Well, all but one of the reviews for Interzone #217 are in. All that remains to be done now is give them a thorough editing sweep and email them off to TTA Towers …

… and then step out of the driving seat. Yup - thanks to the pressures of actually having lots of proper paid work coming at me from various angles, as well as all the other as-yet-non-lucrative stuff I’m entangled in, plus the fact that a lot of my new work puts me in the direct employment by authors and/or publishers, I’m stepping down as Interzone’s Reviews editor as of the forthcoming issue.

Hard to believe I’ve been doing it for a year. In some ways it feels like much longer, in other ways it feels like I only just started. One thing’s for certain: if time were no object, I’d not be leaving the post, as I’ve had a lot of fun doing it and worked with some great people in the process. But time is the one resource that no amount of mining, outright theft or invading other countries can secure for you; as I’ve just said in an email to my team of reviewers, the Interzone gig is the easiest thing to disentangle myself from - not easy, by any means, but easiest.

In addition to being vaguely informative to the blogosphere at large, this post is to thank all the people I’ve worked with indirectly as a result of being IZ’s Reviews Editor - the publishers, authors and website types who form part of the network of genre. Thanks for going easy on a neophyte, and for teaching me a lot in the process!

I’m looking forward to using that knowledge (and gathering more) in my various other posts - as PS Publishing’s PR guy, as website-manager to various stars of the genre firmament, as Futurismic’s editor-in-chief, and as a critic and writer in my own right (time permitting, natch, especially regarding the latter). Meanwhile, my Interzone post will be taken on by the eminently capable Jim Steel, who I’m positive will do a job far superior to my own.

All change!

Just because I’m a lame photographer doesn’t mean I can’t have a go at the photography clichés … so here is a shot from sunset last Sunday:

If someone reading has the m4d-1337 sk1llz0rz with GIMPshop (not Pshop, I can’t justify that sort of expense), and can tell me how to adjust for overexposure after the fact, please make use of the comments field at the bottom (or email if you’re shy).

Justifying the silence

So, no FPB last week due to the (as yet unexplained) server failure. Personally, it was a very weird experience; this weekly download of my life has become quite a ritual, and it felt very odd not doing it. One less load of waffle for y’all to scroll through, though, so the karmic balance probably works out quite neatly.

Nose to the editorial grindstone

I’ve also been pretty quiet between then and yesterday as far as this blog is concerned, because I’ve been fully engaged in the administrative end of my first stint as fully-fledged reviews editor for Interzone. Sandy Auden has stepped aside (with what sounded suspiciously like a sigh of relief), the training wheels are off, and from now on I have to keep my balance if I want to avoid breaking my nose (or overextending a metaphor).

So I’ve been sorting through the huge list of books that get sent to TTA Press over a two month period, working out which ones to offer to my team. This is less a science than a combination of gut feeling and arcane calculation. We only have so much space to work with, after all. The whittled list is with the reviewers, so now I wait for responses and divvy the titles out next week. It’s a lot more work than it sounds like (honestly, it is), but quite satisfying nonetheless.

(Plus I get to exercise my editorial privilege once again and cherrypick a title I really want to cover … Karl Schroeder’s Queen of Candesce should do nicely, methinks.)

Andy (Ed-in-Chief) also asked me to write an editorial for the next issue, which I have done. I think that’s what’s made the reality of the position sink in - it’s quite scary to think that my opinion on book reviews will be the first thing that people see when they open up Interzone #212. I hope I’ve managed not to sound like a total arse.

Books and magazines seen

OK, a fortnight’s worth of incoming materials. So, magazines first:

• F&SF August 2007 -  (About a fortnight after the last one. I’ve totally given up trying to predict when these will arrive; the vagueries of the transAtlantic postal system are utterly opaque to me.) I’ve actually read most of it, too; very heavy on the ‘funny’ stories, which aren’t necessarily bad as such, just not really my thing. I enjoyed the Gwyneth Jones, though.
• Murky Depths #1 - I’d totally forgotten about subscribing to this until it turned up in my letterbox. It’s an interesting idea; a genre fiction mag that takes a mixed media approach. Comic-book size, heavily illustrated, leaning more toward the shorter stories. A bold experiment, from the flick-through I’ve had so far, and I wish it the best of luck.
• Locus August 2007 - my last issue, I think, as I’m not renewing my subscription. I simply don’t get enough out of it for the money, especially now the prices are higher for postage. Would that I were richer, but so it goes.
• Vector and Matrix from the BSFA - the former featuring, among a number of far more qualified and erudite commentators, yours truly waffling on about Glorifying Terrorism (the book, not the practice), and my favourite short and long fiction of 2006.

