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Mind Meld: Young Adult SF/F Books That Adults Will Like, Too [May. 14th, 2008|01:44 am] A Mind Meld in which various folk recommend Young Adult SF/F Books That Adults Will Like, Too --and reading my fellow commentators recommendations made me realize how many I missed. Give a shout out for your own favorites. Link 2 comments|Leave a comment

Review round up [May. 13th, 2008|10:51 am] On The Faery Reel, by someone who openly admits she has a "fairy intolerance"--she only enjoyed a handful of the stories: Alas, a Blog and The Del Rey Book of SF&F by BookLoon: BookLoon Reviews and another nice one by Gavin J. Grant at Bookpage.com SF&F book roundup Alankria, one of the lucky recipients of my "blog about it and get a free book" offer, reviewed the new edition of Black Thorn, White Rose Alankria's blog Link Leave a comment

Inferno rave on The Fantasy Times website [May. 12th, 2008|11:23 am] I'm not familiar with this webzine but boy, does someone like the book. Thank you. The Fantasy Times A quote: "Inferno is the utmost in genre goodness from the heart of the horror annals. Although there is no ‘theme’ to this anthology, there is an overarching sense of taking the best of every type of genre story, mix it with odd circumstance and then mashing it into a piece that cannot be put into a stereotype of horror fiction (zombies, cultists etc.) Instead, the anthology gives those of us who wish to send people to good examples of horror fiction a text book, of sorts, to learn from. There is something for every type of genre reader and can serve as a gateway to the dark fantasy/horror genre." Link 3 comments|Leave a comment

The Del Rey Book of SF&F READING/LAUNCH PARTY Tuesday the 13th! [May. 11th, 2008|08:13 pm] For anyone in the NY area, we're having a launch/signing/reading party at the South Street Seaport Museum this Tuesday...and if you don't have a copy yet you can buy one there and have it signed by me and contributors Barry N. Malzberg, Carol Emshwiller, and Richard Bowes. (even if you bring a copy we'll sign em!) Bibliophile reviews The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and likes it: Bibliophile I hope Charles doesn't mention me grabbing his recommendation for reading my book and Jonathan Strahan's The Starry Rift at the same time but I like it: "I was going through Amazon looking for book covers of The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and the "Better Together" recommendation was to buy The Starry Rift along with it. I absolutely support this recommendation and here's my suggestion to make the reading experience smoother: Buy both books and alternate reading stories from each anthology. For one thing, they both contain sixteen stories each but another reason is that they complement each other well in my opinion. The stories in Datlow's anthology are heavy and long and a tad bit dark (akin to running a marathon) and while Strahan has his fair share of heavy stories in The Starry Rift, several of them are light and short and optimistic (your daily 10 km. jog is perhaps a closer analogy). It'll highlight the strengths of both collections and gives you some breathing room. (Of course what happened in reality was that I dove into The Starry Rift and only after finishing it [because I don't like juggling books] did I read The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy.)" Link Leave a comment

Review of Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears [May. 11th, 2008|07:58 pm] Blogger babies_stole_my_dingo came through and has blogged (more links added when the other report in): Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears Link 2 comments|Leave a comment

Speaking of movies [May. 11th, 2008|12:39 pm] I've been reading an article by film critic David Denby about Otto Preminger in January's New Yorker--yes. I'm that far behind. Not only is it fascinating, but it has inspired me to want to see a bunch of his noirs (with Dana Andrews, one of my first movie star crushes): Balance of Terror This quote really particularly impressed me: "So many pictures now are bloated with unnecessary spectacle and backstory that the economy and decisiveness of the noirs—violent, saturnine, dark-city crime narratives driven by strongly motivated characters—seems more miraculous than ever. Like many noir heroes, Preminger’s are tormented, sleepless men pursuing women, money, and respect." YES! Link 10 comments|Leave a comment

