Via the inimitable Jason Stoddard comes news of a genre fiction con that anyone with a serious interest in promoting their writing should consider attending - if only for the fact that the magazine sponsoring it has a claimed readership of 5 million (yes, million) people.

Of course, the Chengdu convention, like the magazine in question (Science Fiction World), is based in China, which may put it out of your financial league - unless you plan to bolt it on to your attendance at this year’s Worldcon in Japan, in which case the power of my searing jealousy will keep you awake for weeks to come.

But fear not, my economically-challenged friends! Because they’re planning on running the Chengdu convention virtually in Second Life in parallel with the meatspace version, which means the financial issues aren’t anywhere near as bad as they could be if you have access to a broadband internet connection and a reasonably pokey computer.

I assure you that I’m going to be there with bells on - and hopefully by then I’ll have my own little patch of SL land developed enough to entertain visitors who tire of panels …

I’m a little late with this one, but the point bears making even if the link is a few days stale. Continue reading “Science fiction and cultural focus”

One of the dictums of the internet at the moment is that of the ‘power and/or wisdom of crowds’. Continue reading “Buying power”

Most people would agree that China’s approach to media censorship is heavy-handed and totalitarian. Continue reading “Chinese censorship slammed…by ex-Communist Party bigwigs”

‘Looking for Jake’ is Mieville’s first collection of shorter works, netted in from the last seven or eight years of work he’s had published. It’s quite diverse within the scope of horror and fantasy writing, ranging from edgey stories of urban paranoia (’An End to Hunger’), through ‘mystery package’ stories a la Jorge Luis Borges, but beginning and ending in what I take to be the same cataclysm of London shown in two pieces, a story and a novella (’Looking for Jake’ and ‘The Tain’). There is also a short but messy tale of revenge among the underworld of Mieville’s best-known creation, New Crobuzon (’Jack’).

An enjoyable collection, but in my opinion he writes better at novel length. These tales are good, but not scintillating, but this is forgivable seeing as there are few writers who can excel at both shorts and novels. One for the fans, but maybe not the best intro for a newbie.