Well, here is my very first World Wide Wednesday as a 30 year old, so let’s get straight to it in a very grown-up and efficient manner!
1) Arthur C. Clarke Analysis
The Arthur C Clarke award has been mentioned a couple of times on previous WWW — today is the day that the award winner is revealed in a glittering ceremony (to which your humble scribe has been invited!) There have been a couple of posts detailing which of the shortlist should be the winner of the Arthur C Clarke award.
2) On Capsule Reviews and Egotistical Bloggers
After Aidan’s last article on how librarians buy books he noticed a comment regarding capsule reviews, and invited John Ottinger to his blog to discuss the merits of different book reviewing.
3) Crooked Cogitations
Jason from Kamvision is a little fed up at some of the snobbery and self-righteous indignation inherent in the SFF community. He believes that we should be far less dismissive — especially when we consider how dismissive other crowds are of us.
4) The SFF Literary Pub Crawl
Ken over at Neth Space asks 5 questions of his interviewees in a fab little feature, one of which is to do with their favourite watering hole. Ken pulls a number of responses together in order to take us on the SFF Literary Pub Crawl, which is great fun to read!
5) Men & Reading
Larry at OF Blog of the Fallen links to an interesting article in a recent blog discussion post: originally posted in the Huffington Post, the article is titled ‘Why Men Don’t Read: How Publishing is Alienating Half the Population‘. He then discusses the 800 lb Gorilla in the room — discussing where the article goes wrong, but also where it has a kernel of truth.
6) Zero to Published in 12 Meandering Steps
Rich Matrunick has written a fab little article for the lovely chaps and chapesses over at Speculative Book Review, detailing in an amusing fashion the 12 meandering steps to being published.
7) Cover Matters: Survey Results
A little while back, I invited all of you to take part in The Book Smugglers survey on book covers and they now present to us the results of the ‘cover matters’ survey with some very interesting results and commentary.
8) Ye Olde Authors Layeth The Smackdown
Niall — the ever-speculative Scotsman has an entertaining glance at an article from The Examiner about author’s trash talking and laying the smackdown — I leave him to tackle the subject in his inimitable fashion!
9) Psychopathic Chocolate Bunnies
Un:bound have recently welcomed a new guest blogger in the form of Vincent Holland-Keen, who writes candidly about the principle of show, don’t tell in relation to some of his work. Apart from being an interesting read, I love the title of the article!
10) Mind Meld: Coolest Robots
I really enjoy the Mind Meld topics run by SF Signal, and responded to by greats of the genre — one of the more recent concerned the Coolest Robots in Science Fiction — another amusing and entertaining read!
I think that I’m starting to get the hang of these blogosphere updates by now, but I would still love any feedback that you want to provide. Am I highlighting the right stuff? Am I missing any genres you’re dying to hear more about? Am I missing other media such as TV or movies? Any feedback is gratefully received!
Have a good week, FanLit lovelies!
Happy Birthday, Amanda!
Be sure to give us a picture of you at the ceremony — how cool!
30 ain’t so bad (says someone in their mid-30s)
and thanks for the plug!
Happy birthday, Amanda! :)
Passing on some info for the Marjorie M. Liu fans out there:
To celebrate their premier title, PassionFruit Games is inviting fans and members of the media to a launch party, Wednesday, April 28th at http://www.passionfruitgames.com/releaseparty from 7:00 to 9:00 pm EST (4:00 to 6:00pm PST).
Attendees will be able to chat with Tiger Eye game developers, artists, programmers, and author Marjorie M. Liu. They will also be able to ask for and share tips about the game, and will also be entered into a raffle with the chance to win PassionFruit merchandise, copies of the Tiger Eye novel, and an advance galley copy of A Wild Light, the next Hunter Kiss novel set to release July 28th. They also have the chance to win collectible variant covers of Liu’s Black Widow Marvel comic book and a framed signed cover of the next Dirk & Steele novel, In the Dark of Dreams, when it goes on-sale this November. And finally, visitors will learn how to participate in an online mystery adventure set in Liu’s Dirk & Steele universe.