The Clarion 2011 workshop at UCSD La Jolla has just opened up for submissions from writers. Clarion is the original boot-camp-style writing program for science fiction, fantasy and horror writers, with alumni as diverse as Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Jeff VanderMeer, Octavia Butler, Kathe Koja, James Patrick Kelly — and me! — Read the rest
Paolo Bacigalupi's remarkable debut novel The Windup Girl won the Nebula Award and tied for the Hugo award, so of course, I knew that his first young adult novel, Ship Breaker, would be great. And it was. But what I wasn't prepared for was how different Bacigalupi's young adult fiction would be from his adult work. — Read the rest
Kathe Koja's Under the Poppy is a novel unlike any other — even unlike any other of Kathe Koja's books, which are a marvellous genre unto themselves. In some ways, Poppy marks a return to the early-period Koja, the purveyor of dark, erotic poesie, horror novels that dripped blood and fluids and explored the way that art and love and eros twine around themselves, in bottomless tragedy from which joy and beauty shine like pennies in the sewer. — Read the rest
Rae Mariz's debut YA The Unidentified is a thrilling, engaging polemic about the corporatization of kids' lives in the guise of a mystery story.
In the future, the US education system has gone bankrupt, and has been rescued by the private sector, who convert giant malls into heavily surveilled school buildings in which all education takes place as a series of sponsored games that, on the one hand, deliver tailored, creative curriculum, but, on the other, commodify all learning, social intercourse and creativity, turning it all into trends and products that are sold back to the students and the wider world. — Read the rest
Science fiction illustrator and nature photographer Rick Lieder has started offering some of his gorgeous prints in the Boing Boing Bazaar/Maker's Market. One of Rick's specialties is macro photography, and this image, "Firefly," blends a painterly sensibility with that up-close back-yard nature photography I love. — Read the rest
Hooray! Kathe Koja's classic debut novel The Cipher has gone into development as a feature film, entitled "The Muse." No further details yet, but Cipher was one of those lavish, frightening, erotic novels that you never forget. This is stellar news. — Read the rest
Matt sez, "Hey, I just worked with an absolute horde of great science fiction/fantasy writers to come up with a bestiary of imaginary beasts for Wofford's Shared Worlds program. It's a two week camp for young people with an interest in pursuing sci fi/fantasy writing. — Read the rest
Hurrah! It's time for another issue of Rudy Rucker's absolutely ass-kicking free sf zine, Flurb. The new ish has stories by Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker, Richard A. Lupoff, Danny Rubin, and Kathe Koja and Carter Scholz (incidentally, I've been reading Koja's new book in manuscript form and I am agog at its brilliance — watch this space in the months to come for a review of Under the Poppy). — Read the rest
John Oakes sez, "Article in New York Business describing OR Books, a new sort of publishing house being started up by two longtime indy publishers. We plan to take existing tech and apply it to old-fashioned publishing values–and to commit to massive marketing for our authors, and to do so within a progressive framework, releasing fiction and nonfiction." — Read the rest
Locus Magazine's just posted my latest column for them, "In Praise of the Sales Force," a look at the things that publishers can do for authors that the Internet can't replace (yet, anyway!).
— Read the restHardly a day goes by that I don't get an e-mail from someone who's ready to reinvent publishing using the Internet, and the ideas are often good ones, but they lack a key element: a sales force.
Rick Lieder, the talented sf/f artist whose backyard nature photographs have stunned me for years, has released a new book of photos of small birds on the wing, shot in his own backyard in south Michigan. Rick doesn't use fancy fast film or other high-tech treats — instead, he just uses patience and care to capture these remarkable images. — Read the rest
The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop at the University of California at San Diego has announced its 2009 instructor lineup: Holly Black, Larissa Lai, Robert Crais, and Kim Stanley Robinson with Elizabeth Hand and Paul Park. Clarion is the oldest science fiction writing workshop, a legendary boot-camp for writers (I'm a proud graduate, instructor, and director of the charitable Clarion Foundation). — Read the rest
My editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, rang me yesterday to talk about a weird little phenomenon: people who were going to stores looking for my newest, Little Brother, were walking away unfulfilled because they were looking in the science fiction section, not the young adult section. — Read the rest
Next Thursday at 9PM Pacific, the magnificent fantasy writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman will host a live chat on the Clarion Foundation Website, open to Clarion Circle members. The Clarion Foundation oversees the Clarion science fiction/fantasy writers' workshop at UCSD (I'm a Clarion grad, and I'm in good company: Bruce Sterling, Octavia Butler, Lucius Sheppard, Kathe Koja, Jeff VanderMeer and many other writers are also grads). — Read the rest
I've just finished Kathe Koja's moving new young adult novel Going Under, and I continue to be deeply moved by Koja's work.
Going Under is the story of a bright, home-schooled brother-sister pair who struggle with their love and resentment for one another, under the hapless gaze of their clueless parents. — Read the rest
I've joined the Board of Directors of the Clarion Foundation, a new nonprofit that will manage the Clarion Writers' Workshop, a "boot-camp for sf writers" at Michigan State University that I graduated from in 1992 and taught this past summer. The workshop runs every summer for six weeks, and accepts some 17 students each year. — Read the rest
I've just finished reading Kate Wilhelm's "Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop," a book that is a combination of memoir and instructional treatise, written by one of the field's great writers, mentors and teachers. — Read the rest
My pal Rick Lieder is one of the best science fiction and fantasy artists in the field today (he's also the husband of fantastic splatterpunk turned young-adult author Kathe Koja), but he got his start as a photographer. He's returned to his roots, and has taken his camera to his Michigan backyard to shoot intense, macro-focused pictures of insects walking on leaves and twigs, using natural light, without a tripod. — Read the rest
Just a reminder that I'll be appearing as the Guest of Honor at PenguiCon, a Linux and Science Fiction convention being held in Detroit next weekend, from April 22-24. I'll be giving talks on I, Robot, copyleft, folk art, open source licensing and open spectrum, and I'll be doing a reading and conducting the charity auction. — Read the rest
This holiday season, Bay Areans can contribute to the Gift of Reading book-drive and help turn kids onto great, life-changing literature. I'm going to do a run to my local when I get home and round up as much of the following as I can for donation — books I read and wish I'd read when I was a kid:
— Read the rest