We Own the Night & Shall We Dance? [May. 10th, 2008|02:20 pm] Last night I watched the recent police melodrama about two brothers played by Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix, their father played by Robert Duvall. The setting is NYC in 1988 which is depicted as an illicit drug-soaked wild west that can only be tamed by THE POLICE. Wahlberg is the good son who became a cop and made his deputy police chief dad proud. Phoenix, who didn't follow his brother into the force is managing a night club (that is connected with drugs). I've seen plenty of movies with similar plots--the most recent THE DEPARTED, remake of the Hong Kong movie INFERNAL AFFAIRS and usually enjoyed them. It also reminded me of EASTERN PROMISES, which although it was about human trafficking more than drugs had some very similar plot points (old man seemingly nice paternal guy who is the BIG BAD GUY, violent "enforcers" galore). So why did I loathe this one, even while I was watching it? I like the actors but feel they were given nothing to do. The script sucked. The direction sucked. I could have watched the re-sent OLDBOY but decided I needed a lighter touch so watched the remake of the lovely Japanese movie SHALL WE DANCE? The remake is just as lovely, with a charming cast: Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez (who is in her best role since OUT OF SIGHT, the Elmore Leonard adaptation in which she co-starred with George Clooney). Middle class, happily married guy feels some niggling dissatisfaction with his life and feels he's missing ...something. Sees a woman looking out the window of a dance studio during his evening commute home and decides to secretly take dance classes. It's very close in feel to the Japanese version although I'm pretty sure (from what I remember) there are some variations on secondary characters and plot points. Loved it. Link 22 comments|Leave a comment

Iraq Contractor in Shooting Case Makes Comeback [May. 10th, 2008|11:30 am] Blackwater is back and I'm disgusted (once more) by the Bush administration: WASHINGTON — Last fall, Blackwater Worldwide was in deep peril. Guards for the security company were involved in a shooting in September that left at least 17 Iraqis dead at a Baghdad intersection. Outrage over the killings prompted the Iraqi government to demand Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and led to a criminal investigation by the F.B.I., a series of internal investigations by the State Department and the Pentagon, and high-profile Congressional hearings. But after an intense public and private lobbying campaign, Blackwater appears to be back to business as usual. Thanks to surricatus Link 4 comments|Leave a comment

I'm going to space and so can YOU!!!! [May. 8th, 2008|04:40 pm] Just sign up for your name to be included on the list to be launched in 2009 with the Kepler spacecraft into orbit around the Sun. It's the closest I'm ever going to get (or particularly want to get) to going into space and I've got a certificate saying I'm goooooooing... Kepler Mission: A search for habitable planets Link 10 comments|Leave a comment

Green Porno by Isabella Rosselini [May. 8th, 2008|11:13 am] A fun set of videos on insect sex: Green porno thanks to Justin Howe's Creature Double Feature site (and Rick Bowes) Link 17 comments|Leave a comment

Reissues of the adult fairy tale series [May. 6th, 2008|12:27 pm] Here are books #2-4 of the series being reissued by Prime: The last will be Black Heart, Ivory Bones. The first, Snow White, Blood Red is still in print in mass market from Avon. Link 13 comments|Leave a comment

Twists of the Tale reissue [May. 6th, 2008|11:49 am] My cat horror antho, which is coming out from Wildside in a new, trade paperback edition this summer will look like this: Link 20 comments|Leave a comment

Books books books [May. 5th, 2008|03:47 pm] Today I received by box of The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy--hallelujah! means that there will be books to sell at next Wednesday's reading/signing/launch party at the South Street Seaport. Plus, I got my authors copies of the fourth of the adult fairy tale anthology reissues from Prime: Black Swan, White Raven.I don't know the actual pub date (it doesn't say on amazon) but I'll find out from Sean Wallace. Link 14 comments|Leave a comment

My Wiscon programming schedule [May. 5th, 2008|11:47 am] So I'm going to Wiscon for the second time--the first was ten years ago. My official programming schedule arrived today and these are the two panels I'll be on: Do you suffer from zombie fatigue? Are you getting superbored with superheroes? Excellent books like World War Z and Soon I Will Be Invincible seem to be the exception to the rule of endless zombie and superpowered crap being produced -- but are they? Or does there have to be a pop culture saturation of a certain kind of genre--a laying of the groundwork--before we can get the kind of detailed and finessed dissection and resurrection of tropes that these books pull off? Saturday, 4:00-5:15 P.M. Assembly M: Liz Gorinsky Jim Munroe David Schwartz Nicole Bunge Ellen Datlow Title: Does Written SF Have a Future? "Is the print SF/F book or magazine as outmoded as the dodo? Is online writing the wave of the future, or will that, too, fall by the wayside in favor of other media? Is the sky falling, or has it always been falling, or is it not falling so fast after all?" Sunday, 2:30-3:45 P.M. Assembly M: Susan Groppi John Klima Stephen Eley Ellen Datlow Link 17 comments|Leave a comment

