Thursday, May 31, 2012

May 31, 2012 Links and Plugs

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Night’s Engines by Trent Jamieson

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

May 30, 2012 Links and Plugs

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Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol. 4 edited by Dean Francis Alfar & Nikki Alfar

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

May 29, 2012 Links and Plugs

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Blackout by Mira Grant

Monday, May 28, 2012

May 28, 2012 Links and Plugs

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Bread and Circuses by Felicity Dowker

Friday, May 25, 2012

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Here We Cross edited by Rose Lemberg

Thursday, May 24, 2012

May 24, 2012 Links and Plugs

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 The Sword & Sorcery Anthology edited by David G. Hartwell and Jacob Weisman

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

May 23, 2012 Links and Plugs

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 The Year of the Beasts by Cecil Castellucci and Nate Powell

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Friday, May 18, 2012

Call for Submissions: Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol. 8

Editors Dean and Nikki Alfar invite you to submit short fiction for consideration for Philippine Speculative Fiction volume 8.

Philippine Speculative Fiction is a yearly anthology series, which collects a wide range of stories that define, explore, and sometimes blur the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all things in between. The anthology has been shortlisted for the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award, and multiple stories from each volume have been cited in roundups of the year’s best speculative fiction across the globe.

First-time authors are more than welcome to submit; good stories trump literary credentials any time.

Submissions must be:
1. speculative fiction—i.e., they must contain strong elements and/or sensibilities of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, alternate history, folklore, superheroes, and/or related ‘nonrealist’ genres and subgenres
2. written in English
3. authored by persons of Philippine ethnicity and/or nationality

Submissions are preferred to be:
1. original and unpublished
2. no shorter than 1,000 words and no longer than 7,500
3. written for an adult audience
In all cases, these preferences can be easily overturned by exceptionally well-written pieces. In the case of previously-published work—if accepted, the author will be expected to secure permission to reprint, if necessary, from the original publishing entity, and to provide relevant publication information.

Submission details:
1. No multiple or simultaneous submissions—i.e., submit only one story, and do not submit that story to any other publishing market until you have received a letter of regret from us. We don’t mind if you submit to contests.
2. All submissions should be in Rich Text Format (saved under the file extension ‘.rtf’), and emailed to nikkialfar@gmail.com, with the subject line ‘PSF8 submission’.
3. The deadline for submissions is 11 p.m., Manila time, September 15, 2012. Letters of acceptance or regret will be sent out no later than one month after the deadline.

Editors’ notes:
1. Please don’t forget to indicate your real name in the submission email! If you want to write under a pseudonym, that’s fine, but this can be discussed upon story acceptance. Initially, we just need to know who we’re talking to.
2. If you’d like to write a cover letter with your brief bio and publishing history (if applicable), do feel free to introduce yourself—but not your story, please. If it needs to be explained, it’s probably not ready to be published.
3. We advise authors to avoid fancy formatting—this will just be a waste of your time and ours, since we will, eventually, standardize fonts and everything else to fit our established house style.

Authors of selected stories will receive Php500 pesos in compensation, as well as digital copies of the book.

Please help spread the word! Feel free to copy this and paste it anywhere you see fit that happens to be legal. :)

Thanks,
Dean and Nikki Alfar, co-editors

May 18, 2012 Links and Plugs

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The Croning by Laird Barron

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Guest Blog: Oops I got History in my Fantasy (again) by Tansy Rayner Roberts



The huge recent success of steampunk has done a lot to show that fantasy fiction, even the most traditional and epic version of the genre, doesn’t have to draw purely from medieval European history, its social structures and its cultural detail.  It’s been great fun to watch the New Victoriana taking over fantasy as a genre, replacing tunics with bustles, and dragons with airships.

Though of course, we can always have dragons AND airships, which is even more fun.  We’re also getting our fair share of magical Regency, with empire-line gowns, the marriage market and Napoleonic dragons.

Using the first half of the 20th century as your historical touchstone has its difficulties.  I didn’t realise how difficult it was, of course, until I was in the middle of trying to do it.

One of those finicky world building details most likely to drive authors completely up the wall is whether we use conventional Earthly names for objects or creatures in fantasy worlds, or new words.  Of course, pretty much all the words we use have Earth derivations, and some readers (and authors) are more picky about them than others.  This is where medieval vocabulary often gets a pass, because there’s something more familiar about chatelaines and knights, paladins and princesses.

But what about the word Flapper?  One of my beta-readers protested at me using that particular word in my manuscript, because it felt like such an Earth-based term to her.  But I stuck to my guns largely because there were so few places in the book where I could drop in elements to evoke the 1920’s rather than pre-industrial historical snippets.

