Still here...

Just an update as I haven't posted since last Thursday. I'm still alive but doing a bit of traveling and visiting with family and friends. Also attended the opening game of the 2009 Notre Dame Football Season (Go Irish!).

I'm currently reading Paul McAuley's The Quiet War and I'm liking it so far, even though I'm still not that far. Eagerly looking forward to Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl which hits shelves next week.

After that I'm trying a Jack Skillingstead book based on recommendations by a number of authors that I really enjoyed. Not sure if it will be Harbinger or Are You There and Other Stories but that's what I've got in mind right now.

As usual, Keeping An Eye On... will be back tomorrow with an interview with Mr. Bacigalupi focusing on The Wind-Up Girl among other things.

To steal a page from SF Signal, which one of these covers is your favorite? [You can click the picture for a larger view]

Keeping An Eye On... Elizabeth Bear

It's Thursday and that means another edition of the Keeping An Eye On... interview series. This week we are keeping an eye on one of the prominent female authors on the list; Elizabeth Bear. Now Elizabeth somehow manages to write novels as fast as Jay Lake writes short fiction. Don't ask me how; just know that I'm jealous. Since 2005, she's published more than 10 novels and that's not even counting her spectacular short work. Like so many of the authors of the SF Signal Watchlist, she is a recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer and unlike many of our authors she already has 2(!) Hugos to her name for her 2008 short story "Tideline" and her 2009 novelette "Shoggoths In Bloom." Bear was nominated to the list by the likes of Paula Guran and Gardner Dozois but many more people suggested in the comments that she shouldn't be eligible. Not because she didn't deserve it, but because she was already considered one of the genre's best.

I tend to agree with that assessment but I'm not arguing with the list, I'm just interviewing it. Anyway, let's get on with it.

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SoY: If we are keeping an eye on you, what should be looking for in the near future? What have you been working on recently?

EB: If you're keeping an eye on me, maybe I need to learn to be sneakier! Right now, I just handed in book two of the Jacob's Ladder trilogy, called CHILL, to Spectra. I am shopping around a fat fantasy with maps, and I've started work--with Sarah Monette--on the sequel to A COMPANION TO WOLVES. Also, we're just wrapping up work on SHADOW UNIT (www.shadowunit.org) season 2, and gearing up planning for season 3.

SoY: If a reader has never heard of you before reading this, what is the one single piece of work of yours (novel, short story, imaginary TV show, etc.) would you like them to read?

EB: Oh man. See, I have to tailor that to the reader. I wouldn't send a science fiction fan to read the same thing I would send an alternate history fan or a mystery buff or a sword-and-sorcery lover to read. Some of my work is more literary, and some is more pulp inspired.

Right now, though, the story I'm proudest of is "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall," which was published in Ellen Datlow's Del Rey Book Of Science Fiction And Fantasy, and which is available on my website.

SoY: Describe your writing style in haiku-form.

EB:

Something here with which
I take exception. Boom! Crash!
Argument ensues.

Hmm. That lacks a seasonal reference, doesn't it?

SoY: Some of the other up and coming authors I've interviewed have mentioned how hard writing a novel is compared to their experiences writing shorter fiction. What did you find hardest about making that transition? Do you have any advice for any author struggling with their writing?

EB: Well, they're not the same thing at all. Expecting writing short stories to prepare you for writing novels is like running fifty-meter sprints to prepare for a marathon. It just doesn't help all that much.

I never made a transition, so to speak. I've been doing both all along--I wrote my first short stories when I was six or seven, and my first novel by age ten. The hard part, for me, was learning to create arc and linearity in prose. I think I am a poet by nature, but I'm kind of a lousy one. Fortunately, I'm a much better fiction writer, even though that linearity thing has been a challenge. People will expect their stories to have beginnings, middles, and ends--often in that order!

Advice for struggling writers? Textbooks of it, all of it either very helpful or totally useless. The best thing I can say is always strive a little above your abilities. That way, you can't help but improve.

SoY: You are one of the prominent female authors (and one of only 5 on this list) in a genre dominated by male authors and male readers. What are your opinions on gender parity in speculative fiction today? Do you feel like being a woman viewed as a negative (unjustly so) by some readers?

EB: Well, I think the male readers thing is nonsense. The subgenre outselling the hell out of all the others right now is urban fantasy, which has a predominantly female fan base. More women read for entertainment than men.

I also know absolute scads of new female writers, many of whom are amazingly good. Just sticking to novelists, I could name Cat Valente, Chris Moriarty, Sarah Monette, Nalo Hopkinson, Liz WIlliams, Karen Traviss, Nora Jemisin, Amanda Downum, Marie Brennan, Naomi Novik, Justine Larbalestier-- well, we would be here for a while.

However, I do agree that female writers get critically shorted. We're not taken as seriously as men. Cathrynne Valente is every bit as good a writer as China Mieville, but she doesn't get the ink he gets, or the publicity budget. We don't make it onto the Hugo ballot in proportionate numbers, I suspect because the voter base for the Hugos has its favorites. Also, women seem to be more likely to be published in softcover than trade hardcover, which limits their critical exposure. I've been tremendously lucky to be well-reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and others, even though the majority of my titles are in paperback.

There was a big kerfuffle a year or two back over whether there should be more women in the Hugos or more men in the Dick awards (It was nearly all chicks that year, which is one of the things that lead me to realize how many women get pubbed in paperback original.). And you know, the fan awards--the fans are gonna vote for what they vote for.

One thing I flat-out love about my generation of SFF writers is that we're the diversity bubble. We're black, gay, Asian, Hispanic, queer, trangendered, women, third culture kids, nonChristian--and we're here to stay, because science fiction is the literature of alienation, and boy have we have some stuff to talk about. I think the 40-and-under crowd is really amazing.

(I also keep hearing about how there are no new young SF writers coming up, and I'm amazed by that. Because I look around and find myself surrounded by them.)

Is being a woman viewed as a negative by some readers? Sure. Chris Moriarty still feels it necessary to publish under a gender-neutral pseudonym, after all. On the other hand, I know male writers who are going gender-neutral or picking up female pseuds to crack the paranormal romance market, because that's where the money is.

Basically, I think some men are very threatened by competent women. But, well. I don't really care. I'm not writing to that audience. And I figure that my best bet is to just keep doing what I'm doing, and outlive the hell out of them, because there are certainly many, many men and women who like my books a lot. (My fan mail probably runs about fifty-fifty.)

Some white people won't read books by authors of color, either. We call them "idiots."

...well. That got me going.

SoY: You also participate in the writing of Shadow Unit, a television show that will most likely never air. Care to give us some background on what Shadow Unit is and how it came to be? What do you hope to accomplish?

EB: Well, I dunno if I'd go so far as to say it's totally unlikely that it would never air. I bet CBS would turn Chaz into a white guy, though.

Shadow Unit was the brainchild of one Emma Bull, of whom you may have heard. Along with Charles de Lint and a couple of others, she invented this new speculative fiction subgenre back in the 80's, which we now call "urban fantasy."