a good weekend plus a mention and a terrific review [May. 4th, 2008|11:07 pm] This weekend I was mostly enjoying myself at a housewarming/book party for a friend and then a marvelous dance concert put on by The Harlem School of the Arts. The performances ranged from ballet, tap, modern dance, traditional African dance, and hip hop and the ages from about 5-25 or so. I went to see Lillie Womack in her first performance as a tap dancer -and on her fifth birthday. The proud parents took photos. Lillie slipped a little out of character by waving to her parents in the audience--no stage fright this kid! The best of all the dances by far were two solo performances choreographed by Keith Anthony Lewis (we ran into him afterwards and gushed about his choreography). One was a female and the other male. The dances and the dancers were up to professional level. The tap dancers ranged in age (there were two groups: Lillie's, which was mixed age and sex and an all boy group). The kids were totally adorable. The drummers who accompanied the traditional dancers were fantastic as was the accompanist who played piano and clarinet (IIRC). It was a marvelous fun evening. Today I got up very late and had lunch with an old friend (and former roommate) who I've been getting together with more often in the past few months. This is probably because her son is at the age (18) at which he can --or wants to be--on his own more. She and I talked about a cross-country road trip next year -neither of us have ever done it and we'd like to before we're too old. She'd probably do most of the driving. I think I've got enough friends across the country to crash with if we're in the area. Otherwise we'll do motels. I'm too old for camping out and never could sleep well in a car. And back to reality and more professional things. The Del Rey Book of.... is getting some attention. Today I found four copies in the B&N on 8th street and of course signed them--they are really good-looking. This is the first time I've seen a finished copy. From Jeff VanderMeer: omnivoracious and from The San Francisco Chronicle: "...The former fiction editor for Omni and the online magazine Sci Fiction, Datlow knows how to solicit exciting new work. The quality of the selections in this volume is uniformly high, and the diversity of voices and approaches should attract a wide range of readers." a lot more here: SF Chronicle review Link 2 comments|Leave a comment

movies! [May. 3rd, 2008|12:37 am] After a lovely couple of hours with Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Press and running errands, I watched movies tonight. First up was Oldboy but the DVD wouldn't load--not wouldn't play--would not load. I was worried that it was my DVD player but nope, Atonement went in fine, so I watched that. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Depressing as all get out, my expected that. James MacAvoy seems to be getting younger in each movie I see him in. It's weird. I liked the acting. Then I watched the three episodes of Dr Who on the disc with "Blink", which is what I really wanted to see. Thought it would give me some context as I've only watched Dr. Who many many many years ago when it was really primitive and had no production values whatsoever. I was impressed. I could see getting hooked on it--but I won't ;-) However, "Blink" really is excellent and reminds me of the excellent Buffy episode "Hush." Both are horror and both are weird. Loved them both. Bravo! I've been pulling together the Nebula Award Showcase anthology and it's coming along nicely. I've chosen most of the stories I'm going to use, although there may be one or two more, am awaiting one appreciation and two nonfiction pieces and praying that HarperCollins doesn't give me a hard time with the Michael Chabon excerpt permission. They accept nothing but snail mail so that's what I sent. How will I know the permissions department even receives it? I have no idea. I still have to write a brief introduction to the volume and need a few more bios and I'm thinking of something a little different if I can pull it off but we'll see. The mss is due into the publisher at the end of June. Link 2 comments|Leave a comment

The Shirley Jackson Award Final ballot [May. 1st, 2008|08:39 pm] Whoopie!!!! Here's the list, from the official site: 2007 Shirley Jackson Awards Finalists NOVEL * Baltimore, Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden (Bantam Spectra) * Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press) * Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow (William Heinemann Ltd) * The Terror, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown) * Tokyo Year Zero, David Peace (Knopf) NOVELLA * 12 Collections, Zoran Zivkovic (PS Publishing) * Illyria, Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing) * The Mermaids, Robert Edric (PS Publishing) * "Procession of the Black Sloth," Laird Barron (The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Night Shade Books) * The Scalding Rooms, Conrad Williams (PS Publishing) * "Vacancy," Lucius Shepard (Subterranean #7, 2007) NOVELETTE * "The Forest," Laird Barron (Inferno, Tor) * "The Janus Tree," Glen Hirshberg (Inferno, Tor) * "The Swing," Don Tumasonis (At Ease with the Dead, Ash-Tree Press) * "The Tenth Muse," William Browning Spencer (Subterranean #6, 2007) * "Thumbprint," Joe Hill (Postscripts #10, March 2007) SHORT STORY * "Holiday," M. Rickert (Subterranean #7, 2007) * "The Monsters of Heaven," Nathan Ballingrud (Inferno,Tor) * "A Murder of Crows," Elizabeth Ziemska (Tin House 31, Spring 2007) * "Something in the Mermaid Way," Carrie Laben (Clarkesworld, March 2007) * "The Third Bear," Jeff VanderMeer (Clarkesworld, April 2007) * "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse," Andy Duncan (Eclipse One, Night Shade Books) COLLECTION * The Bone Key, Sarah Monette (Prime Books) * The Entire Predicament, Lucy Corin (Tin House) * The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Laird Barron (Night Shade Books) * Like You'd Understand, Anyway, Jim Shepard (Knopf) * Old Devil Moon, Christopher Fowler (Serpent's Tail) ANTHOLOGY * At Ease with the Dead, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press) * Dark Delicacies 2, edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb (Running Press) * Inferno, edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor) * Logorrhea, edited by John Klima (Bantam Spectra) * Wizards, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Berkley) The awards will be given out this summer at Readercon. Link 12 comments|Leave a comment

