This is an absolute treat, I read the teasers and the first episode and enjoyed it a lot. I would not have heard about it except I read the blogs of several authors I enjoy, and some of the authors involved happen to be on my list - they then pointed me to the others and they have all been talking about this.

It’s also the product of a childhood imagination pastime being reinvented by the author the child has become.

So I thought I’d check it out. Could have been self indulgence, but so far it’s good

What is it? A donation supported episodic fiction - let me quote:

The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit hunts humanity’s nightmares. But there are nightmares humanity doesn’t dream are real.
The Behavioral Analysis Unit sends those cases down the hall.
Welcome to Shadow Unit.

Nice teaser, eh?

Read More...

It’s a universal fantasy, isn’t it?—that the animals learn to speak, and at last we learn what they’re thinking, our cats and dogs and horses: a new era in cross-species understanding. But nothing ever works out quite as we imagine. When the Change happened, it affected all the mammals we have shaped to meet our own needs. They all could talk a little, and they all could frame their thoughts well enough to talk. Cattle, horses, goats, llamas; rats, too. Pigs. Minks. And dogs and cats. And we found that, really, we prefer our slaves mute.

I seem to read online more, lately. Here’s short speculative story that takes a great premise and follows from it, based on the author’s ideas of human nature. Now this one is right up my alley, around science fiction and myth, and with a dash of my favorite mythical topic at that, the trickster idea (i own the anthology this is from).

It is also a story that really made me sad - because i totally bought into where she went. I fear people would be like that… It really made me pause.

It is a delightful story available for free - Enjoy! http://www.kijjohnson.com/evolution.html

Just a quick note that I am catching up fast this week on Shadow Unit. I have read all the short bites and am working my way through the 8 episodes.
This is because the “season finale” is coming next week and I have read that this will be a multi media, interactive, enjoy-it-live-on-the-site-and-forums kind of thing.

It is actually a blast to read, so I figure I’d give it another plug - I’d love to discuss it with some of you :D

From Elizabeth Bear:

If you have been waiting to catch up/start reading Shadow Unit until the season is over, may I respectfully suggest that it is now approximately one week until the first season finale extravaganza begins. And, um. It’s the sort of thing that is going to be much more wonderful chaotic fun to participate in real-time than to read about later.

Trust me on this.

Shadow Unit, for those of you joining us in progress, is a web serial/hyperfiction written by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Amanda Downum, Sarah Monette, and, er, me. It’s modeled on a television show format, complete with episodic and season-long plotlines, burgeoning mysteries, and an ensemble cast of unrealistically sexy smart people attempting to save the world from the worst monsters imaginable… unless they die trying. It’s sort of what would happen if Millennium, The X-Files, and Criminal Minds had a love child, though I have to admit we have yet to have an episode with an industrial microwave. But surely, it’s only a matter of time.

Current site content comprises seven novelettes or novellas, a whole bunch of vignettes, artwork, a message board with thriving discussion threads and an awesome community (and a fine obsession with food!), a plethora of fairly lightly concealed Easter Eggs, and interactive character blogs.

Additional toys will be provided over the hiatus, and the current plan is to offer first-season community members a particularly nice toy in the fairly near future.

All content is free, unless you are moved to donate (We are currently using the Public Radio Guiltware model), and while we are exploring traditional publication options, there is no way on Earth that all the web content is going to make it into dead tree form. There’s just too much of it. So, you know. Here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor.

I still havent read his most recent set, but I think I want to read this new one more.

Interview @ locus:

http://www.locusmag.com/2008/Issue09_Stephenson.html

A couple reviews:

http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/09/locus-magazines-gary-k-wolfe-reviews.html

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-neal-stephenson7-2008sep07,0,7020583.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090402460.html

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=19062744&cds2Pid=22560

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/09/11/Stephenson/

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

My wishlists have a strong bias to speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, myth. There is also a smattering of mysteries/detective/spy stories (but rarely the traditional ‘thriller’ I have grown numb to those), contemporary fiction, and world fiction, especially african.

Most of the books that were on the previous wishlist are still wished - I didnt buy them yet. As a result I have left the old wishlist and will only put new books on this one. So if you are looking for more ideas also check the older list here, as any overlap would be accidental.