One subgenre wasn't enough for her, apparently, because while on a long car trip with her spouse, Will Shetterly, she came up with idea for a web-based, serial, interactive, multimedia hyperfiction project--basically an innovative storytelling structure exploiting the medium of web 2.0.

In less technical terms, it's what happens when too many SFF writers who are also fans of spy and cop shows get together and decide to write their own mad little story about a task force composed of unrealistically sexy FBI agents trying to save the world from the worst monsters imaginable.

It allows a real-time narrative (which largely takes place in character blogs), combined with serial installments ("episodes") written by a staff of variously best-selling, award-winning, and New Hotness SFF writers. There's also a message board, wiki, and active fan community. We're issuing it under a Creative Commons license, and one fan has created ebooks.

And it's all funded on the public radio guilt model.

I just think it's the coolest thing ever, and there's always something going on.

Also, I'm in love with every single one of the characters. Every. Single. One.

SoY: What are your writing habits like? Do you have any peculiar writing habits that somehow work for you but everyone else would find quirky (and/or insane)?

EB: Yes. I tell people that I am the official Bad Example. All that stuff you're supposed to do to be a Real Writer? (write every day, work on one project at a time, pick a subgenre and stick to it, don't revise as you go, set regular working hours, etc?) It's death to me. I tried doing it last year and wound up being a year overdue on a novel because I broke myself so badly.

Basically, I write anywhere and everywhere. I do six things at once, and I can't put together two back to back books in a subgenre to save my life.

SoY: What authors would you describe as your primary influences in developing your personal literary style?

EB: Oh, lordie. This is where I'm supposed to say something coy, or literary and patently false, right?

The abovementioned Emma Bull, and her compatriots of the Scribblies (Steven Brust, Pamela Dean, Will Shetterly, Pat Wrede.) Kurt Vonnegut. Roger Zelazny. Somebody once compared me to a young Poul Anderson, and I about fell over dead, I was so happy. Suzy McKee Charnas and Joanna Russ, both of whom I read at an impressionable age, thus scarring myself eternally (sort of in a good way). John Bellairs. L. Frank Baum. Joy Chant. Ursula Le Guin. Maya Angelou. L. Frank Baum. Octavia Butler.

Peter Beagle, who made me want to be a writer.

I have a very strong mythological influence, which probably actually comes from having parents who were folk musicians, and exposed me to a lot of bloody old ballads at a very young age. I'm pretty sure the entire Promethean Age thing comes from listening to Steeleye Span's COMMONER'S CROWN album on endless repeat for most of my childhood.

I've also been informed that I am in the grand tradition of New England writers, in that I write comedies of ethics--the sort of thing where Our Doughty Hero is endlessly forced into making absolutely obscene ethical choices between terrible and awful alternatives. I think I have to cop to that. So, Nathaniel Hawthorne it is.

SoY: Some of your work is almost beyond subgenre classification. What's the strangest story you've ever sold?

EB: Parodic Man from UNCLE meta-slash. Which is Hal Duncan's fault, though I have never admitted it before.

SoY: What has been the highlight of your career so far?

EB: Oh wow. Two things: one is having writers and editors who I respect and admire compliment my work. The other is when somebody writes to me and tells me something I wrote changed their life for the better somehow. I have had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting--online and in person--fans who found some solace or strength or catharsis in my work.

I write to be read, and because it is the work that's set before my hand. And because it's the most effective tool I have for alleviating suffering. Which is, to my mind, the only useful work in the world.

I kick you off the list because you've already published 10 novels in less than 5 years. You aren't up-and-coming, you're here. Who do you nominate to the list in your place?

See above! Okay, Karen Traviss is probably "here," too. Um, and let's think about some boys and some short story writers, too. Christopher Barzak. Yoon Ha Lee. Leah Bobet. David Schwartz. Tobias Buckell. Cherie Priest, who has just made a major breakthrough in terms of kicking her writing up a notch with her forthcoming book. Nisi Shawl, who needs to sell a damn novel already. Christopher Rowe. Paolo Baciagalupi.

It's thick on the ground out here. This is exciting times.

SoY: You've published an amazing amount of novels in a very short period of time. Were any of these novels done prior to your first sale or are you just unbelievably proficient? How do you manage to maintain such a high output and remain at the top of your creative game?

EB: I'm a frelling genius.

*fails to keep a straight face at all*

Well, I write a lot. It's my full-time job, and I do, you know, use that time to write. And I have been practicing since first grade, so I kind of have the basics down now that I'm creeping up on forty. I read a lot. I try to have adventures and meet people and keep filling up the well. And I'm crabby. I'm terribly, terribly crabby, and most of my books come from a deep-seated well of irascibility, where I read or see something and thing "That's just not right. I should FIX THAT."

And so I try. And I keep trying to make each one better--richer, stronger, more nuanced, more accessible, trickier, cleverer, cleaner, more beautiful, more exciting and interesting and full of wonderful people--than the last. I don't always succeed. But I try. and I think that's the important part.

They're never as good as I want them to be, of course.

That, and the variety helps. If I were just writing Jenny Casey books, I don't think I could manage to keep making them interesting. But I have a lot of stories in my head, and I am always finding new ones.

SoY: Every writer has a favorite word. Mine's plethora. What's that unique word that tries to find its way into everything you write?

EB: "shatter"

It's not even my favourite word. My favorite word is "floccinaucinihilipilificatrix." But it's probably revelatory of my deep psychological unwellness or something.

SoY: What's the best thing you've read this year?

EB: Probably Christopher Barzak's THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING. Or John M. Ford's THE LAST HOT TIME. Oh, wait, no. Sherman Alexie, THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN. That one.

SoY: [Obligatory pimpage] Is there anywhere online that readers can follow you and your work? [/obligatory pimpage]

EB: Hee. Well, Shadow Unit, of course. And www.elizabethbear.com. Which needs to be updated something fierce. Also, I have a livejournal and a twitter feed.

---

Yet more great responses from yet another great author. I can't say enough how much I've been enjoying talking with these authors who are either just reaching their prime or on their way toward it. The combination of talent and enthusiasm is infectious, and I'm get excited to read these authors over and over again.

Elizabeth Bear is no exception. Go check out her work. I guarantee that at least one of her books is exactly the book for you.

District 9 vs Time Traveler's Wife

Over on Rotten Tomatoes, I saw that District 9 had a 89% rating.

Finally! Original Quality Sci-Fi!

Then I saw District 9...

I wanted to like it. I really did. But after exiting the theatre, I had to ask myself "What movie were those critics watching?" The special effects were decent but so were the effects in Transformers or Terminator Salvation. Other than that, it was fun but nothing mind-blowing like the critics pretended it was. Even ignoring some of the criticism targeted toward the horrible depiction of Nigerians and the other biased failings of a film that supposedly presented a commentary on racism and ghettoization, its incredibly easy to pick apart the absolutely horrendous internal logic District 9 offered.

