Posts published in: 2014/03

Paul Kincaid's From the Other Side, March 2014: The Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, Diana Wynne Jones' The Islands of Chaldea, Ken MacLeod's Descent, and Nick Mamatas' The Last Weekend

Posted on 2014-03-28 at 18:21 by montsamu

From the Other Side: March 2014

By Paul Kincaid

Why is it that every time I go to a science fiction party it turns out to be in a cellar bar with a low ceiling and loud music, so I spend all of my time trying to make out what the person I’m talking to has actually said? That’s exactly what happened at the party to announce the shortlist for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award. So I think I heard Ian Waites of NewCon Press tell me that the collection of non-fiction by Adam Roberts, for which I have written

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Posted in From the Other Side | Tagged arthur c clarke award, descent, diana wynn jones, ken macleod, nick mamatas, paul kincaid, the islands of chaldea, the last weekend, ursula jones

Local book release: Daughter of Chaos by Jen McConnel

Posted on 2014-03-25 at 15:23 by montsamu

I've had the pleasure of publishing Durham author Jen McConnel's poem "Enchantment" way back in Issue #4 (hat tip as always to poetry editor Dan Campbell) and in watching her career grow and bloom in the years since and let me tell you, she's currently on quite the upswing. Her September 2012 "New Adult" novel The Burning of Isobel Key was republished as The Secret of Isobel Key in December by Bloomsbury Spark (and produced in audio by Audible for Bloomsbury), and today she starts a new series with Daughter

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Posted in Release Day | Tagged jen mcconnel

Monday Musings: N.K. Jemisin in Statesville this weekend, and Lev Grossman and Junot Diaz kick of the NC Literary Festival next week!

Posted on 2014-03-24 at 19:52 by montsamu

Monday, March 24, 2014: Via regular contributors The Exploding Spaceship comes news that Statesville, NC's Mitchell Community College will host award-winning author N.K. Jemisin this weekend (Friday March 28 and Saturday March 29) as part of the 2014 Doris Betts Spring Writers Festival. There are author readings, (free!) writing workshops, and more. If you're in the Piedmont area, check it out!

Meanwhile, here in the Triangle we're getting very ready and very excited about next week's North Carolina

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Posted in Friday Quick Updates | Tagged flyer, junot diaz, lev grossman, nc lit fest, nk jemisin

News: Flyleaf Books to host Ann VanderMeer on Monday, April 21!

Posted on 2014-03-20 at 2:11 by montsamu

Fantastic news, everyone! On Monday, April 21, Chapel Hill's Flyleaf Books hosts award-winning editor Ann VanderMeer for a discussion of her just-released anthology The Time Traveler's Almanac. Published last year in the UK, this new definitive anthology of time travel stories gets a fantastic US release from Tor; read the preface at The Onion’s AV Club and Jason Sheehan’s review for NPR. And check out this cover:

The Time Traveler's Almanac

"The Time Traveler's Almanac is the largest and most definitive collection of time travel

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Posted in events

The Hardest Part: Mur Lafferty on Ghost Train to New Orleans

Posted on 2014-03-19 at 19:49 by montsamu

Durham author Mur Lafferty already had a handful and a half novels out in the world when, last year, she both had her "debut" novel published by Orbit, The Shambling Guide to New York City, and she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the Hugo Awards at the World Science Fiction Convention. Not a bad year, eh? Still, after all the books and the stories, she had to go back to the drawing board -- again and again -- to get a particular plot point right for book 2 in her Shambling Guides

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Posted in The Hardest Part | Tagged mur lafferty

The Exloding Spaceship Reviews Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi and The Eidolon by Libby McGugan

Posted on 2014-03-16 at 19:39 by angelablackwell

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SF that didn't peg the engineer's baloney meter!

Just a quick note of explanation, both of these novels use alternate reality as a way to get around some glaring scientific issues with their universes (one deals with FTL and the other with the Large Hadron Collider). I like my hard science fiction, but these days you can't really write some types of stories using hard science unless you make up some new science. The trick is to add new science into the story in a way which doesn't trip the baloney meter

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Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Some Recent Good Urban Fantasy Reads: The Cormorant, Black Arts and Ghost Train to New Orleans

Posted on 2014-03-16 at 3:31 by angelablackwell

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The Cormorant by Chuck Wendig (Angry Robot, January 2014)

This urban fantasy/hard-boiled thriller stars Miriam Black, a woman with the paranormal talent of precisely predicting the date, time, and circumstances of anyone's death. She does some illegal things to survive, usually conning or stealing from the unfortunate who wants to know about his or her demise.

Miriam and the people she encounters all get gleefully skewered, folded, spindled, stapled, and mutilated by Wendig; there is kidnapping, torture

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Posted in The Exploding Spaceship | Tagged chuck wendig, faith hunter, mur lafferty

Friday Quick Updates: Baen audio drama casting; H.G. Wells panel rescheduled; NC Lit Fest schedule; and upcoming events including Jenna Black and Kristen Simmons

Posted on 2014-03-14 at 17:48 by montsamu

Friday, March 14, 2014: Happy Friday everyone! There are some fun activities for teens and kids this weekend (a Divergent fan party on Saturday, Richard Peck's The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail on Sunday), ahead of a three-author YA event at Flyleaf Books on Monday with Kristen Simmons, Mindee Arnett, and Durham's Jenna Black, whose latest novel Resistance was just published Tuesday by Tor Teen, a follow-on to last year's Replica.

 

Also this weekend (Saturday March 15 and Monday March 17), Wake

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Posted in Friday Quick Updates

Coming to Town: Kim Harrison for The Undead Pool

Posted on 2014-03-07 at 14:42 by montsamu

In 2004, HarperTorch published Dead Witch Walking, and Kim Harrison's urban fantasy "Hollows" series has since grown into a best-selling mainstay. In late February, HarperVoyager published book 12, The Undead Pool, in the continuing adventures of witch and day-walking demon Rachel Morgan, and Harrison was back on tour. As did last year's tour for Ever After, this year's tour brings her back to Quail Ridge Books tonight (Friday, March 7) at 7:30 pm. Harrison was kind enough to take some time in the middle of

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Posted in Coming to Town | Tagged kim harrison, sharon stogner

The Exploding Spaceship Release Day Edition (a day late in US and a day early in the UK): Reviews of Emilie and the Sky World and the 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare

Posted on 2014-03-05 at 6:20 by angelablackwell

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Emilie and the Sky World by Martha Wells (Strange Chemistry, US release March 4, 2014; UK release March 6, 2014)

This is a sequel to Emilie and the Hollow World. Emilie has family problems and runs away from her aunt and uncle, and then finds employment and adventure with the Marlendes as they travel the aether in an airship, exploring the currents and the ways they could lead to alternate realities.

In this volume they end up in another world, a jagged, mishmash landscape that looks like it was formed

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Posted in The Exploding Spaceship

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