Well, I’m honoured, I really am. Lee Harris of Hub Magazine has – for the second year running, no less – chosen this ‘ere blog as his 2008 Best Website for Timewasting, describing me as “… an advance Google scouting party for genre enthusiasts.”

The big irony here is that this year I’ve probably blogged less bona fide content than ever before, and I know for a fact I’ve been pretty sloppy on linking to actual in-genre news (as opposed to stuff that informs the genre from without, if you see what I mean)… but even so, it’s nice to know that someone’s reading. In fact, I have to assume (with the help of Google Analytics) that the silent majority of the nearly three hundred subscribers to this site read it principally for the link-dumps, and so I should probably take this opportunity to say thanks to you all for doing so. [image by cliff1066]

The seventy-odd weirdos who actually read FPB all the way through every week, however… well, your crime is your punishment, I guess.

That said, look out for a change in output here over the coming year, on which subject there will be more announcements in the very near future. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have links to compile…

Now this is a good idea. The StarShipSofa boys are going to podcast all five of the short stories on the shortlist for this year’s BSFA Awards.

The first one will appear on Monday 10th March, with one daily after that – which means they’ll all be ready well in advance of voting time at Eastercon.

So none of your “I was too busy to read ‘em” excuses*!

If you aren’t too busy to read them, here are the links:

• “Lighting Out” – Ken MacLeod (disLocations)
• “Terminal” – Chaz Brenchley (disLocations)
• “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” – Ted Chiang (F&SF, September)
• “The Gift of Joy” – Ian Whates (TQR)
• “The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter” – Alastair Reynolds (Interzone #209)

So, who’s psyched for Eastercon, eh?

[ * OK, to be fair, this is usually my excuse. ]

Well, we might have guessed this would happen:

“Nominations were also invited for the [BSFA Award for] best non-fiction of 2007, but although a number of works were nominated there was no consensus and so no shortlist could be formed. A non-fiction award will therefore not be presented this year.”

I suppose there are a lot of ways to look at that – I’m going to take the charitable view and assume they knew that the limited number of us who care about such things would rather thrash it out for ourselves than submit to a consensus we couldn’t agree with.

In which case, ladies and gentlemen – start your engines!

[Historical note - we had a pretty good beef session chat about this last year. But if any smart-arse starts a web-based crit mag in the next five months, I'm not touching it with a bargepole.]

***

UPDATE 23/01/08!! This just in from the wonderful Farah Mendlesohn – a new LiveJournal community to discuss issues non-fictional in the genre scene, lest the above occur again.

And please, LJ people, no private posts on that one. It’s hard enough for me to stay in the loop as it is!

***

Through the magic of trackback links, albeit somewhat belatedly, I discover that this here blog has won its first official accolade.

Yes, indeed! Lee Harris, editor of Hub Magazine, has this to say about the Best Website For Timewasting category:

“As a serial timewaster, the internet has become something of a boon and a burden, with many wonderful sites dedicated to taking time from an otherwise productive day. www.SFX.co.uk has a good selection of news snippets posted most days, and is usually worth a look. www.dwscifi.com (the online home of Dreamwatch) has new reviews and news posted daily, and again, well worth a daily visit.

The website most worthy of this extremely prestigious accolade, however, is Paul Raven’s home at www.velcro-city.co.uk. Paul is the webmaster of The Velcro City Tourist Board. He also happens to write for Futurismic, Interzone, and Vector (the critical magazine of the British Science Fiction Association). Velcro City contains daily links to other items of interest around the internet, as well as essays, reviews and opinion pieces.”

Well, wow. I’m really quite chuffed. I’d like to thank my mother, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, my agent …

And I guess I should take the opportunity to point out to Lee (and indeed anyone else) that if you think VCTB is a good way of wasting your time, that makes it an even better way of wasting my own!

Thanks for reading, everyone. I wonder if I can win this prize two years running?

Well, I’ve not actively been a part of the science fiction community for very long, but I’ve been around long enough to know that there’s usually a huge uproar of controversy and bitching after the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award is announced.

This year? Nothing. Nada. Silencio.

Does this mean everyone’s happy with the choice of M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing?* Or are the discontented just holding fire until they have some really ripe and fermented blog bile to launch?

[* You'll hear no complaints from me, that's for sure.]

I just heard it from Andrew McKie, who posted it about fifteen minutes before the moment in which I am typing. I can’t say that’s a result that disappoints me in any way whatsoever. Congratulations, Mr. Harrison. Well deserved.

Here’s a handy little post; in the course of reviewing all (yes, all)the nominees for the short fiction categories of this year’s Hugo Awards, SF Signal provides links to every single one, as they are all available online for free.

I wonder if I could hammer through the whole lot in a weekend?

Just in case for some strange reason VCTB is the only science fiction literature blog that you’ve read so far today, I’ll let you know that the Hugo Award nominees have been announced. Niall has the complete nominees list (with links and insight) over on Torque Control, as well as a link to Peter Watts’ stunned reaction to Blindsight making it into the ballot for best novel. And well deserved, too.

I’ll freely admit to having missed the boat on this one; my excuse being that I just don’t have enough free time in my life for reading as many books as I’d like to.

Continue reading “Book Review: ‘Air’ by Geoff Ryman”

M. M. Buckner is one of the new bright hopes of US SF. ‘War Surf’ is her third novel, and examines a future Earth where capitalism has reached its most extreme possible outcome. Economic and environmental disaster has created an Orwellian world of ‘protes’ and executives, the classic worker-aristo schism. Continue reading “Book Review: ‘War Surf’ by M. M. Buckner”