Charlie ("Charles N") Brown was the force behind Locus Magazine (previously) until his death in 2009; he hired me to be a columnist for the magazine in 2006 and I've been writing for them ever since.

The two will read from their latest titles; tax-deductible admission is $20 ($10 under 15), with proceeds to the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Locus Magazine.

Locus magazine, the venerable science fiction trade publication put out by the nonprofit Locus Science Fiction Foundation has expanded its digital offering, selling DRM-free PDFs, ePubs, and Mobis on a subscription basis or as singles. I'm proud to write a column for Locus, and really treasure each issue when it comes through the door. — Read the rest

Locus Magazine's Amelia Beamer sez,

I'm serializing my first novel, THE LOVING DEAD (with zombies and a
Zeppelin, out from Night Shade in July), online for free starting today,
Monday March 8th. My friend and Locus coworker Tim Pratt is also serializing a new Marla Mason novel, BROKEN MIRRORS, starting Monday March 8th.

Locus Magazine reports that publisher Charles N Brown, one of science fiction's great figures, has died peacefully in his sleep on his way home from ReaderCon. I read Locus from the time I was old enough to see over the counter at Bakka, the science fiction bookstore where I later worked, and for some years now I have been a columnist with the magazine. — Read the rest

Locus Magazine has published its annual roundup of the top science fiction of 2008. As with every year, this is a fabulous starting point for anyone who wants to get up to speed with what the field has on its mind these days — there's a lot of breadth and gusto in these selections. — Read the rest

Woohoo! I'm on the Locus Award ballot — twice! Once for Best Novella for my story After the Siege and again for Best Collection for my book Overclocked. Thanks to everyone who voted for me! I'm in damned good company too — if you're looking for a masterclass in contemporary sf, this would be the place to start:

SF NOVEL
The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
Halting State, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Spook Country, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

FANTASY NOVEL
Endless Things, John Crowley (Small Beer Press; Overlook)
Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
Pirate Freedom, Gene Wolfe (Tor)
Territory, Emma Bull (Tor)
Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)

Link

The annual Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List just came out — it's the critical consensus of Locus's reviewers on the best science fiction and fantasy of the year, and a more reliable guide to great speculative fiction you will not find. — Read the rest

My latest Locus editorial is out: "In Praise of Fanfic."

Two things are sure about all fanfic, though: first, that people who write and read fanfic are already avid readers of writers whose work they're paying homage to; and second, that the people who write and read fanfic derive fantastic satisfaction from their labors.

Science fiction and fantasy author Terry Bisson (previously at Boing Boing), famed for short stories such as the Hugo and Nebula award-winning Bears Discover Fire and They're Made Out of Meat, died Wednesday morning. He was 81 years old. — Read the rest

My latest Locus Magazine column is Jeannette Ng Was Right: John W. Campbell Was a Fascist, which revisits Jeannette Ng's Campbell Awards speech from this summer's World Science Fiction convention.

My latest Locus Magazine column is DRM Broke Its Promise, which recalls the days when digital rights management was pitched to us as a way to enable exciting new markets where we'd all save big by only buying the rights we needed (like the low-cost right to read a book for an hour-long plane ride), but instead (unsurprisingly) everything got more expensive and less capable.

For many years, I've been arguing that while science fiction can't predict the future, it can reveal important truths about the present: the stories writers tell reveal their hopes and fears about technology, while the stories that gain currency in our discourse and our media markets tell us about our latent societal aspirations and anxieties. — Read the rest

Locus Magazine announced the winners of its annual reader-voted awards last night, with top honors for Mary Robinette Kowal, who won Best SF Novel for The Calculating Stars (which also won a Nebula Award this year), as well as Brooke Bolander, who won Best Novelette for The Only Harmless Great Thing (also a Nebula winner); and Phenderson Djèlí Clark whose Nebula-winning short story The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington also won a Locus.

Locus Magazine has published its annual Locus Award finalists, a shortlist of the best science fiction and fantasy of the past calendar year. I rely on this list to find the books I've overlooked (so. many. books.). This year's looks like a bumper crop.

Author Carol Emshwiller has died at the age of 97, after a long and distinguished career in science fiction, fantasy and other genres.

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me," and it analyzes how Big Tech has been able to "disrupt" incumbent industries, but has repurposed obscure technology regulations to prevent anyone from meting out the same treatment to their new digital monopolies.

My latest Locus Magazine column is What the Internet Is For: it describes the revolutionary principle (end-to-end communications) and technologies (general purpose computers, strong cryptography) that undergird the net, but also cautions that these are, themselves, not sufficient to revolutionize the world.

My latest Locus Magazine column is Big Tech: We Can Do Better Than Constitutional Monarchies, and it's a warning that the techlash is turning into a devil's bargain, where we make Big Tech pay for a few cosmetic changes that do little to improve bullying, harassment, and disinformation campaigns, and because only Big Tech can afford these useless fripperies, they no longer have to fear being displaced by new challengers with better ways of doing things.

Here's my reading (MP3) of Zuck's Empire of Oily Rags, a Locus Magazine column about the corruption implicit in surveillance capitalism, which creates giant risks to users by collecting sensitive information about them in order to eke out tiny gains in the efficacy of targeted advertising. — Read the rest