And the books:

• Dagger Key and Other Stories by Lucius Shepard (ARC) - a bit of a change of pace for me with this latest assignment from Vector. As regular readers will know, I don’t read much fantasy, so Shepard’s work will be an interesting expedition into new pastures. I often read high praise of his work, though, so I’m hoping to be impressed.
• Halting State by Charles Stross (ARC) - George Walkley at Orbit knows me too well already, I feel! It’s all I can do to not drop my current books-in-progress and tear straight into this title immediately … if I find myself with a spare afternoon, that shred of discipline may dissolve. I get the impression from other reviews that this is the book I’ve been waiting for someone to write.

Coda

So, there we are, and here I am. It’s the end of the week, the sun is shining, and my stomach is growling, which by the calculations of any sane person surely means it’s time for The Friday Curry.

So, I’ll bid all and sundry a good weekend - I’m hoping the unusually seasonal weather holds out, myself. Whatever you have planned, I hope it works out well for you. Peace.

Well, I hope you’ve all had a nice long holiday weekend - even if the weather was as rotten as it was here in Velcro City. I hardly noticed, though - I’ve been busy.

One of the many things I’ve been doing over the weekend is playing around behind the scenes at T3A Space, the new-look blog-style website for TTA Press (publisher of short genre fiction magazines Interzone, Crimewave and Black Static). T3A is where updates and story acceptances for the TTA stable are posted, and over the coming months it’s going to grow into a content-rich site with lots of good stuff to read.

Andy (TTA’s head honcho) already had things looking sexy with an eye-catching theme (luckily - as, having seen VCTB, no one in their right mind would set me loose on the aesthetics of a website), but yours truly has been hacking about with the ergonomics and functionality. Upgrades include a working spam-free comments system, and lots of other behind-the-curtain search-engine friendly stuff. There’s still work to be done, but things are looking good so far.

I’ve also set the RSS feed for the site to run through Feedburner, which is a very easy operation but well worth the time invested. But if you click through, you’ll see the subscription counter sat at a lowly first-day count of zilch, zero, nada.

So, here’s the challenge - I’d like you all to subscribe to the T3A RSS feed, which I’ve made extra easy by linking to it there. You don’t even have to click more than once! Let’s see if we can’t get that counter to show something a little more impressive than zero by tomorrow, eh?

The title should say it all, and whatever else you need to know should become apparent after you read Geoff Ryman’s announcement on the TTA Press website.

But for those too flabbergasted (or lazy) to click through, Mr. Ryman (with the assistance of Julian Todd and Trent Walters) will be guest editing an issue of Interzone to be published next year, which will adhere strictly to the manifesto of the Mundane SF movement, of which Ryman is a founder. Some simple guidelines:

“What makes a story Mundane? A few simple rules:

• no FTL travel or communications
• no aliens
• no time travel
• no parallel universes
• no immortality or telepathy.”

There you have it. More guidelines, plus details about how to submit a story for consideration, can be found by clicking through to the TTA website. So get writing, already! I might even have a go at this myself. After all, what’s a little failure between friends?

Interzone celebrates twenty five years of continuous publication with this, its two hundred and ninth issue. The fiction offering is supplied by a mix of old hands who owe a part of their current standing to the magazine (most notably M. John Harrison, whose work appeared in the first ever issue) and some new hot properties. Continue reading “Magazine Review: Interzone #209 (Silver Anniversary Issue)”

Interzone #207 manages to sustain the high standard of fiction content that #206 set, despite having a very different collection of work between the covers.

Continue reading “Magazine Review: Interzone #207″

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to indulge in a brief spate of patting-my-own-back on a dark wet Friday evening:

Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging! My finest hour (so far)”

OK, I’ll state the obvious right off the bat - I write reviews for Interzone, and therefore could possibly be accused of a certain conflict of interests by reviewing the magazine. My excuse is that I have absolutely nothing to do with the fiction section (apart from as a reader), and hence cannot see any problem with me discussing the stories in that context. Continue reading “Magazine Review: Interzone #206″

It’s located on a blog, it occurs on Fridays and usually contains plants. Hell knows why they called it Friday Plant Blogging…

Continue reading “Friday Plant Blogging! Spider plant”

How have you survived all week? Waiting, lusting, craving, desparate…for your Friday Plant Blogging fix!

Continue reading “Friday Plant Blogging! New kid in town”