Well, it's May Day and in addition to the usual worker's consciousness, this is also a day of certain pagan overtones. The author of the book which inspired The Wicker Man, has a new short interview online. Apparently, it's also the day "science fiction" was created as a marketing term.
There's been a lot of activity in the realm of ebooks, publishing and other business matters. NYTimes has an essay about the extremes writers have gone to in the past to get their names out there. Penguin has a new writer's site, Book Country, supposedly dedicated to e-publishing and collective critique, but I have to wonder if it's just a lame attempt to co-opt the boon in self-publishing. Scott Nicholson has a some good things to say about self-publishing and how it serves the writer better than traditional publishing. Kristine Kathryn Rusch explains some of her struggles with e-publishing, giving examples from her increasingly common position of having books both self and traditionally published.
Will people be able to read Naked Lunch anymore? Typewriters are dead tech.
Watch out for Lorissa Innsmouth! Hail to Yog-Sothoth, the might vagina! Lovecraft comes to sex ed. Also, sad baby Cthulu.
It's funny because it's true. Existential Star Wars.
There's this essay about military science fiction at The Guardian. He makes some good points, but like many of the commentators, I think he has Battlestar Galactica all wrong. Plus, he ignores the paramilitary structure of the Federation in Star Trek.
Russian genre fiction is HOT. Check out these collections.
Like many, I have keen interest in the outre theories about Shakespeare, this book sounds like it takes a solid run at some of them.
(If you have a problem accessing the NYT articles, find the cookies on your browser and delete them, it should let you view after that.)
