Tony Smith from StarShipSofa sez,

Over the coming months StarShipSofa will present a series of online web lectures by some of the top SF writers out there. These lectures will be called How To Write Science Fiction with…

Among the writers lined up for future lectures are Kim Stanley Robinson, Spider Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi and many others.

Tony from the StarShipSofa podcast writes, "August sees a fantastic line up of top SF authors on StarShipSofa. This month boasts stories by Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, Gene Wolfe and Adam Roberts, with also an amazing cover art by Andreas Rocha."

Surfing the Gnarl is the latest volume in PM Press's wonderful Outspoken Authors series: a collection of slim, handsome chapbooks curated by Terry Bisson that combine essays, stories and interviews (I've previously written here about the Kim Stanley Robinson volume, as well as my own). — Read the rest

I'm about to fly to Edinburgh for a gig at the Edinburgh Festival, tonight at 8:30PM. There are still a few tickets left.

From there, I'm headed straight to Renovation, the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, where I'll be doing a ton of stuff:

Wednesday, August 17
11.00-11.45am – Author in the Library, Sierra View Library (off site), 4001 S. — Read the rest

Here, in five parts, is Orson Welles rather obscure documentary adaptation of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, a book that has the distinction of being available at every single yard sale in the English-speaking world. It's full of fear and hope and God help me, I can't stop of thinking about Pinky and the Brain. — Read the rest

The last of this year's excellent "SF in SF" reading series is coming up on Nov 14, at 7PM:

Jeff VanderMeer, recent Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention 2009, is touring for his final novel in his Ambergris Cycle, "Finch," published by Underland Books, and for his writers' guide "Booklife," published by Tachyon Publications.

In 2006, my friend Ken Hollings, author of Welcome to Mars, wrote and presented a BBC Radio 4 piece about Philip K. Dick's weird relationship with God. As Ken says, it's a "a strange tale of madness, machines and attempted suicide." — Read the rest

Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is one of my most personally influential novels. It's an epic tale of the terraforming of Mars, whose sweep captures the birth and death of mythologies, economics, art, revolution, politics. Its publication preceded Kim Stanley Robinson's brilliant Red/Blue/Green Mars books by years, but the two are very good companions, in that McDonald captures almost everything Robinson got (in a third of the number of pages), and adds the poetry and spirituality of Mars in the bargain. — Read the rest

Danny sez, "Naomi Novik, the author of the excellent (and Peter Jackson-optioned) Patrick O'Brian-meets-Anne McCaffery historical fantasy series, Temeraire, has announced that Del Rey is putting it the first volume as a free, DRM-free, PDF download!
Novik's series is perfect for this. — Read the rest

There's a scant few weeks left to get your applications in to the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop at UCSD, a six-week intensive boot-camp for would-be writers. Clarion students write and critique every day, and receive one-on-one and group instruction from six instructors. — 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

Worldchanging's Alex Steffen's got a good, thoughtful piece up about "peak population," the idea that we'll crest humanity's most rapid period of population growth and that it will — and should — slow down from here. I love this quote from Kim Stanley Robinson, speaking of birth control: "empowering women is the best climate change technology." — Read the rest

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

Flurb #4 ("A Webzine of Astonishing Tales") is online.

Rudy Rucker says:

It's another fat and juicy issue, including stories and essays by:

Charlie Anders, Kathleen Ann Goonan, John Kessel, Marc Laidlaw, Kim Stanley Robinson;

also Rudy's meeting with Hieronymus Bosch;

also pieces by three newer writers: David Agranoff, Gord Sellar, and Penlope Thomas;

also a group-written jam by "Gustav Flurbert"!

BoingBoing readder Cristóbal Palmer responds to a recent BB post about Tactical Usage of the phrase "Oh Snap!", and says:

My own flowchart. Starts with the question, "Is it fucked up?" and goes from there. Did this a long time ago.

A silica-glass DVD put together by folks at the Planetary Society is now ready to be shipped off to Mars, aboard NASA's Phoenix Scout. The mission may lift off as early as this Friday, August 3, and landing should happen in 2008. — Read the rest

This summer marks the first year that the venerable Clarion Writers' Workshop will run at the University of California at San Diego. Previously, the legendary science fiction writers' boot-camp was hosted at Michigan State, where I attended it in 1992 and taught in 2005. — Read the rest

I'm one of the guests of honor at Utopiales, the international science fiction convention being held in Nantes, France on November 2-5. Other guests include Kim Stanley Robinson, Martha Wells, Lucius Sheppard and Norman Spinrad.

Du rouge au vert des petits hommes, Mars en aura vu de toutes les couleurs et demeure à ce jour le sanctuaire de tous les fantasmes en science-fiction.

I've got a story in Future Washington, an anthology that just came out. As the title implies, the anthology collects stories about the future of Washington DC, and in my case, the future of regulation, too. I've read about half the stories in the anthology since my contributor's copy arrived in the mail yesterday and I've yet to come up with a dud. — Read the rest

Hee-YAW! My second novel Eastern Standard Tribe, is a finalist for this year's Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Last year, my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. — Read the rest