The latest instalment of podcast If You’re Just Joining Us features David Anthony Durham talking about “writing rituals, long walks, Scotland, the Acacia Trilogy, and several other writing projects he’s working on”.
OK so Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child is awesome and I am going to post a passage from it soon but in the reviews people mention that the cover is awesome because if you look at it just the right way you can see a kappa in it and I can’t see the fucking kappa and is it something I’m missing? No kappa is jumping out at me. Can you tell I’ve been up all night because apparently I’m nocturnal now?
So I went as Chell for Halloween.
It was utterly awesome. Not many people got it, but the few who did made me super happy. I wore it to school, and this little kid came up to me and commented on it and we traded Portal quotes and it was awesome the end.
My stepdad made the gun – it’s too perfect for words – and I did the rest. I was quite pleased!
And Best Novel goes to a very deserving Nnedi Okorafor for Who Fears Death.
(There were six nominees, of whom four are women, and three of them women of colour. Awesome!)
Morticia: Wednesday’s great-aunt Calpurnia. She was burned as a witch in 1706. They said she danced naked in the town square and enslaved the minister.
Wednesday’s teacher: Really?
Morticia: Oh, yes. But don’t worry. We’ve told Wednesday college first.
In southwest detroit (a generally latin@ neighborhood in Detroit), there’s a group called Young Nation that has created The Alley Project—which is a local grassroots project where neighbors up and down a specific alley have donated their garages and alley facing building walls to Young Nation, who then provides the space to youth so they can create art without fear of criminalization (either through the criminalization of graffiti or the criminalization of youth or undocumented people) and get professional mentorship from artists. This is just one of the many amazing murals on the alley…
The people of a certain red star no longer speak its name in any of their hundreds of languages, although they paint alien skies with its whorled light and scorch its spectral lines into the sides of their vessels.
Their most common cult, although by no means a universal one, is that of many-cornered Mrithaya, Mother of the Conflagration. Mrithaya is commonly conceived of as the god of catastrophe and disease, impartial in the injuries she deals out. Any gifts she bestows are incidental, and usually come with sharp edges. The stardrive was invented by one of her worshipers.
Canadian authors Wayson Choy, Sky Lee and Paul Yee have launched a $6 million copyright infringement lawsuit against the parent company of Penguin Group Canada.
The statement of claim was filed against Pearson Canada Inc., as well as Gold Mountain Blues Toronto author Ling Zhang and the novel’s U.K.-based translator Nicky Harman.
The suit claims Gold Mountain Blues “contains substantial elements” of certain works by the plaintiffs “and is therefore not an original literary work deserving of independent copyright protection.”
None of the allegations contained in the statement of claim have been proven in court. Penguin — which did not return requests for comment Thursday — has previously denounced plagiarism accusations surrounding the novel.
PROTIP: To avoid plagiarism lawsuits, set your Chinese-Canadian immigrant story in space, a feudal fantasy world, or a grimdark postapocalyptic landscape. No one will ever know.
…Anyone? Bueller?
Over at John Scalzi’s blog, N. K. Jemisin talks revolution, apocalypse, and the final instalment in the Inheritance Trilogy, The Kingdom of Gods.
I can’t remember if I’ve ranted here about feudalism and monarchism in fantasy and how, despite how epic fantasy often deals with political upheaval, there is so rarely any fundamental development of the system in the way we see in our own history. See how many societies have gone from a monarchy to a system where the monarchy coexists with parliamentary democracy or the like, or how existing governments—monarchies and democracies alike—have been disrupted by colonialism. Instead there’s a lot of tiresome sentimental reliance on the English King Arthur myth—the return of the True King and all that. Anyway, it seems like The Kingdom of Gods breaks this mold, and I’m looking forward to it.
Brit Mandelo reviews the first in what’s planned to be a series of annual special issues that feature hard sf by more than just the usual suspects. Sounds very cool, I’d love to get my hands on a copy.