Note: If this list makes you want to look up any of the books, I have a cute little amazon store with all of the books mentioned, and you can finance my book addiction while snatching a new or used copy of the book. Check it out: UK List | US List

New additions to my wishlist:

Peter Hoeg: The Quiet Girl. From Endicott. Hoeg’s latest is a thoroughly interstitial novel: part literary thriller, part urban fantasy, part post- catastrophe sf, set in near-future Copenhagen and told in rich, labyrinthine prose. This fascinating, atmospheric story may be my favorite of Hoeg’s books since his haunting, best-selling Smilla’s Sense of Snow . (T. Windling)

Stephen Baxter. From Locus: “Weaver (Ace Jul 2008). Fourth and final volume in the history-spanning Time’s Tapestry series following Emperor, Conqueror, and Navigator, this time set during an alternate WWII where Churchill falls from power and Nazis invade England. Previously published in the UK by Gollancz (1/08). “The Time’s Tapestry series evokes the same wondrous questions as the best alternate history tales, and does so on as broad an historical canvas as we’ve ever seen.‘’ [Gary K. Wolfe]“

Ekaterina Sedia, The Alchemy of Stone (Prime Books Jul 2008). From Locus: Literary fantasist Sedia enters steampunk territory with this tale of a sentient clockwork woman caught in a power struggle with alchemists, mechanics, and the gargoyles who once ruled the ducal city of Ayona.

Walter Jon Williams, Implied Spaces (Night Shade Books Jul 2008). From Locus: What seemingly begins as classic high fantasy — complete with a roguish sword-wielding hero, a talking cat, and an army of trolls — soon morphs into a wildly inventive, genre-bashing, post-Singularity tale of pocket universes and high adventure. Williams’s “angle of approach harks back to classic ludenic SF writers like Zelazny and Farmer, whose pocket universes borrowed as much from fantasy as SF.‘’ [Gary K. Wolfe]

And there are more:

Read More...

Scifi dimensions has a podcast interview with Ken McLeod http://www.scifidimensions.com/podcast/2008/07/14/the-scifidimensions-podcast-11/
I’m glad I found it as I somehow had missed that he had a new book out. I happen to read this McLeod’s blog, too, although it is not updated very often, but he hadn’t pimped the book there that I noticed (I have been busy this summer but still!).

It seems it is another one of his near future thrillers - I liked his far fetched books better, but he’s a very enjoyable writer in any mode (as long as you are open minded about speculative politics, that is).

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

While on the subject of speculative politics, or political scifi (usually thrillers), here’s a nice article at the Huffington Post about a selection of them which came out this summer, by another good author and editor, Jeff Vandermeer - here’s the article. The only one I had heard about is Cory Doctorov’s, but I will have to look them up.

To think Jeff Vandermeer was once so little known I got an email from him for just mentioning his book on my wishlist here… I think he lost track of who mentions his books nowadays. I havent read anything by him in a while, he seems to focus on editing, or I missed the books like I missed McLeod’s…

I think I will request some of these from the library, give these authors a boost

On the tor site - A story of magical realism and refugee camps.
I enjoyed the description of the life of a camp, and the lovely poetic miracles - although not enough is known of the strangers and what their powers are to totally make sense, but that is ok in a short story.
I could not help but to think that in a way what the strangers do is just like what most of the western countries and organisations do - whisk in, do a couple miracles, and waltz away.

The story is available to read, print or download

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=story&id=4231

This is a rather quirky story which really made me ponder and wonder, even though the context seems a bit artificial. It reminded me a little of several books which have a psychologically different protagonist, and the challenges of communication and understanding in such a setting, where the perpectives are so alien to each other. In this story it is a matter of life and death…

It’s a rather long read: http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/murphy/murphy1.html

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

It just occured to me that 2 weeks ago when I mentioned several stories available online from Elizabeth bear, that I forgot to mention the intriguing, Hugo Winning story Tideline. It is a strange story and I certainly didnt know where she was going with it.
Strangely enough it has a similar setting to “Inappropriate Behaviour“, another online story I mentioned recently, in that it is an encounter on a beach between a human and a machine. Of course the particular characters, plots and resulting stories are very different, but both make you puzzle and think and possibly feel as well. Maybe there’s something to this beach setting, I wonder if I can find other story variations. Anyone know one?

Anyway, “Tideline” is on Elizabeth Bear’s site: http://www.elizabethbear.com/tideline.html

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Read it at http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2008/09/17/tom-edison-and-his-telegraphic-harpoon/
A bit of a steampunk alternate history, a bit loose but a fun read :D
There are quite a few more tales available on that site, worth a sniff through.