[Caution Spoilers Ahead!] There is no rationale or explanation given for ANY of the following questions or points

• Why does the ship stops working in the first place?
• Why does the command module fell from the sky?
• Why is every alien seemingly a mindless beast except for the Christopher Johnson character and his son?
• Why does the black goo both powers the command module AND turns Wikus into an alien?
• Why Wikus's arm changes over night but the transformation magically pauses for the remainder of the film
• Why wouldn't the aliens collect the black goo before all of the black goo containing parts are scattered around the district?
• Why don't the humans explore the mother ship further?
• Why don't the aliens don't simply band together or utilize their highly superior weapons instead of being subjugated by the humans?
• Where do the excess weapons come if the aliens don't have any access to the mothership and they have no fabrication technology of their own?
• If the movie is being shot as a documentary, where does all the footage of Wikus come from when he is by himself? Pick a style and stick with it!

And these are only a few of the lazy plot points that stick with me. It doesn't make any more sense than Transformers. Why the superior reviews? It doesn't actually make any commentary on apartheid, racism, or discrimination on more than an after school special level. The acting certainly isn't anything to write home about. I don't get it. The movie is relatively enjoyable as a popcorn flick but it's nothing out of ordinary.

Now I appreciate the fact that this wasn't Transformers 63 or Beanie Babies: The Musical. New ideas are few and far between and new SF ideas are even rarer. Well-budgeted SF new ideas with decent marketing push into the realm of leprechauns and unicorns. For that reason, I'm happy that District 9 did well. Hopefully, it means that we can see more original SF. Possibly even some good original SF. I mean, 89%, Really?


On the other hand, I've also saw The Time Traveler's Wife two weeks ago and I loved it. It currently has a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, which for reference is 1% lower than the "instant classic" G.I. Joe. The Time Traveler's Wife is based of a book of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger which is probably the best time travel story I've ever read. It's important to realize that it's not science fiction but more of a time travel fantasy akin to Ken Grimwood's Replay. I think this might have turned some people off, especially those viewers going for the Time Travel part of the title. There is no scientific explanation for the main character's time traveling but it's not really relevant. It has a strong romantic storyline which may scare some readers off but the themes of causality, determinism, and chronology are mind-boggling and absolutely brilliant.

As an example, there isn't a singular moment when the two characters meet. An older Henry time travels to meet his wife's younger self and strikes up a friendship with her. Later on in Claire's chronologically unfolding life, she meets the man who has been visiting her for years and who she firmly believes she is destined to marry. The catch is that this twenty-something Henry has never met Claire before in his life. For a SFF fan who enjoys a story that will make you think and make you wonder, this is an outstanding book. For someone who is looking for a hard science fiction story, be warned that there is none to be had and the only explanation given is necessary for one of the important plot devices of the novel.

That being said, I felt like the novel did have some flaws particularly in the angst department. I'm not as keen on the relationship part of the story so when you start getting chapters and chapters with a lot more complaining and fighting rather than excitement and wonder, it starts to grate on my nerves. Especially when the characters start to do things that you feel are outside their characterizations.

I felt like the movie took all of the time travel wonder but improved/streamlined the relationship drama in a way that I connected with more strongly. I might even say that I enjoyed the movie as much as, if not more than the book. From reading the reviews, it seems like a lot of people where thrown by the complex causality loops that are explained more clearly and with more attention in the book. This being the case, I think it might be the coupling of the book and the movie together that worked so well.

I don't think I've ever said this before but I think I've found a book/movie combo that actually work well together rather detracting.

Long story short. See District 9 to support original films but don't be suprised when you don't enjoy it. Read the Time Traveler's Wife. Then see the movie.

Why am I not surprised...

Currently, io9 is stealing quotes from my interview, and deleting my comments.

Over at io9 (see how easy it is to link!), io9 misattributes the interview to SF Signal, where I have been rerunning interviews the Monday after I post them here. I'm a big fan of John & Co over at SF Signal and I was more than happy to rerun the interviews there. I have more of a problem with io9 not linking SF Signal or more correctly, Stomping On Yeti, to read the full interview. They do, however, manage to link themselves just fine.

And it's not only the fact that they aren't linking sources appropriately. When I attempted to post a comment correctly attributing the quote (and suggesting that they link either SF Signal or, God forbid, the website on which the quote actually originated from), the comment was deleted under io9's "don't post things that we don't like" policy

Bad io9. Shame on you.

YetiStomper Picks: Books for September

The Quiet War - Paul McAuley

A long anticipated book in the YetiStomper camp, Pyr finally releases a US edition of Paul McAuley's The Quiet War. Set in a 24th century Solar System on the brink of civil war, this appears to be a Space Opera worth reading. Look for a review sooner rather than later.

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi's debut novel, The Windup Girl, expands on the world of his fantastic stories "The Calorie Man" and "Yellow Card Man." While not a full dystopia, Paolo's vision of the future depicts a world where resources are scarce and calories are cash. Genetic manipulation, bio-terrorism, and megacorporations with a monopoly on food. I read Paolo's collection Pump Six and Other Stories earlier this year and I've anticipated this book since I finished that collection. Another highly recommended book thats getting a free pass to the front of the reading list.

The Golden City: A Novel - John Twelve Hawks

The third and final book in John Twelve Hawks' Fourth Realm Trilogy. Doubleday put all of there marketing muscle behind the first book in the series, The Traveler, but I'm guessing sales didn't live up to expectations as the 2nd and now 3rd books have arrived with little press whatsoever. It might have something to do with the fact that John Twelve Hawks is publishing these stories anonymously and doesn't give interviews or maintain an internet presence so there is nothing to sustain a publicity campaign, especially for additional books.

Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel - Harry Connolly

Urban Fantasy debut of the month. Seems to be in the line of Harry Dresden or John Taylor where a wizard gets in a little over his head. There are a million Urban Fantasy series out there but this one had enough buzz to get my attention. If you are looking for more Urban Fantasy, check this out.

The Other Lands (Acacia, Book 2) - David Anthony Durham

The 2nd Book in the Acacia series. David Anthony Durham also just won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. They don't usually give those away lightly. I have yet to read Acacia due to my distaste for reading partially finished series but I've heard very good things.

Darker Angels (The Black Sun's Daughter, Book 2) - M.L.N. Hanover

Follow up to the strong Unclean Spirits (review here). This series has a lot more to offer than the cover art indicates and Daniel Abraham is quickly climbing the ranks of my favorite authors. I highly recommend Unclean Spirits and I'm guessing Darker Angels will be more of the same. Another book likely to jump to the top of the reading mound.

The Apex Book of World SF - Lavie Tidhar

A SF anthology of translated works from countries not typically represented in English SF circles including Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, and Malaysia among others. If you are looking for some authors you haven't read before, or are interested in checking out some alternative points of view, this is an anthology you should check out.

Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) - Suzanne Collins

YA Adult Sequel to The Hunger Games which was extremely well recieved by fans and critics alike. This is one of those series that is technically YA but works across all age groups.

The Year of the Flood: A Novel - Margaret Atwood

It takes a lot for authors who are writing genre material to be considered "literary" or "mainstream" but Atwood is one of those lucky few. I've seen reviews saying "The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her [Atwood's] visionary power." and "By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive."

The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

The third Robert Langdon novel isn't genre persay but I still enjoy a good adventure novel as much as the next reader. I expect a fast, fun read but not much else. It's going to be interesting to see if Dan Brown can deliver on the unavoidable hype after the runaway success of The Da Vinci Code.

