Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: January 2013

R.S. Belcher talks about characterization

Today we welcome Rod (R.S.) Belcher, author of The Six-Gun Tarot which I recently enjoyed and recommend to you. (Here’s my review.) Rod wants to talk about why you love your favorite fictional characters. One commenter will win a copy of The Six-Gun Tarot.

One of the elements of my book that has been getting a lot of good feedback from readers and critics has been the strong and well-developed characters with whom I populated the tiny town of Golgotha, Nevada in 1869. I thought it might be fun to discuss what makes a character great.

January 31st, 2013. Bill Capossere | R.S. (Rod) Belcher | Thoughtful Thursday | 13 comments |

The Woodcutter: You might like it

The Woodcutter by Kate Danley

The Woodcutter lives in an enchanted wood. His job, which he inherited from his ancestors, is to maintain peace and the delicate balance of good and evil in the neighboring realms of humans and fairies. One day when he discovers Cinderella lying dead on the forest floor, he knows that something has gone wrong. Further investigation shows other fairytale characters are in danger, one of Odin’s hellhounds has escaped, and someone is murdering pixies so they can sell pixie dust on the black market. The Woodcutter must figure out who is behind these evil events and set things right again.

The Dragon Masters: Great characterization in the Vancian style

The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance

Jack Vance won the 1963 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for this little gem of a tale which is a favorite of many of Vance’s fans, your present reviewer included. The story takes place vast millennia into the future on a planet known to its inhabitants as Aerlith. Aerlith is a harsh world, where slow rotation leads to long nights and days (analogous to several “earth” days). The human beings living on the planet are descended from spacefarers who fled an earlier interstellar war and who have lost all industrial knowledge as well as the capability of space flight.

WWWednesday: January 30, 2013

Ron Howard is in talks to direct a movie version of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

Alan Moore is most known for the graphic novel The Watchmen. Here’s a guide to reading a bit deeper into his repertoire.

Would you like a flying car?

Nerdscape contest. I may have to do this.

A great column with several prominent authors contributing discussing which books would benefit from rebranding as YA novels, and which YA novels should be reissued as adult books.

January 30th, 2013. Ruth Arnell | World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |

Faces Under Water: A beautiful but dated template of a story

Faces Under Water by Tanith Lee

I found the first book of Tanith Lee’s THE SECRET BOOKS OF VENUS series, Faces Under Water, in a used bookstore recently. To call Lee a prolific writer is to understate things somewhat. I had never heard of this series, set in an alternate Venice and based on the four elements. They were published by Overlook Press in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century.

Faces Under Water is short but dense,

January 30th, 2013. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | Tanith Lee | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Wind in the Willows: A great read for children and adults

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows is a set of anthropomorphic stories that English author Kenneth Grahame wrote for his young son and published in 1908. The story begins when Mole, who lives in a hole in the English countryside, decides one fine day to come out of his underground lair to see a bit of the world. He’s amazed by all that he sees and soon he encounters and befriends a water rat who invites him to a picnic, takes him for a ride on the river,

Six-Gun Snow White: A beautifully told feminist fairy tale

Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente

C.S. Lewis once wrote his goddaughter, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” It seems an odd statement at first, that one is ever not the right age to read fairy tales, but I think there is something truthful about that assessment. We read fairy tales to our youngsters, to teach them the way of the world, to be wary of strangers, that dragons can be defeated if you are brave enough, to keep your word and to guard your tongue.

The Hemingway Hoax: Award-winning novella

The Hemingway Hoax by Joe Haldeman

While on vacation in Key West, John Baird, a Hemingway scholar, meets a conman named Castle in a bar. After telling Castle about Hemingway’s missing manuscript, Castle suggests that they forge it and make a lot of money. Baird refuses, of course, but Castle enlists Baird’s wife Lena and the two of them talk John into creating a forgery. Under pressure from his wife and his rapidly dwindling finances, John goes along with the plan but, unbeknownst to his co-conspirators, he makes a backup plan to protect himself in case of detection.

Magazine Monday: Subterranean Magazine, Fall 2012 and Winter 2013

Welcome news: Subterranean Magazine, a quarterly publication, has announced that it will be available for free download from here on out. The announcement was accompanied by the free editions of the Fall 2012 and the Winter 2013 issues, each of which contains a number of excellent novellas — a length for which Subterranean Press, as well as the magazine, are known. Many, including me, consider the novella to be the ideal length for science fiction, fantasy and horror: it provides the author with enough space for world building, but not more space than many stories need.

Nine Horrors and a Dream: A horror collection

Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan

Nine Horrors and a Dream is a collection of Joseph Payne Brennan’s best horror tales, and was first published by Arkham House in 1958. The book consists of short stories that, for the most part, first appeared in the classic pulp magazine Weird Tales in the early 1950s; indeed, the book is dedicated to that great magazine, which ended its 31-year run in 1954. Prospective readers of Brennan’s collection should be advised that this is NOT an easy book to acquire.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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