Discussions

Karen Burnham

To wrap up this series on conventions and con-going (See Parts I, II, III, and IV), Jeff Ford reminds us that sometimes weird s–t happens at cons. Read his tale of a stranger dressed in black, and commentary from Stefan Dziemianowicz, myself, Cecelia Holland, Karen Joy Fowler, Gardner Dozois, and Gary K. Wolfe.

As always, this discussion is broken up into multiple pages for ease of reading. If ...Read More

Karen Burnham

Last time we talked about the fact that cons aren’t always welcoming. (You can also see Part I and Part II.) However, some folks walk into their very first cons and simply find that they’re at home. Today we hear from Ellen Klages, Theodora Goss, Tim Pratt, Liz Hand, Paul Graham Raven, and Karen Joy Fowler.

As always, this discussion is broken up into multiple pages for ease ...Read More

Karen Burnham

In today’s installment of discussions about conventions (Part I, Part II), we face up to the fact that sometimes cons aren’t terribly welcoming spaces for the uninitiated. Several of us were quite put off by our early experiences. Today’s participants include N. K. Jemisin, James Patrick Kelly, Maureen Kincaid Speller, myself, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Andy Duncan, John Clute, and Cecelia Holland.

As always, this discussion is broken up into ...Read More

Karen Burnham

Continuing our discussion of conventions and convention-going (Part I is here), in this installment we look at those of us who started out as fans. Today’s stories and commentary come from F. Brett Cox, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Russell Letson, Marie Brennan, Jonathan Strahan, Gardner Dozois, Cecelia Holland, and Paul Graham Raven.

As always, this discussion is broken up into multiple pages for ease of reading. If you’d like to ...Read More

Karen Burnham

I asked our venerable Roundtable panel about conventions and the con-going experience. I got a huge number of responses that cover a wide range of practical and subjective aspects of this part of the sf/f culture. I decided to break up the responses to cover separate themes, and spread them out over two or three weeks. It seems appropriate to surround WorldCon (which I must sadly miss this ...Read More

Karen Burnham

This Roundtable continues the discussion from two weeks ago on recommending books for fans of George R. R. Martin. The discussion moved away from specific titles and wandered into the way ways that we group fiction. What does it mean when fans of X may like Y? How come X number of people can point at a book and come up with X + N different labels for ...Read More

Karen Burnham

Many authors who were published well before J. K. Rowling saw bumps in their sales because kids started picking up their books while waiting for the next Harry Potter to come out. Tamora Pierce, Pat Wrede, and all those other authors were then sold as the ‘next HP.’  We saw this again with Twilight–L. J. Smith’s backlist  suddenly became hot property. Every publisher has a vampire series ...Read More

Karen Burnham

I recently tossed out the following topic to the Roundtable discussion group: The summer blockbuster movie season is upon us, and as usual various forms of genre film are dominating the screens. This year the offerings range from comic book movies (Thor), sequels to sequels (Pirates of the Carribean 4), kids films (Cars 2), and new outings from big-name directors (Super ...Read More

Karen Burnham

Welcome to this panel on up-and-coming author N. K. Jemisin. Her debut fantasy novel has been nominated for six awards so far this year, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Tiptree awards. Last weekend (after this panel was concluded) we learned that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (HTK) won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Last year her short story “Non-Zero Probabilities” was also short-listed for the Hugo and ...Read More

For our final entry in the shorter (short story and novelette) category, this week we have “Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly. He has published other stories with the same characters, including “Tourists” in Jonathan Strahan’s Eclipse 4. Here are some earlier comments on the story:

Lois Tilton, Locus Online

A sequel. Mariska’s mother had her cloned to fulfill her own ambitions to work in interstellar space, so ...Read More

This week we’ll be talking about “The Things” by Peter Watts. It appears on the Locus, Hugo, BSFA, and Shirley Jackson shortlists, as well as most recently showing up on the Sturgeon Award list. This makes it by far the most nominated piece of short fiction this year, as well as being a rare cross-over between the general genre awards and the horror awards.

