sci-fi
Linky linky linky linky LINKS
Sorry for last week’s lack of links and apologies in advance for the lack of links next week!
- Mark Charan Newton thinks sci-fi books are dying. I tend to agree.
- Why fandom owes even more to H.P. Lovecraft than we realised.
- A man has ‘beaten’ WoW. Sort of (via Boing Boing)
- Dollhouse battles were about sex. So says Whedon – Fox will never tell.
- Real life vampire killing kits!
- Using Microsoft’s Surface to play D&D – more footage.
And some TV and movie links
Just a couple of interesting news items:
- Apparently Dollhouse has been put on a brief hiatus due to the upcoming sweeps week. Hopefully the fact that its DVR ratings have been huge means that it will finish up the season – at least.
- An Iain M. Banks story has been picked up to be made into a film! Bank’s short story ‘A gift from the Culture’ from the collection The State of The Art is apparently going to be made into a film. More here and here (tip from A Dribble of Ink). No word on timing or anything else. I’ve read the story but can’t remember a thing about it and I think the book is on my parents shelf half a world away. Anyone else remember much?
Happy (very slightly belated) birthday to Ursula K. LeGuin
Happy 80th birthday to one of my favourite all time authors! I just read Four Ways to Forgiveness a few months ago and was once again totally overwhelmed by the power of her writing. If you haven’t already go read the Earthsea cycle (all of – including the Other Wind and Tales from the Earthsea which has a wonderful Ged story in it), The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness or pretty much anything else by this hugely prolific writer.
(Thanks to Andrew Wheeler for the reminder)
A Ton of Links
I’ve been busy – what can I say? But I’ve been saving stuff up to post!
- Inquisitor – Another cool looking isometric indie RPG. I hope that and Age of Decadence come out!
- The Magicians – this book looks pretty cool and based on this interview, the author Lev Grossman is pretty cool as well! He’s also writen a great article about the improtance of plot in the Wall Street Journal.
- Erik Mona is doing a new blog – there’s no RSS but Erik Mona, Publisher at Paizo is going a blog over at ENWorld. The 1st entry is all about his history as a gamer.
- DragonAge’s lead writer – here’s an interview with David Gaider! Pretty interesting stuff…
- A huge list of sci-fi – writen by people who aren’t white men.
- Tim Holman’s new blog – Mr Holman is the Publisher at Orbit. He’s writen some cool stuff including the state of the Urban Fantasy sub-genre and what gets onto the covers of fantasy books.
Phew.
How much would that dragonlance rip off in my bottom draw earn me?
Interested in SFF writing, but now sure how much you’ll get paid? Tobias Bucknell has done a survey of author advances and he answer is: not much. Median advance on a first novel is US$5,000 in both fantasy and sci-fi But still, 5 grand isn’t bad…
And fantasy at least, is surviving the recession nicely, with sales up about 10%.
A whole mess of genre blook links
I’ve been collecting these, but it’s getting out of hand. So…
- John Scalzi, blogger extraordinaire and sci-fi author talks about how long it takes to get established in genre fiction. It’s an interesting read and remands me that if I haven’t started yet, I probably never will!
- There’s a new, George R. R. Martin edited, Jack Vance homage collection out entitles Songs of the Dying Earth and it’s prompted the New York Times of all places to print a lengthy homage of their own. I’ve never clicked with Vance, despite my love of the Vancian-style magic in D&D, and this article helped me realise why.
Intricate plotting is not Vance’s forte, but he artfully recombines recurring elements: the rhythms of travel; the pleasures of music, strong drink and vengeance; touchy encounters with pedants, mountebanks, violently opinionated aesthetes and zealots, louts, bigots of all stripes and boyishly slim young women with an enigmatic habit of looking back over their shoulders. His stories sustain an anecdotal forward drive that balances his digressive pleasure in imagining a world and the hypnotic effect of his distinctive tone, which has been variously described as barbed, velvety, arch and mandarin.
I’m afraid I’m all about the plots I’m afraid and writers for whom writing is primarily about the form of language have never appealed to me. The article’s a very good read though.
- Another thing I’ve never really got is steampunk, although I finished (and really enjoyed) Michael Swanwick’s The Dragons of Babel today and that has some steampunk elements. The Onion A.V. Club has a primer on steampunk which gives some pointers if you’re been interested but not known how to get into it.
- On the other hand I enjoyed the first two books of Scott Lynch’s as-yet-unfinished ‘Gentlemen Bastards’ trilogy as much as I’ve enjoyed any fantasy work in the last few years – they’re the sort of rollicking high adventure that makes me laugh and keep turning the pages. If you’re the sort of person who likes to wait till a trilogy is all finished before starting, you’ve got a bit more waiting to do. I’m hoping the wait is so the book is right not because Lynch has over extended…
- Finally the Guardian had some musing on fantasy fans recently as a result of the inaugural Gemmel Awards. To whit:
even SF fans have it easy compared to followers of fantasy. These are the people Red Dwarf fans sneer at for being nerdy. They are the zit-ridden little brothers of the SF geeks, whose even-less-healthy obsessions include trolls, giving Anglo-Saxon names to phallic weapons, and maidens with magical powers.
And to think this is an attempt to be complimentary. Sigh.
I will try to be better at getting these all up in a more timely fashion in the future. Promise.
Some video game links
I’ve been collecting links but had no time to post them. So here you go!
- Regular readers know that Sophie and I are pretty excited about upcoming PC/console RPG Dragon Age and may have even picked up that we’re both planning on playing it on the Xbox 360. Good news for us then because the Kotaku writers have had some time with the 360 version and say the controls work fine!
- There was also an interesting interview with video game designer Tim Schafer about the need for games to expand their subject matter beyond sci-fi and fantasy if the medium is going to grow larger. I could give a fuck about it getting bigger, but he’s probably not wrong.
- Finally, magicians Penn & Teller have dedicated an episode of their show Bullshit! to violent video games – pretty funny stuff.
I need to read a video game blog other than Kotaku. Any suggestions?