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach: Three Short Novels of the Malazan Empire, Volume One - Steven Erikson

More Malazan. So far I haven't ventured into the world of the Malazan Empire (again with unfinished series) but I've also heard nothing but good things here.

DMZ Vol. 7: War Powers - Joe Kubert

Volume 7 of the Vertigo comic detailing the experience of a war journalist caught up in a American Civil War being fought in the streets of New York City. Like most things here, I'd recommend checking out the entire series but if you've been keeping up with DMZ, this is a reminder that Vol 7 comes out this month.

Where August was light September seems to have kicked it up a notch.As always, if you are interested in more details regarding any of the above books, just click on through the Amazon links.I'm more interested in telling you why I recommended them rather than simply what's out there. Anything that might have escaped my genre nets? Which one of these covers is your favorite?

You can view previous installments of YetiStomper Picks here

YetiReview: Abyss (FotJ Book 3)

20 words or less: Fate of the Jedi plotline begins to pick up in a typically uneven Denning novel that does more right than wrong.

My Rating: 3.5/5

Pros: Interesting Luke/Ben subplot finally delivers on potential; Spot-on characterizations; Series plotlines finally start to come together

Cons: Poorly written dream sequences; Denning continues to demonstrate a weakness for describing action sequences; Techspeak crutch used to arrange scenes

The Review: After reading Omen (review here), the Fate of the Jedi series left a bad taste in my mouth. Now, after Troy Denning’s Abyss, I’m happy to say the series appears to be back on track. In the first two books, it was clear that LucasBooks were trying to fix some of the issues that plagued their first attempts at large story-arcs (of the 9+ book variety); mostly regarding continuity errors, sloppy characterizations, and dropped plotlines. It was easy to see that each book had a specific start and end-point and the author was responsible for navigating between the two. This structured approach felt unwieldy in the first two books, possibly a result of the authors not being given enough plot to fill a 350 page book with or creative struggles on the author’s part. It might be the fact that the overarching plotlines are finally starting to intertwine, but Abyss felt like a fully developed story rather than 3 unrelated novellas that simply occupied the same chronological space in the Star Wars Universe. The characters all have something interesting to do, rather than visiting the galactic pet market or teaching sages the importance of living life to the fullest or whatever one-dimensional storyline was used to bridge the predefined end points for Han, Leia, and Luke.

The Luke/Ben plotline specifically was a huge improvement over previous entries and very interesting in its own right. Retracing Jacen’s journey to various Force-wielding cultures around the galaxy sounds like a very intriguing story on paper. However, the first two entries came and went with only minor amounts of “galaxy-building” development or Force philosophy leaving only a massive amount of wasted potential behind. With the Mind Walkers, a secretive sect hidden amidst the galaxy’s largest Black Hole cluster, Denning delivers on that original potential, fleshing out a strange and possibly ill-intentioned group of Force-users that inhabit an equally mysterious space station. In previous books, the Luke/Ben story was a glaring weakness. In Abyss, Denning has improved it into one of it’s strengths.

The second plotline concerning the “Jedi-sickness” plaguing young Jedi Knights continued as well. This was one of the most intriguing parts of the first two books and Denning managed to add some much needed momentum to the story after it started to crawl in Golden’s Omen (10% of the book involved two characters going to dinner). The multi-faceted Jedi/Republic/Empire/Press conflict continues to develop as loyalties change and additional incidents occur. The third plotline is Sith being Sithly. Which doesn’t disappoint, although they aren’t quite as evil as they possibly should be. Clearly, all three plotlines are related but this is the one that is really going to make things interesting in the books to come. Overall, the series made tremendous improvements plot-wise in this volume.

While I was much happier with the plot advancement of Abyss, it still had some stylistic problems, albeit not nearly as many as Omen. Where Golden was a Star Wars “noob” still finding her voice, Denning is a seasoned Star Wars author. He gets what Star Wars characters do and don’t say (at least pre-Phantom Menace characters anyways). The majority of the dialogue and galaxy-building is strong aside from Denning’s tendency for tech-dumping. Inventing “mirfields”, “wallscopes”, and other technologies for a single scene is more lazy writing than anything else. Rather than trying to come up with an internally consistent reason for the situation he wants to write, Denning resorts to “new technological advancements” to introduce a conflict. It doesn’t help that these buzzwords never really get explained and don’t make much sense from any of the context clues. This is further compounded by Denning’s apparent inability to write an action sequence. As soon as the action gets going, whether it’s the exploration of an ancient run-down space station, a lightsaber battle in zero gee, or a chase through the streets of Coruscant, the characters get lost in general spatial vagueness and an absolute vacuum of detail. Anyone who has scene Star Wars knows that the visual elements are tremendously important and Denning just can’t deliver up to expectations. I spend so much time trying to figure out what is actually happening that it’s almost impossible to get lost in the thrill of a fight. Normally, I would be a little lenient but Denning does this in every Star Wars book he has every written. I suggest he try a little Joe Abercrombie to see what how an action scene should be done.

Ignoring my distaste for a couple of Denning’s bad habits, Abyss is still a worthwhile entry in the Fate of the Jedi series and it really put the series back on track without straying from the more rigid serialized structure that is cleaning up the series continuity issues quite nicely. This was especially nice to see after Omen failed to advance the plot in any appreciable way and wasted a huge opportunity with the Luke/Ben subplot. Honestly though, if you aren’t a Star Wars junkie like me, there’s nothing really worth talking about. I would say you were missing much. As a fanboy, however, I’m very eager to see where the story goes in future volumes. Unfortunately for me, FotJ Book 4, Backlash, won’t be out until next March.

The Heroes (UPDATED)

In somewhat timely fashion (Best Served Cold Review), Joe Abercrombie has announced the title and a rough description of his next novel in the First Law Universe (does it have a name yet). He's anticipating it will be similar in length to Best Served Cold and unfortunately, probably won't be released until Feb 2011.

Here's the summary:

Both because the action centres around a ring of standing stones called the Heroes, and because it's about heroism and that (meant semi-ironically, of course). It mostly takes place over the course of three days, and is the story of a single battle for control of the North. Think Lord of the Rings meets A Bridge Too Far, with a sprinkling of Band of Brothers and Generation Kill. It's about war, you get me? Principally it follows the (mis)adventures of six assorted persons on both sides and different levels of command, whose paths intersect during the course of the battle in various fateful, horrible, wonderful, surprisingly violent, surprisingly unviolent, and hilarious ways. With the Northmen: a veteran losing his nerve who just wants to keep his crew alive, an ex-Prince determined to claw his way back to power by any means necessary, a young lad determined to win a place in the songs for himself. With the Union: A depressive swordsman who used to be the king's bodyguard, a profiteering standard-bearer, and the venomously ambitious daughter of the Marshal in command. But of course a fair few familiar faces show up on both sides...

Check out the full story over on Joe's blog. And if you haven't read any his work yet, you are missing out on some seriously good stuff.

UPDATE: I asked a question of Joe over on his blog regarding the title of his fantasy world/series title. His fantasy world is The Circle of the World and the overarching book series is "The Song of the Sword of Time of the Fallen." I think he's being sarcastic but I really hope he's not.