The Creature Court trilogy is a mash up of historical influences from various eras, but I was very firm on wanting to give it that early 20th century flavour.  But it was only very late in the writing process that I let myself include aspects of industry - Victorian style sewing machines, for instance, and trains.  So the best way to convey the 1920’s influences were through fashion, music and other cultural details, and the vocabulary of my characters.

Music was the hardest, of course.  Ever tried describing jazz in words without using the word jazz?  I tried, though I think I ended up just using the words from our world because, you know.  We have words for a reason, and sometimes the only way to access the connotations you need are by using the most obvious word.

Costume was easier for two reasons: my protagonist was a dressmaker, and saw the world through clothes; but also the magical underworld of the Creature Court was heavily reliant on appearances and theatrical presentation to augment status, which meant that I was totally justified in describing every single outfit. I talk more about my approach to the costuming side of the Creature Court over here.

I know that many people have come out of the Creature Court books having not particularly noticed the 1920’s aspects of the world building, and it works fine without being aware of that.  But if you read the books and don’t come away at least with a visual image of Livilla looking like the quintessential 1920’s vamp flapper in the red dress with sharp black bobbed hair, I’m not doing my job right!

For tone and voice, I fell back on an old writing trick that has proved greatly reliable in the past: I read fiction from the era I wanted to evoke.  You can only learn so much from factual books, but fiction is brilliant for the details they take for granted, and the casual vocabulary that their characters drop on the page.  It can influence the author almost on a subconscious level, and while I never applied the same rigour to my research as Mary Robinette Kowal (who only uses words in her Regency magic series that she is certain existed in Jane Austen’s lifetime) it can have a most pleasing influence.

I developed this particular technique quite by accident - I re-read Pride and Prejudice while writing my first novel, and there’s one scene that never quite recovered from all the unexpected formal diction and curtseying that suddenly arrived in my prose.  Later I thought, aha!  I can use that power for good, not evil.  It doesn’t work, of course, for historical eras where there are no extant novels.  But you can't have everything. 

There are many tiny world building details and dialogue tics in the Creature Court that came about because I was reading Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford novels, and even if that wasn’t the case, it’s not like time reading those authors would ever count as wasted!

I have nothing against the medievalist tradition in fantasy fiction (though I do rail rather against the faux-medievalist tradition and the overwhelming use of the less interesting aspects of medieval history in some fantasy fiction) but I am flying the flag for other historical periods to become just as powerful and influential.  We’ve made a good start with the Regency and Victoriana, but what about the neglected history periods of the world?  Where is our Egyptian steampunk, our Sumerian YA, and our 1950’s urban fantasy?

History is fun, but it’s more fun once you start adding werewolves to it.

Seriously.  Try it for yourself.

Some of my favourite recent historical mash up fantasies:

Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis - middle grade regency romp with magic
Soulless (and sequels) by Gail Carriger - Victoriana comic urban fantasy
Temeraire (and sequels) by Naomi Novik - Napoleonic dragons
Shades of Milk and Honey (and sequel) by Mary Robinette Kowal - Regency romance with magic
Cold Magic (and sequels) by Kate Elliott - epic Afro-Celtic post-Roman fantasy with Regency icepunk, Phoenician spies and trolls I AM JUST REPORTING THE FACTS HERE.

But I'm sure many of you can make your own recommendations...

This post was written by Tansy Rayner Roberts for her Flappers with Swords Blog Tour.

Tansy’s award-winning Creature Court trilogy: Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts, featuring flappers with swords, shape changers, half-naked men and bloodthirsty court politics, have been released worldwide on the Kindle, and should be available soon across other e-book platforms. If you prefer your books solid and papery, they can also be found in all good Australian and New Zealand bookshops.

You can also check out Tansy’s work through the Hugo-nominated crunchy feminist science fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia, Tansy's short story collection Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press). You can find her on the internet at her blog, or on Twitter as @tansyrr.

May 17, 2012 Links and Plugs

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 Shadow Unit: Anomalous Crimes Season 1, Book 1 edited by Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

May 16, 2012 Links and Plugs

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A Confusion of Princes  By Garth Nix

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

May 15, 2012 Links and Plugs

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The Future is Japanese

Monday, May 14, 2012

May 14, 2012 Links and Plugs

Just plugging two interviews with fantastic editors: Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, and Ellen Datlow.

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 The Moment of Change edited by Rose Lemberg

Friday, May 11, 2012

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Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

Thursday, May 10, 2012

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Flora's Fury by Ysabeau S. Wilce

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

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The Weird edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Monday, May 07, 2012

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War & Space: Recent Combat edited by Rich Horton and Sean Wallace

Friday, May 04, 2012

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Best Horror of the Year 4 edited by Ellen Datlow

Thursday, May 03, 2012

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Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

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The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

May 1, 2012 Links and Plugs

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Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke Edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin