandon, Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf.
When the new all-female Ghostbusters reboot arrives in theaters next summer, nearly all the living actors from the original 1980s films — Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, et al. — will be doing cameos. But not Rick Moranis, who was offered the chance to appear in a walk-on role but turned it down. “I wish them well,” says the 62-year-old comedic legend, who’s so stunned by the outcry over his absence in the film that he decided to grant a rare interview with THR. “I hope it’s terrific. But it just makes no sense to me. Why would I do just one day of shooting on something I did 30 years ago?”
Yes! That is a melon baller! Despite my never buying shoes for her, my wife purchased this for me when she saw it in a store. Because Modern Manhood ACHIEVED!
Now all I need is some Kenneth Cole oxfords and a crying pillow, and I’m set.
A four-dimensional concept is now presented in a three-dimensional format.
A 2015 $2 coin in the name of Cook Islands visibly explains the relationship between space and time, as created by scientist Hermann Minkowski. Building on Albert Einstein’s 1905 Special Theory of Relativity, Minkowski suspected the existence of a fourth dimension (time, in addition to height, width and length), in which space and time are connected geometrically, and he created a diagram illustrating the connection.
The Prooflike half-ounce .999 fine silver $2 Space–Time Continuum coin was issued by Coin Invest Trust. It was struck by B. H. Mayer‘s Kunstprägeanstalt Mint in Munich, Germany.
The reverse of the coin depicts the Minkowski diagram, a geometric illustration of the formula of special relativity, which is engraved in one of the diagram’s columns together with the inscription SPACE–TIME CONTINUUM. The center of the high-relief coin is marked with a magnetic sphere, which can be removed.
The obverse, whose shape is a mirror or inversion of the reverse, displays the Ian Rank-Broadley portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, the issuing nation and the face value.
Einstein incorporated Minkowski’s ideas into his general theory of relativity in 1915, six years after Minkowski died.
(14) A black eye for Myke Cole?
A pupil is a hole, it can't have a color. The iris conveys the color of the eye.
[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Rob Thornton and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
Among the 2,600 stories that series editor John Joseph Adams screened for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, he chose 80 as notable — see the list, now posted on the series’ website.
Editor Joe Hill selected 20 for publication (ten science fiction, ten fantasy). Those picks are designated on the table in green.
Adams screened hundreds thousands of notable works published in 2014 by magazines, journals, and websites, then special guest editor Joe Hill chose the best pieces to publish in a blind reading so that the prestige of the venues or bylines were not a factor.
The writers with stories in the volume are:
Nathan Ballingrud
T.C. Boyle
Adam-Troy Castro
Neil Gaiman
Theodora Goss
Alaya Dawn Johnson
Kelly Link
Carmen Maria Machado
Seanan McGuire
Sam J. Miller
Susan Palwick
Cat Rambo
Jess Row
Karen Russell
A. Merc Rustad
Sofia Samatar (two stories by the author)
Kelly Sandoval
Jo Walton
Daniel H. Wilson
Adam-Troy Castro explained on Facebook that the authors are permitted to say they have work in the collection but are not allowed to announce the title. However, advance reading copies of the book are now circulating and a photo of the first page of the table of contents is on Twitter.
When I squint at the table of contents I see the introduction is titled “Launching Rockets.” Another Hugo reference? Or would Freud say, “Sometimes a rocket is only a rocket”?
If March comes in like a lion, does it have to be cowardly? Perhaps so, if our theme is Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond; a new anthology co-edited by Doug Cohen and JJA. And look what Toto dragged in — two of the best writers working in speculative fiction today: Robin Wasserman and Ken Liu!
Ken Liu is nominated for three Nebulas, it was announced today. An author and translator of speculative fiction (and lawyer and programmer), his work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons. Already on his awards shelf are a Nebula, a Hugo, a World Fantasy Award, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award.
Robin Wasserman is the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Book of Blood and Shadow, the Cold Awakening Trilogy, the Chasing Yesterday Trilogy, and Hacking Harvard.
John Joseph Adams is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. Forthcoming work includes Wastelands 2, Dead Man’s Hand, and Robot Uprisings. John is also the editor of Lightspeed Magazine and Nightmare Magazine, and co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
Douglas Cohen is the former editor of Realms of Fantasy Magazine. In the magazine’s final year, they published their 100th issue, won a Nebula Award, and were nominated for a second one. Oz Reimagined marks his first anthology.
This session of the NYRSF Readings takes place March 6 at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art (see info below). Doors open 6:30 p.m. Suggested donation: $7.
Launched with funding obtained from a successful Kickstarter campaign, Nightmare will be home to a wide range of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror.
Issue #1 features all-new fiction by Jonathan Maberry, Laird Barron, Genevieve Valentine and Sarah Langan.
Issue #2, due in November, will contain new fiction from Ramsey Campbell and Desirina Boskovich, as well as classic reprints by award-winning authors Joe Haldeman and Poppy Z. Brite.
Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, the monthly Nightmare will run two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, a feature interview, an artist gallery showcasing the cover artist, and “The H Word,” a monthly column about horror. Ebook issues will come out the first of every month and be available for sale in ePub format via the Nightmare website.
Nightmare online will also include nonfiction, fiction podcasts, and author Q&As.
Each issue’s contents will be serialized on the website throughout the month, with new features publishing on the first four Wednesdays of every month.
The Hosts of Fantastic Fiction at KGB are raffling off donations from well-known sf and fantasy authors, editors, artists, and agents to support the reading series.
Among a myriad of prizes are a signed galley of Catherynne Valente’s Deathless (plus a handmade necklace), your very own wormhole with a certificate of authenticity by physicist Michio Kaku, and three unpublished stories by Michael Swanwick where you own the rights till 2015, or one of a myriad of other prizes. Or you might simply take away the pleasure of supporting a popular literary event.