This story has already been the ...Read More

This week we have for consideration another Nebula winner, a novelette, “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone. This is a rare story from Analog making the awards rounds this year. We’ll start with a round-up of reviewer reactions.

Lois Tilton, Locus Online:

The narrator, Harry Malan, is the new President of the small Mormon congregation on Sol Central Station, which includes a number of the vast ...Read More

Here are some views from around the net of Kij Johnson’s Nebula award winning story, “Ponies“.

Lois Tilton, from her bi-monthly column at Locus Online:

Every girl gets her own pastel talking pony with wings and a horn. But before the other girls will let her join the group, she has to take a knife and cut these off. The ending stings, but it’s still Highly Unsubtle.

Life, the Universe, ...Read More

Welcome to the first installment of this awards-based Short Story Club. This week the focus is on Aliette de Bodard’s “The Jaguar House, in Shadow“. Here’s a round-up of reactions from around the Net:

From Lois Tilton:

Alternate history. Greater Mexica has been overtaken by a reactionary theocracy, and the traditional orders of Knights have been destroyed, except for the Jaguar House, whose leader Tecipiani has chosen to collaborate with ...Read More

OK, I’ve received just enough encouragement to be dangerous here, so we’ll try this out. Last week I put together a list based on all the awards short lists I could find to date. I argued that these represent a newborn consensus about the best fiction of 2010. On the list were three short stories and three novelettes, five of which are available online. In the spirit of Torque Control’s ...Read More

As usual, if you’d like to see the whole conversation on one page, select ‘View All’ from the drop down menu above. If you don’t see a drop down menu above, click here and it should show up.

Jonathan Strahan

I LOVE awards. I love them in a way that is probably slightly unbalanced. I love the annual nature of them, the sense of cycles turning and time passing. I ...Read More

As usual, if you’d like to see the whole conversation on one page, select ‘View All’ from the drop down menu above. If you don’t see a drop down menu above, click here and it should show up.

Andy Duncan

John’s and Paul’s comments, taken together, make me pose a related question to the group:

In a field so award-conscious, what happens to writers – new, veteran and in-between – ...Read More

Karen Burnham

This weekend, awards season really geared up. The BSFA and Ditmar awards were announced, and the Hugo award nominations were revealed. Congratulations, by the way, to all the winners and nominees reading this!

So what do awards do for us as a community? Do they help shape the dialog, or are they just something to argue over? Along the way, do you have any gripes, praise, or handicapping ...Read More

With the publication of The Dervish House, it has now been six years since the Ian McDonald’s River of Gods came out. Along with Brasyl, and the short story collection Cyberabad Days these books form a distinctive body of work from an interesting author. I’d like this panel to take a look back on this group of writings and see what sort of impact or influence it has ...Read More

Once again I turned to our Roundtable panelists with a question:

A couple of weeks ago, our own Jonathan Strahan was so bold as to voice his dislike of the term ‘speculative fiction’ on his Coode St. podcast. Reactions came fast and furious, from Galactic Suburbia, Cheryl Morgan and Cat Valente–and probably others. It seems that this is a topic everyone has an opinion about. How do you like your ...Read More

Welcome to our second Locus Roundtable discussion. I started off the panel with the following question:

Now that we’re a few weeks into the new decade, I was wondering if anyone would like to take a crack at talking about the decade just past. It was the decade that had Arthur C. Clarke’s iconic science fictional years: 2001 and 2010. But instead of commercial transport to the Moon and adventures ...Read More

This is the first discussion of the resurrected Locus Roundtable group. I tossed out the following prompt to the participants. Click here to see the entire discussion.

Damien G. Walter posted the following on io9.com:

In science fiction [the] argument sometimes arises as a belief that SF does not need to function as art. It does not need to be beautiful, as other kinds of fiction might. Its characters do ...Read More