Keeping An Eye On... Paul Melko

This week we are Keeping An Eye On Paul Melko. Like so many of the authors on SFSignal's Watchlist, Melko has debuted with a bang. His first novel, Singularity's Ring, was a SciFi essential book and, even more impressively, he managed to take home the 2009 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Since then he's published an unrelated second novel, The Walls of the Universe, based of a Hugo-, Nebula-, and Sturgeon-nominated novella of the same name. He's also got a short story collection out from Fairwood Press, chock full of the best and hard-to-find short fiction Paul has authored. One of the members of the surprisingly large Ohioan SF Revolution, Paul is also one of the relatively newer names of the watchlist and one of the names that SFSignal helped me discover.

Since then, Paul's been on my Watchlist and it was a pleasure to see what he's going to be up to in the immediate future. Read on to find out for yourself.

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SoY: If we are keeping an eye on you, what should be looking for in the near future? What have you been working on recently? What are you writing now?

PM: What's coming next? Good question! In August I finish up my MBA at The Ohio State University. I hadn't expected it to put a halt on any new words from me for 18 months, but it did. During that time my second book (THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE) arrived and my first book (SINGULARITY'S RING) won some awards, so there's been a fair amount of writing business going on. I'm looking so forward to picking up some old projects that my brain is salivating. I have four choices on what I'm going to do:

1. Write a sequel to THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE.
2. Write a new stand-alone humorous SF novel based on my Cankerman short stories.
3. Write a middle-grade hard science fiction novel with my friend Ben Rosenbaum.
4. Write a middle-grade fantasy novel based on my Kirby Drogan stories.

Really, I'm ready to do any and all of them. The question is what to do first. Before a reader sees any of those, look for the trade paperback version of THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE, hopefully in stores sometime next year.

SoY: If a reader has never heard of you before reading this, what is the one single piece of work of yours (novel, short story, cave painting, etc.) would you like them to read?

PM: If you, our hypothetical reader, have but a few minutes, then read my short story, "Ten Sigmas," which I think is my best short story, first published in Talebones and collected elsewhere. If you have an afternoon for me, read the novella version of "The Walls of the Universe." If you want to spend the next two days with me, read my first novel SINGULARITY'S RING.

SoY: Describe your writing style in haiku-form.

PM:

I write only prose,
as the frugal use of words
causes me much pain

SoY: Singularity’s Ring won both the Compton Crook Award and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It’s the first novel you’ve had published. Was it also the first novel you wrote? Can you describe the journey between concept and sale for all of the aspiring writers who might be reading this?

PM: SINGULARITY'S RING started as a short story for Lou Anders' LIVE WITHOUT A NET. We had just been introduced, and he said he was editing an anthology in which the future of humanity did not depend on computers and hardware and Internets. I was struck by the idea for biological networks almost immediately, and I wrote "Singletons in Love" for Lou. It went on to get collected in the Year's Best SF by Gardner Dozois. I found the characters so intriguing that I wrote more stories in the same universe. "Strength Alone" in Asimov's became chapter 1 of the book. "Singletons in Love" was chapter 2. And a third story "The Summer of the Seven" was a prequel.

It was not the first novel I wrote. THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE, in radically different form was the first, sorta. There were several abortive attempts prior to that. But WALLS didn't cut the mustard, and so I pieced RING together into a novel when I realized I had 3 or 4 chapters just sitting around. "The Walls of the Universe" novella, a Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon nominee, was a distillation of the best parts of the crappy novel. I used that to write the second version of the novel.

RING sold to Tor, and WALLS sold after that.

SoY: What authors would you describe as your primary influences in developing your personal narrative style?

PM: Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Heinlein, Harry Harrison, Gregory McDonald.

SoY: Some of the other up and coming authors I’ve interviewed have mentioned how hard writing a novel is compared to their experiences writing shorter fiction. What did you find hardest about making that transition? Was it easier the second time around?

PM: Writing in general is hard. The skills required are slightly different for short and long fiction, and if you learn one set of skills, the other set of skills feel out of place in your brain until you get the hang of it.

Neither length seems any easier than the other to me at this point.

SoY: Every author has that one story they’ve always wanted to tell. Is either Singularity’s Ring or The Walls of the Universe that story? Or is that one still to come?

PM: THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE is probably the book I've always wanted to write.

SoY: Who wins in a battle to the death between Ender Wiggins, Paul Atreides, Gandalf, and Harlan Ellison?

PM: Honor Harrington

SoY: I’ve heard of the British SF revolution but you seem to be part of the Ohio SF revolution. Why are there so many up and coming genre authors coming out of Ohio. Is there something aspiring writers should know?

PM: Serendipity. I grew up in Ohio and luckily the town I grew up in had three great bookstores downtown, one of them a used bookstore with a trove of old SF. But that's true of practically all small towns in Ohio.

When I moved back to Ohio, I immediately looked for a writers workshop to attend. I ran into Charles Coleman Finlay and Tobias Buckell, and all three of us were at nearly the same points in our career. How unlikely is that event?

Writing is one of those things that is usually learned in isolation and for one's self. Having a cohort of writers at about the same level as you -- a gang of journeyman -- was a phenomenal help to me. And just as likely to happen any place as Ohio.

SoY: Are there any original stories left? Hollywood doesn’t seem to think so. Do you think the way most people consume their media today is influencing the creativity of our culture?

PM: I like the idea that we as a species evolved with story as a part of intelligence. When we see disconnected facts, our brains try to piece it together as narrative. This works to our advantage -- we can reason and strategize -- and disadvantage – we end up making stories (myths, astrology, religion, bad theories) to fit the facts. But in any case, we're hard-wired for prose, and that will not change. People will need story, but of course the medium of story will change, but the common characteristics will not. We need heroes, vivid description, plot, a moral, exotic settings, romance, interesting people doing interesting things.... And of course we'll need people to write those stories.

SoY: You’ve also got a short story anthology out from Fairwood Press. With developing authors, there can some times be an urgency to publish a collection as soon as they’ve got enough stories. How did you select the stories for Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods?

PM: I've had a enough stories to publish a collection for a while, but just recently I had enough science fiction prose alone to fill a collection. Looking through my oeuvre, I realized I had Hugo-, Nebula-, and Sturgeon-Award nominated works, stories that had appeared in the year's best anthologies, and stories that had only appeared in small press magazines. It seemed like a collection was in order.

SoY: An incident occurs resulting in your removal from the list of up-and-coming genre stars. What is the most likely cause of that incident? (can be as serious or as funny as you would like) Who do you nominate in your place?

PM: What could happen? Tor doesn't pick up my third book. I find another genre or media of interest. Life gets in the way. I get bored. It's really quite tenuous, isn't it. Read me while you can!

Jack Skillingstead, Mary Robinette Kowal, John Pitts, Ken Scholes can all have my spot.

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Now Paul neglected to answer my question regarding ways to follow him online but I was able to find an official website as well as a blog. I'm guessing he wouldn't be opposed to me posting those here since they are overflowing with information on his work. I'd recommend checking him out, as well as picking up at least one of his two outstanding novels. I have a sneaking suspicious once you get one, the other might be on your bookshelf before long.