And the second three copies of Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears for blogging [May. 1st, 2008|04:45 pm] ...are up for grabs... Speak out now--anyone who hasn't yet won one of my books. If you're from out of the country, I only ask that you pay postage. If you win, please email me your mailing address at datlow at yahoo dot com. Going.... Link 17 comments|Leave a comment

Three free copies of Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears for blogging [Apr. 30th, 2008|07:32 pm] NOW! If you're one of the winners please email me your mailing address (datlow at yahoo dot com). Overseas winners are fine as long as you'll pay the postage. Going going.... Link 32 comments|Leave a comment

Special reading/launch of The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy [Apr. 30th, 2008|01:19 pm] The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings and the South Street Seaport Museum present As an Extracurricular Special Event a launch party for The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow featuring readers Richard Bowes Carol Emshwiller Barry N. Malzberg Tuesday, May 13th -- Doors open 6:30 PM Free Admission -- $5 donation if possible THERE WILL BE WINE AND SNACKS!!! South Street Seaport Museum's Melville Gallery 213 Water Street (directions below) Richard Bowes has published five novels, the most recent of which is From the Files of the Time Rangers. The novel Minions of the Moon won a Lambda Award. His stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, SCI FICTION and elsewhere. The novella “Streetcar Dreams” won a World Fantasy Award. His story “There’s a Hole in the City” won the storySouth 2006 Million Writers Award for Fiction. His most recent short fiction collection, Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies, was published by PS Publications in England in 2006. Carol Emshwiller is the author of six novels and more than 100 short stories. Her short work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and has been collected in several volumes, most recently in I Live With You. In her career spanning five decades, she has won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. In 2005, she was presented the World Fantasy Award for Life-Time Achievement. Her most recent novel, The Secret City, was published in 2007. Barry N. Malzberg has written more than 40 science fiction novels and 250 short stories since his first publication in Galaxy Magazine in l967. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his 1972 novel, Beyond Apollo. Malzberg has also written extensively about the field of science fiction itself, both in novels (Herovit's World, about a discouraged science fiction writer) and essays collected in The Engines of the Night (Locus Award, l982). He has also written mysteries and suspense novels (some in collaboration with Bill Pronzini) and several novels for the Olympia Press. Ellen Datlow was editor of SCI FICTION, the multi award-winning fiction area of SCIFI.COM, for almost six years, the editor of Event Horizon: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for one and a half years, and fiction editor of OMNI for over seventeen years. She has edited or co-edited over fifty reprint and original anthologies, including the horror half of the ongoing The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her most recent are Inferno, The Coyote Road (with Terri Windling), and of course, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her next original anthology, Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy, and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, will be out next January. -- The New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series is in its umpteenth season of providing performances from some of the best writers in science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, etc. The series takes place the first Tuesday of every month at the South Street Seaport's Melville Gallery, 213 Water Street. Admission is free, but $5 donations are encouraged to offset costs and buy dinner for the readers. The producer and executive curator is radio producer and talk show host Jim Freund. WHERE: The South Street Seaport Museum's Melville Gallery 213 Water Street (near Beekman) http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=213+Water+Street,+New+York,+NY HOW: By Subway Take 2, 3, 4, 5, J, Z, or M to Fulton Street; A and C to Broadway-Nassau. Walk east on Fulton Street to Water Street By Bus Take M15 (South Ferry-bound) down Second Ave. to Fulton Street The New York Review of Science Fiction magazine is celebrating its 19th year! Subscribe or submit articles to the magazine! New York Review of Science Fiction PO. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY, 10570 NYRSF Magazine: http://www.nyrsf.com Link 7 comments|Leave a comment

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