Congrats to the nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards, to be presented at this year's World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, NV. I'll be there and rooting for my favorites!

Best Novel
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)
Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K.

Republican Michigan governor Rick Snyder, along with the state's Republican house and senate, have passed a controversial bill that allows the governor to dissolve the elected governments of Michigan's towns and cities, replacing them with unaccountable "emergency financial managers" who can eliminate services, merge or eliminate school boards, and lay off or renegotiate unionized public employees without recourse. — Read the rest

AE is a new Canadian science fiction magazine, named for AE Van Vogt. They're launching their issue one later this month:

In the meantime, you can read our exclusive interview with Hugo winner Peter Watts and our printable microfiction zine AE Micro.

Last night, the Hugo Awards, one of science fiction's most prestigious prizes, were presented in Melbourne at Aussiecon 4. The Hugo ceremony is one of my favorite parts of any WorldCon, and last night's event, emceed by Garth Nix, was a particularly outstanding edition. — Read the rest

Are you a pro sf/f/h writer? The Clarion Foundation, the 501(c)3 charity that oversees the original Clarion workshop wants your keyboard!

Like all nonprofits, we're always in fundraising mode, and to that end, I have a curious, easy-to-fulfil request for you for something that we're pretty excited about. — Read the rest

Kai was outraged by the conviction of Dr Peter Watts, the Canadian science fiction writer who got out of his vehicle while crossing back into Canada to ask a US border guard why his car was being searched, and was clubbed, gassed, charged with a felony, and left in wet clothes in an unheated cell overnight during a snow-storm. — Read the rest

Congratulations to all the 2010 Hugo Nominees, including some favorites I've reviewed here: Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Comstock, Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, Ian McDonald's "Vishnu at the Cat Circus" (from Cyberabad Days) and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. — Read the rest

Dr Peter Watts, a PhD biologist and a hell of a science fiction writer, talks about what it means that a bunch of climate scientists

Science doesn't work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses.

Our friend, R.U. Sirius is the editor of h+, a digital magazine that's the natural successor to Mondo 2000. The lineup for the second issue looks good!

R.U. says:

Rising up out of the gloom of early 2009, the second edition of h+ magazine sends a message of hope to weary changesurfers.

The StarShipSofa podcast is metamorphosing into the StarShipSofa – The Audio Science Fiction Magazine, following in the great tradition of magazines like Analog, Asimov and Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Tony sez,

Each week the StarShipSofa will deliver a full package of SF related audio material all free including audio fiction, fact audio essays, flash fiction and poetry, all by leading names in the SF field.

The Toronto Public Library system is just kicking off a gigantic, ambitious speculative reading series that starts next Monday with Michael Skeet hosting a panel discussion with Karl Schroeder, James Alan Gardner and Peter Watts on the pursuit of foresight in Canadian science fiction. — Read the rest

Tony C Smith says:

StarShipSofa is a weekly podcast that has started to put out Hugo Winning audio stories for free. Last week we put up David Brin's 1985 Hugo winning story "The Crystal Spheres." This week we put up Bruce Sterling's 1989 story "We See Things Differently."

The finalists for the Locus Award for the best science fiction of 2006 have been announced and I'm proud as anything to announce that two of my novelettes made the shortlist, I, Row-Boat and When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (both are from my new collection Overclocked). — Read the rest

This year's Hugo nominees are out — congrats to all the great nominees! It's amazing to see great books like "Glasshouse," "Rainbows End," and "Blindsight" on the ballot, along with stories like Ian McDonald's "The Djinn's Wife," Bill Shunn's "Inclination," Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," Ben Rosenbaum's "The House Beyond Your Sky" not to mention Neil Gaiman's "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," Tim Pratt's "Impossible Dreams" — and the list goes on! — Read the rest

My friend Peter Watts has just put his breakout novel Blindsight under a Creative Commons license and put it online, partly because the book is selling so fast that readers are having a hard time laying their hands on copies. Peter writes the angriest, darkest sf I've ever read, heart-rending stuff that makes you glad you're alive if only because you're better off than his characters. — Read the rest

Laurie sez, "This is a reproduction of a very funny slide/talk by biologist/SF author Peter Watts (actually delivered at a Toronto SF convention this spring) with audio track and PowerPoint type slides. It brilliantly satirizes talks at Big Pharma conferences as it describes (from a Big Pharma standpoint) the evolutionary explanation for the existence of vampire, and the argument for genetic tweaking to create more vampires, backed up with real biology. — Read the rest

A Finnish SF magazine has done a special on Canadian science fiction writers. If you savvy Suomi, check out the interviews with and stories by Peter Watts and Doug Smith.

Link
Discuss
(Thanks, Doug!)

Paul Di Filippo reviews my pal Peter Watts's new novel, Maelstrom on Sci-Fi.com. Maelstrom is the sequel to Starfish, a gutsy heller of a book. Can't wait to get a copy of Maelstrom!

Like the endlessly mutating and recombinant digital/wetware entities that live in Peter Watts' online Maelstrom, his fiction itself exhibits a wonderful Darwinian adaptability.