Thanks again to Paul for participating and if you enjoyed the interview, come back next week for more interviews. I've been getting a lot of responses lately, so I might be trying to move to a quicker release schedule in the coming weeks if I can find time.

Alternate Perspectives Requested...

If anyone who found this blog over the weekend is still around, I'd be curious to know what you thought about this post over at World in a Satin Bag. The author is essentially making the same point I was trying to, but not failing quite as hard as I did. Where I tried to be ironic, the author took the more direct approach.

Go over there, have a read, let me know what you think.

YetiReview: Best Served Cold

21 Words or Less: A bloody story of revenge filled with murder, mayhem, and a memorable cast of characters as endearing as they are dysfunctional.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

The Good: Strong, interesting antiheros that you can’t help but cheer for; world-class action sequences that put you in the story; a fast-paced, well-plotted story that twists and turns but never loses momentum

The Bad: A few too many reused characters/connections from The First Law; some plot twists work better than others; still no map

Preview (contains publisher’s description, expectations, and other thoughts)

Your average fantasy author wouldn't use murderers, traitors, and psychopaths as the bad guys. But then again, Joe Abercrombie is not your average fantasy author. In Best Served Cold, the standalone revenge tale set in the same fantasy world as his highly praised First Law trilogy, Abercrombie takes mercenaries and barbarians, poisoners and serial killers and not only writes them as the focus of the story but inexplicably manages to make you care enough about them to cheer them on. If Joe ever suffers from crippling writer’s block (god forbid) and he needs to take on a day job, he’d make good money as a defense attorney. He’s got an uncanny ability to make a hardened killer seem like the luckless underdog. Friendly. Monza. Morveer. Without giving any surprises away (and there are plenty of them), these are just three of the brilliant characters that you’ll remember as long as Glotka, Ninefingers, and Bayaz from the original trilogy.

I could go on and on about how great the characters are but I want to be clear that Best Served Cold is by no means a character study. It’s a full blown revenge fantasy for the sake of Khalul! It’s fast paced, tightly plotted, and beautifully violent. Now, beautiful isn’t a word I typically use to describe violence but Abercrombie writes an action scene that is easily envisioned and almost effortlessly enchanting to the point where I would be tempted to say Abercrombie is writes the best fight scene in the genre today. It's arguable that the action reads as smoothly as watching a movie scene but when you’re filming a movie there’s a limit to what you can do without CGI (or at least without killing your actors). And while the action might seem gratuitous at times, it never is. Best Served Cold is tightly plotted and ever detail serves to further the plot, set up a twist later on, or provide a hint at the bigger war between the Gurkish and the Union. Unlike most standard fantasy, Abercrombie’s sandbox is not tied to one individual destined for greatness. Instead there’s a bigger conflict going on behind the scenes and it’s still not clear who the good guys are, if there are any. Essentially you’ve got morally ambiguous and altogether untrustworthy characters working for powerful men with divided loyalties who are mere puppets of shadow organizations with bottomless coffers and hidden agendas all of their own. If that doesn’t allow for unexpected plot twists, sudden reversals of fortune, and endlessly intriguing chaos, there isn’t too much more to ask for.

I was really tempted to give Joe a 5-star on this one and Best Served Cold by any other author would probably have earned it. But Abercrombie is so good, he’s judged by a higher standard. The main issue that held me back was Abercrombie’s propensity for reusing characters from his First Law Trilogy. 2 of the main characters appeared in Abercrombie’s first trilogy as well as several minor names. While I can’t blame him for wanting to reuse his typically spectacular characters, a few characters were shoehorned into the novel in ways that seemed too convenient to be plausible, particularly when this novel was set across the sea from the setting of his first trilogy. (Although I wouldn’t know for sure since we still don’t have a map!) Some inclusions worked wonderfully and felt natural, others came across as forced. In much the same way, a few of Best Served Cold’s twists strained plausibility, particularly one character’s unexpected return and another pair’s romantic relationship. Hopefully in the next entry in this outstanding series, Abercrombie can balance these cameos in a slightly more subtle fashion.

This is only Abercrombie’s fourth novel and there isn’t a weakling in the bunch. It’s amazing how already I consider Abercrombie to be one of the best fantasy authors in almost every category. Characters, action, dialogue, plot, world building? It’s all there and it’s all top-notch. Abercrombie is the king of blood-soaked fantasy. Or at least a prince with a pile of gold, a hidden dagger, and an eye on the throne.

Women and Writers of Color Suggestions

Last weekend I had the brilliant idea of engaging a rather vocal subsection of the genre community in a lively little discussion. Long story short, they aren't just vocal; they're also correct on a number of very good points, two of which were the importance of trying to be conscious of your unconscious bias and expanding your reading network. Without realizing it, I tended to write off female writers, and I'm not sure why. I wasn't presuming that they would only be concerned with relationships or children or unicorns or something like that but when I reflected on it I wasn't reading that many books not written by my own demographic.

So today I saw this list of Mindblowing SF by Women and People of Coloron Tor.com. There is a ton of info there. They've got lists of short stories, novels, and a list of authors you should check it out. I've looked it over and while I've read some of the authors )LeGuin, Niffenegger, Kress, Willis, Bear, Parker, Atwood, among others) there are a lot of authors I've always meant to read but haven't (Buckell, Russell, Butler) and several I'm ashamed to say I haven't heard of.

So check out their list. If you've read a lot of those authors and more, let them know who they might be missing. I'm not well read but I didn't see Lauren Buekes, author of the fantastic Moxyland on their list. If you aren't as well read, maybe pick up a book or two, try something new for a change.

Covering Covers: Galileo's Dream

I saw the cover for Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream for the first time accompanying Adam Robert's glowing review at the Guardian website. I grabbed a brief summary of the novel from his review which is quoted below:

Two-thirds of the novel is a scrupulously researched and brilliantly effective historical tale dramatising Galileo's life and times; the remainder is set among the colonised moons of Jupiter in the year 3020. Alien life has been encountered beneath Europa's ice; it may be benign or it may pose a terrible threat to Jovian human society. By means of temporal entanglement (with just a little Robinsonian hand-waving), Galileo is brought "proleptically" forward to lend his prestige to the debate over what to do.

That sounds very interesting and the cover blends Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle with any of a number of Alastair Reynolds covers. Devoted SFF blogosphere followers might recall that Adam Roberts referenced Galileo's Dream in his rant about the mediocrity of this year's Hugo slate as one of the books he's read that he would nominate over any of the actual novels on the list. I'm definitely interested in reading this one but unfortunately it falls into the category of books that are published in the UK with no US release date in sight. I just might have to bend my rule about foreign releases once again...

What do you think of the cover? Any UK readers out there?

Update: Reader Kimon provided a link to the US Cover as well as a US Release Date of December 29th, 2009. There's also another review, this one from The Independent.

Here's the US cover:


I don't know about you but the cover + release date is two votes for the UK edition and two strikes against the US one. Book Depository Free World Wide Shipping, here I come.

Apologies to Jonathan Strahan...

