As is usual, seven days in the world of the Internet is plenty of time for people to write interesting articles and share fabulous news – and I’m here once again to bring you my ten favourites!

1) Go, Tia!fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviews

Well, I simply can’t start with anything else but the wonderful news that FanLit guest reviewer Tia Nevitt is to be a published author! We’re all fabulously excited and offer our congratulations and best wishes to Tia.

2) Minors Who Review Adult Books

This, for me, is a very interesting issue: should minors read certain books, and are they qualified to comment on them? Babbling About Books brings us the full discussion, including some handy links to various other commentaries.

3) Is Science Fiction dying?

This is a thorny issue that often comes up on the Interwebs. The latest person to have a crack at it is Gav from Next Read. In three posts, he rants on the following: Where Is The New Blood In Science Fiction?; Why Don’t Science Fiction Fans Look To The Future? and SF Is In Danger Of Being Introspective and Inbred!

4) What Qualifies a Book Blogger?

You discerning lot read FanLit because we produce unbiased and fair reviews of all sorts of fantasy books – but, really, what qualifies a book blogger to produce reviews?

5) Bringing Magic Into The Present

Thanks to the purchase of Angry Robot Books by Osprey Publishing (as reported last time out), the release schedule of books has been pushed back and so Angry Robot are inviting some of their favourite bloggers to take the floor and write articles of interest – the first is by Adele of Un:bound, who talks to us about bringing magic into the present.

6) The Ever-Changing Personality of the Bad Guy

Voyager are also inviting bloggers to submit articles of interest for their blog, and one of the first pieces was regarding Bad Guys in Fantasy. Do you agree or disagree? Head over and provide some comments!

7) Beta Readers

We all know authors use beta readers to test early versions of a manuscript, and I am definitely not alone in thinking this would be a great service to provide to a favourite author, but Patrick Rothfuss explains why he can’t take up strangers as beta readers.

8) On Torrents

Piracy of books is becoming a greater problem – especially with the rise in popularity of e-Readers. Ros from Warpcore SF tells us exactly why we shouldn’t torrent books, including some useful links back to articles by authors on how torrenting is affecting their outputs.

9) Genre-Lized Anxiety

Ari Marmell intelligently discusses the issue of genre, and how generalised the idea of “fantasy” can be. Is genre impossible to define?fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviews

10) Good Show Sir!

This is a heads-up to those of you who may not yet be aware of the site Good Show Sir, which aims to bring you the tackiest in science fiction and fantasy book covers! The pictures are hilarious, to say the least, but do check out the comments for each of the submissions as well! We’re sure to be using some of these in our regular cover renaming contests.

All done, peeps! Thanks for reading once again – and in the comment section below, please link any relevant and interesting articles that we may have missed in the last seven days.

Author

  • Amanda Rutter (guest)

    AMANDA RUTTER, one of our guest reviewers, used to be an accountant in the UK but she escaped the world of numbers and is now living in a fantasy world she creates. She runs Angry Robot's YA imprint, Strange Chemistry. And we knew her when....