In one of those random moments that makes your entire day, I discovered completely by accident that my story "A Bit of the True Material" received an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

(woot!)

My 500 word short about how far teenagers will go to get around overprotective parenting appears in this quarter's print issue of Aoife's Kiss.


For Boston-folk, turns out Pandemonium doesn't stock it, but you can order the magazine from the fine folks at Genremall:

http://www.genremall.com/zinesr.htm#aoife

My story "Redemption Tattoo" is the featured story over at Reflection's Edge this month. (November ed.)


(Horror/erotica, which is not exactly my usual stock in trade, but hey, every now and then it's fun to go play in the dark.)

Reflection's Edge offers their fiction free and was a pleasure to work with. Go give 'em a look.

My review of the new William Gibson novel Spook Country is out this week in Boston's alternative arts and entertainment magazine The Weekly Dig.


Summary of the book: it's a good read, dark and strange and almost the textbook definition of slipstream as defined in the original Sterling essay. If I were writing a blurb, I'd say it's sort of like Kelly Link went out to dinner with Tom Clancy and their hands met reaching for the check.

Life intervened, so I didn't get around to posting about Readercon. The details are fuzzy at this point so it's really cool that there were folks around thinking about recording the event for posterity. In particular, Jim Freund (host of NYC radio's Hour of the Wolf) was at the Sybil's Garage reading with a digital recorder. SG editor Matt Kressel has turned the results into a high quality podcast you can download here:

http://www.sensesfive.com/audio/Sybils_Garage_reading_at_ReaderCon_18.mp3

to hear me, Leah Bobet, and Barbara Krasnoff (in that order) read our respective pieces from the latest issue.

Some very late-night Mafia (killed off late in round one, one of the victorious final three villagers in round 2, though I can't claim much credit.) ended the con for me on Saturday evening, but I'll definitely be going back next year. The panels were less energetic this year, but there were a lot of good people, some excellent readings, and the occasional bit of food for thought.

And with Jonathan Lethem GOHing next year, mmm, boy.

I'll be at Readercon this weekend. In particular, I'll be reading with Leah Bobet, Barbara Krasnoff, and Matthew Kressel as part of the Sybil's Garage reading at noon on Saturday.

( Check out the swanky flyer... )

See you there!

The new issue of Sybil's Garage (containing my story "Pairings") hit the stands this week and it's gorgeous. Loaded with fiction and poetry from some excellent writers, SG is also one of the most visually interesting genre mags out there, an anachronistic catalog of woodblocks and funky flourishes. I've enjoyed past issues quite a bit.

The full TOC:

Fiction
“After the War” by Leah Bobet
“On Death and the Deuce” by Richard Bowes
“Pairings” by John Bowker (alphabetical order failed me this time. :)
“Means of Communication” by Barbara Krasnoff
“Jetsam” by Livia Llewellyn
“An Appetite for Love” by Cat Rambo
“Seas of the World” by Ekaterina Sedia
“Translucence” by Rowena Southard
“Strangeness” by Steve Rasnic Tem

Poetry
“Arrive on Time,” by Bruce Boston
“If the Shoe Fits,” by Aurelio Rico Lopez III
“Frayed Worlds,” by David C. Kopaska-Merkel & Wendy Rathbone
“Farewell,” by Jaime Lee Moyer
“One of the Reasons,” by Kristine Ong Muslim
“The Answer Compounded,” by J.C. Runolfson
“Disparate Parts,” by Rachel Swirsky
“Flesh into Sand,” by JoSelle Vanderhooft

Interviews
Jeffrey Ford interviewed by Matthew Kressel
Stephen Segal interviewed by Devin Poore

Here's a link to their site where you can buy the issue on paper or, for that instant gratification fix, in pdf format. Support the small press and tell 'em I sent you.

TangentOnline posted a review of the Fall 2006 issue of On Spec, the one containing my story "A Bit of the True Material".

http://www.tangentonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=992&Itemid=261

The review's synopsis is very slightly off; it's possible I needed to make a certain plot point more clear. Still, "By turns ordinary, whimsical, and dark, this is a powerful little story that packs a lot of narrative oomph into a short space.". I can live with that.

Brit Marschalk gives a nicely balanced review of "Wildstyle" over at TangentOnline.

And The Not Free SF Reader Blog gives it a 3.5 out of 5. Next time, I stick the dismount.

Horrorscope and AsIf review "Wildstyle" in Andromeda Spaceways InFlight Magazine #26:

http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/doku.php?id=asim_26
http://ozhorrorscope.blogspot.com/2006/11/review-andromeda-spaceways-inflight.html


Both are fairly positive, but there's a common observation between the two which has had me thinking as I begin my annual forced-march binge of this year's science fiction and fantasy movie offerings for the "Movie Year in Review" panel I sit on every year at Arisia. 2006 served up a whole lotta crap (Bloodrayne made me wistful for last year's Aeon Flux and brothers and sisters, that's saying something) but it also had a few films that didn't appear on the moderator's list and that I suspect will be shot down as lacking fantastic elements despite the fact the worlds they offer are as surreal as any bunch of blow-dried Ren-Faire rejects with unlikely swords and equally unlikely breasts.*


The first movie that comes to mind is Brick, which I've gone on about before. The world in the film is very recognizeably our own; there are no swords or spaceships, no magic, no unlikely devices. However, the characters are very much something else, high school students ridden by the loa of 1940's detectives, gangsters, and molls, their dialogue and actions simultaneously out of and in-character with both their high school and underworld environments. It's not an escapist fantasy world (I certainly wouldn't want to live there) but a fantasy can be as much about a character's inner landscape as their outer. To my mind, Brick fits the suit.


The other movie that tops my list is John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus. This one should be easier because it actually does have a few moments of undeniable magic. However, it's also a movie almost entirely about sex and sexuality and SF&F has a weird relationship to that. With a few exceptions, sex in the genre is still mostly adolescent, there for wish-fulfullment or titilation. The sex in this film is neither. Still, with its frank look at the myriad twists and turns of the human eros and the convoluted relationships that grow up around that core, Shortbus offers a fantastic exploration of the sexual zeitgeist of a surreally sculpted gender-fluid New York City. If the Tiptree had a media category, it would win at a walk.

In both films, the world they offer is the one we know, kinked, observed by a small number of people while the rest of the world continues to flow by unaware. That's the fantasy that interests me, the stuff that might be happening out of the corner of your eye and around the corner, offering the possibility that the world we live in is already weirder than fiction. Sometimes I get closer than others.

*Again, Bloodrayne? Awful. Really, really bad. It made Iron Eyes Cody cry.