After some mostly civil discussion in the comments of my recent post about Eclipse Three, I'd like to say a few things. And since it's my blog, you can't stop me.

1st) I'd like to apologize to Jonathan Strahan for the "rocket" crack. I was using it as a turn of phrase to introduce the point of "compensating" rather than any real suggestion that trying to be mindful of bias (conscious or not) somehow related to male endowment. That wasn't my intention at all. I also don't feel like Eclipse Three suggests anything negative about him or his work. I didn't think that Eclipse Two or One did either though, and I feel like he was unfairly criticized then. I still suspect that Eclipse Three was influenced by the Eclipse Two situation and this lead to questions about the the role of the individual editor (or reader) when it comes to mitigating bias.

And just to be clear, I will be, and always planned on, buying Eclipse Three (and Four and more) regardless of what's in the ToC. My goal was never to get Strahan to revise the ToC and add more white male authors. That would be silly.

2nd) I'd like to apologize for the somewhat (or maybe excessively) troll-ish nature of the original post. I used the ToC for Eclipse Three to spark the debate over some thoughts I've been mulling over since the Mindblowing SF discussion a few weeks back. It was an easy target due to the several previous gender-themed discussions that the Eclipse series has generated in past years and I may be guilty of consciously choosing a voice that would generate comments. You can't fully develop any thought without discussing it outside your own brainspace and engaging with people who have a different point of view only help you more.

I don't have any ads and I'm not getting paid to write so I wasn't looking for hits or clicks, I was looking for civil discussion. I started this blog because I wanted to talk about books and the publishing industry in general and the vast majority of the people in my life (except for a few select people who knows who they are) weren't willing or able to talk about that kind of stuff. And while it was possible (though difficult) to find someone who was willing to listen, it was impossible to find someone one engaged enough in the SFF scene to present a counterargument or a lively debate.

3rd) This discussion has made me a little more cognizant of my own unconscious bias. I (like many readers) read mostly for pleasure so I tend to stick to my comfort zone, which is predominantly comprised of work I relate to more easily. I feel like this is a fundamental bias of life and not necessarily a bad thing. You like talking about stuff you are interested in, you enjoy spending time with people you get along with, and you derive pleasure out of reading books about situations you can relate to and characters you can connect with. Will I, as a white male, enjoy reading a story featuring a white male character more than a woman of color (assuming the writers are of equal talent)? Most likely. Is there bias? Of course. Does that make me sexist? I don't think so.

However, one of the goals of my blog is to help others (and myself) find new authors worth reading. And unless I expand my own horizons, it's going to be harder to do that. Which I think was the fundamental point I was missing when I was mulling things over internally. I think cofax said it best in the comments:

Now, he's [Strahan] a lot more aware of the issue, and he's clearly reaching out to a broader network of writers. This is what has created the E3 TOC--not quotas, but a conscious effort to expand his level of comfort to include writers from outside his own personal ingroup.

I thought this made a lot of sense. But recognizing that there are some holes in my reading lists is only the first step. I need some more informed help for the next part. Who should I be reading?

Please recommend any author you think is worth checking out regardless of gender or race. Please include why you recommended them as well.

I'm also willing to continue the discussion on gender bias in the original post comments if anyone is interested in joining.

As a final note, the cover on Barnes and Noble (shown above) has a different set of authors than the one originally posted by Strahan. This one includes Kim Stanley Robinson and James Blaylock, neither of whom are in the anthology. The cover Strahan posted featured Peter Watts, who is also not in the anthology. I don't know the best set of authors to put on the cover to move copies, but I would suggest using ones that actually appear in the book.

Jonathan Strahan must have a small rocket...

...because it looks like he's compensating for something.

I saw for the first time the ToC for Eclipse Three, an ongoing anthology series of new fiction.

The Pelican Bar, Karen Joy Fowler

Lotion, Ellen Klages

Don’t Mention Madagascar, Pat Cadigan

On the Road, Nnedi Okorafor

Swell, Elizabeth Bear

Useless Things, Maureen F. McHugh

The Coral Heart, Jeffrey Ford

It Takes Two, Nicola Griffith

Sleight of Hand, Peter S. Beagle

The Pretender’s Tourney, Daniel Abraham

Yes We Have No Bananas, Paul Di Filippo

Mesopotamian Fire, Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple

The Visited Man, Molly Gloss

Galápagos, Caitlín R. Kiernan

Dolce Domum, Ellen Kushner

Notice that 11 out of the 16 authors are women. (Also notice that the cover advertises Peter Watts but he isn't in the ToC but that's beside the point) That's an unusually high number.

Let's take a look at the original ToC for last year's Eclipse Two:

The Hero, Karl Schroeder

Turing’s Apples, Stephen Baxter

Invisible Empire of Ascending Light, Ken Scholes

Michael Laurits is: Drowning, Paul Cornell

Elevator, Nancy Kress

The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm, Daryl Gregory

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, David Moles

The Rabbi’s Hobby, Peter S. Beagle

The Seventh Expression of the Robot General, Jeffrey Ford

Skin Deep, Richard Parks

Ex Cathedra, Tony Daniel

Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose, Terry Dowling

We Haven’t Got There Yet, Harry Turtledove

Fury, Alastair Reynolds

Hmmm... only 1 woman in the original ToC for Eclipse Two. And no authors that are clearly members of minority groups. Hey! Isn't this the same anthology that got criticized last year for not having enough women and minorities? Wasn't the ToC later revised to include Ted Chiang and Margo Lanagan? Boosting that diversity factor by 200%?


The covers are strange too. In Eclipse One the ratio of M:F was 9:7 but all 6 cover authors were men. In Eclipse Two, the ration of M:F was 13:2 and both women made the cover (after Eclipse One received some heat for that). Eclipse Three has 4 female authors on the cover, one male author, and for fun another author who isn't even in the table of contents! That's Jonathan Strahan just screwing with us right there. "I'll put 10 male authors on the cover but have all of the content written by female authors. Who's sexist now?"

Now I'm not suggesting that any one of these authors don't deserve to be in the anthology or can't write. That's not the case at all. I'm suggesting that the disproportionately high number of female authors gives the impression that Jonathan Strahan was purposefully trying to build an anthology around female authors. This is even more suspicious when you consider the criticism that was voiced around Eclipse Two last year. I know its counter intuitive but I think this does a disservice to the authors. To me the ToC says "I got in trouble for not having enough women authors last year, this ought to shut them up" instead of "Hey here are some really good SF&F stories, enjoy."

I realize I'm walking a fine line here but I feel like you can't react to Eclipse Two or The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF with outrage without at least raising an eyebrow at the make-up of Eclipse Three. Why does a book with an unusually high amount of men cause outrage but an unusually high amount of women slip by? Don't they both suggest that the editor might have been considering something else other than the stories themselves when it came to commissioning/selecting work?

