As I said, today is cheap-gifts-day in Italy.
So, here’s a link with something fun and cheap… free, actually – seven (count’em, seven!) huge collection of pulp science fiction from 1940.
This being the 75th anniversary of the first World Science Fiction Convention, all the stories are eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugo Awards.
Read all the details and find the links on ThePulp.net.
Enjoy!
I do not normally share the reviews of my novel, The Ministry of Thunder, here on my blog.
I like to keep things classy, you see.
But when one of the most popular and well-loved authors of science fiction out there takes a moment to write a review of my book, what the heck… I know it’s not classy at all, but I have to share it.
I spent many summers reading S.M. Stirling‘s books.
I am proud, and moved, that he now read my novel.
I just learned of the passing of British author Tanith Lee.
This was shattering news – I an a great fan of her writings, and The Birthgrave was one of the first books I read in English.
Some of her novels – Don’t Bite the Sun/Drinking Sapphire Wine, Volkhavaar, the Paradys sequence… but I could mention many others – stand very high in my favorites lists, and her style was always a source of wonder and frustration – because I’ll never write like that.
Lee was a master storyteller, often breaking the boundaries between genres, and defied categorization.
Her catalog is full of extraordinary stories, beautifully told.
This is really a chunk of my life that goes away.
I am very sad.
It’s a sad fact I’m getting too old for this stuff.
No, ok, let me give you a little background on what happened today.
My friend Claire did a piece on her Italian blog, about Kipling’s science fiction stories.
Kipling’s two science fiction stories, meaning of course With the Night Mail and As Simple as ABC.
Which is all good and fine.
OK, Claire has a take that seems to me a little bit too dark on the stories, but apart from that, reading her piece was…
Surprising.
Because Claire is good, has a wide and deep knowledge of English literature and is doing a great series of posts for the Kipling anniversary, but you see, Rudyard Kipling did write quite a bit of science fiction.
According to John Brunner – and he’s pretty knowledgeable on the subject – Kipling did write at least nine science fiction stories. Continue reading
The first half of the first draft of my new novel is in the hands of my editor, while I hammer out the kinks in the second half.
The going is good.
I like the story, I like the characters, and I’m writing about good ideas in a way that I like.
Nice and smooth.
As it usually happens when I’m very busy doing a lot of things, nice ideas start popping up almost everywhere, and it feels really bad to put them on the backburner, or to bury them in my tiger-striped notebook, waiting for a moment to work on them.
So, while my science fiction novel is rounding the half-way buoy and my steampunk game is getting in shape, I’m setting aside two other ideas, not knowing when I’ll be able to work on them. Continue reading
Ted Chiang‘s The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate is a novelette originally published by Subterranean Press.
I spent a few hours reading it during the weekend, and as it usually happens with stories by Ted Chiang, I was overawed by the author’s skill and finesse.
I will not spoil the plot here (as I know there’s a reader of this blog that has a copy of the book on her ereader).
Suffice to say that this is a time travel story, set in the world and told with the style of The Arabian Nights.
And readers of this blog probably remember I am a fan of the Arabian Nights.
This being a time travel story, it probably qualifies as fantasy1Â – even if, despite the setting and the language, Chiang slips in his narrative a rather plausible science fictional rationale.
But matters of classification really are beside the point2, as we are dealing with a wonderful and poignant story, masterfully designed and perfectly told.
The sort of story that deserves a second reading to try and learn how the author did it.
I’m going through the final push on the first draft of my new novel, a science fiction work that has gone under the working title of Matter/Energy, and later under the tentative title of Nothing Exists Alone.
It’s a big, sprawling hard SF story, which touches upon politics, and environmental sciences, while telling basically a (hopefully!) thrilling adventure yarn. It connects closely with my passion for oceanography, and takes place almost entirely beneath the sea.
And during the weekend I went back to Frank Herbert’s Dune, because I needed to fine tune my writing1 – and Herbert’s novel is a prime example of what I’d like to do, in terms of economy of writing.
Even though I’ll never be as good as Frank Herbert, of course. Continue reading
Karavansara 