Certainly, with any EditorFail you can't know for sure what the editor's intention was. Jonathan Strahan probably didn't realize that he had a lot of women this year, just as I'm sure he didn't realize it was mostly men last year. It appears he is leaning to more of a slipstream/fantasy feel for this anthology and maybe he had more female authors in mind for the style of stories he was looking for. I can't be sure if he did or not. You can only know what you personally interpret it as or what you think it could be interpreted as by someone else. And I can clearly see how some people could see this as an apology, as pandering, or as biased; even more so than last years. Unfortunately, there's also no clear right way to fix the problem. It would appear that the Jonathan Strahan's anthologies might be eclipsed by the stigma of EditorFails for years to come.

And why is there still only one author clearly representing a minority group? Not as easy spell that out on the cover? Are we saving that for Eclipse Four?

Keeping An Eye On... Jay Lake

In this week's entry in Keeping An Eye On we have yet another author who needs no introduction. Jay Lake, who can write fiction faster than most people can read it, was one of the most commonly suggested authors SFSignal's Genre Watchlist. I'm guessing anyone who didn't name him assumed he was too prominent to qualify. Like many of his fellow Watchlisters, Jay Lake won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer; his award coming back in 2004. Since then, he has published several novels (most recently Green) and a number of collections, edited a dozen anthologies, and written countless short stories. I'm not kidding about this, look at his bibliography, there are at least 200 stories there. I'm not counting that. It goes without saying that more than a few of these works have been reprinted in anthologies such as Johnathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and several editions of Gardner Dozois's The Year’s Best Science Fiction.

I was just hoping that Jay would stop writing for long enough to answer a few questions. Luckily enough, he did:

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SoY: If we are keeping an eye on you, what should be looking for in the near future? What have you been working on recently?

JL: Just lately I've wrapped the first draft of ENDURANCE, a sequel to my current novel GREEN. There will be a third book as well, probably entitled KALIMPURA. Short fiction continues apace, and I've got some cool stuff coming out next year, including a collection entitled THE SKY THAT WRAPS from Subterranean Press, and a single title novella from PS Publishing, THE BABY KILLERS.

SoY: If a reader has never heard of you before reading this, as unlikely as that may be, what is the one single piece of work of yours (novel, short story, Hawaiian shirt, etc.) would you like them to read? (This can be for whatever reason you would like)

JL: Either my Dick-and-Jane shirt (a strong candidate for the most heinous aloha shirt ever), or my new novel GREEN. What the hey, start at the top in your pimping. People looking for a free, quick hit might try my short story in the Clarkesworld archives, "The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black", or my collaboration there with Shannon Page, "Rolling Steel."

SoY: Describe your writing style in haiku-form.

JL: words come together
like rain falling on pizza
making a new thing

SoY: Some of the other up and coming authors I’ve interviewed have mentioned how hard writing a novel is compared to their experiences writing shorter fiction. What did you find hardest about making that transition? Has it gotten easier over time?

JL: Novels require more courage, I think. Typing "Once there was man", knowing you'll be living inside that manuscript for months – years, really, with the full life cycle of the editing process – is a huge step for anyone sane. Short stories are like the raid on Entebbe. You get it, you trash the place, you get out. It's over before you can really shit yourself in fear. Novels are like the invasion of Normandy. Lots of things to go wrong, lots of time to worry about it.

SoY: You seem to be more prolific than entire creative writing classes. How do you keep the writing fresh and the ideas flowing? What advice would you give to young authors who are frustrated with their writing careers?

JL: Write more. That's it. Writing is self-reinforcing. Don't make a fetish out of it, and don't surrender to the myth of the garret, or the myth of the chained muse. It's like playing the guitar, or practicing taekwondo, or having sex. The more you do, the better you get. The better you get, the better it feels. The better it feels, the more you want to do. For me, that opens the channel for ideas, and keeps things from going stale.

SoY: What’s with the Hawaiian shirts?

JL: You can always find me in a crowd, right?

SoY: You’ve done a fair bit of editing work in addition to your writing. Is it easy to take off the writer hat and put on the editor? What the biggest difference between reading a story as a writer and an editor?

JL: Actually, that transition isn't as easy as I might like it to be. Also, I'm always a writer first. Being an editor is ever an exception case for me.

Reading, oddly, is not that different, as I have to work hard to turn off my critical eye these days. Reading critically and reading editorially are not the same thing, but they're kissing cousins. It's the difference between "how would I fix this" and "how does this need to be fixed".

SoY: As someone who has written for the cycle (short stories, stand-alones, series work, and editing), what’s your favorite thing to do?

JL: Series novels, I think. Though there is great joy to the lapidary crafting of a short story.

SoY: What are your writing habits like? Do you have any peculiar writing habits that somehow work for you but everyone else would find quirky (and/or insane)?

JL: I don't think I'm quirky, you'd have to ask everyone else. I can write anywhere – in a noisy bar, at a party, on a plane, in the bathtub. I just take the time and do the work. I always use a laptop – never paper and pen, never a desktop. And I fidget a lot. Sprawl on the couch, sit up, move to the easy chair, wander into the kitchen and fry a quesadilla with the computer beside the stove. So many people seemed to need a structured location, or a clean desk, or a ritual. I just need time and my laptop. Quirky? Maybe. Practical? Immensely so.

SoY: What’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened during your career as an author?

JL: The very earnest rejection letter explaining to me the difference between Jell-O and Kool-Aid.

SoY: If I kick you off this list due to your status as an established author rather than an up-and-coming genre star, who would you nominate in your place?

JL: Ken Scholes, or if he's too established, C.S. Inman, who's so new you haven't heard of him yet.

SoY: What’s the real reason for the Hawaiian shirts? I know you were lying before.

JL: They help me maintain my trim, girlish figure, and also cure gout, scabies and bedbugs.

SoY: It’s common knowledge that you are a hardcore super-secretive Michael Jackson fan. By common knowledge, I mean something I totally made up on the spot. How will his death shape your writing in the future?

JL: Once I'm through with my mourning year, I plan to dedicate myself to raising funds to build a giant, free-range Michael Jackson robot with lasers in his eyes. Fricking lasers, to be specific. Think of a Beverly Hills gundam. That will shape much of my writing for the foreseeable future, as the dedication required to properly honor the King of Pop will lead me down nigh-obsessive paths.

SoY: What’s the best thing you’ve read this year?

JL: Wow, that's toughie. Some really good books and stories, both published and unpublished, have passed through my hands. Kaaron Warren's SLIGHTS, C.S. Inman's I DIDN'T WANT TO GO ON YOUR STUPID QUEST, ANYWAY. An as-yet-unpublished short story called "We Happy Few." Robert Charles Wilson's JULIAN COMSTOCK. It's so hard to choose.

SoY: How many story ideas did you come up with during the course of this interview?

JL: About four. Seriously.

SoY: [Obligatory pimpage] Is there anywhere online that readers can follow you and your work? [/obligatory pimpage]

JL: Why, yes. http://www.jlake.com/blog. This is echoed to http://jaylake.livejournal.com/ as well. Also, I'm on Twitter as @jay_lake.

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My thanks to Mr. Lake for taking the time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for me. I also wish him the best of health and hope that he pushes his bibliography into the low to middle thousands.

I definitely recommend checking out his work (both novels and shorts) although I urge you not to try and read it all without first consulting a doctor.

Come back next week for another interview with a new interview with another rising genre star!