Blog Posts

Blog Posts

Book Review: The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

/

Doloriel, a.k.a. Bobby Dollar, has a tough job for an angel. He’s an advocate, which means when someone dies, he gets the call to argue that the soul should go to Heaven. Or, at worst, Purgatory. Every death has an on-the-spot trial, with a representative from Heaven and Hell arguing for the soul before an impartial judge. It gets even tougher when the impossible happens — a soul disappears from the body of a recently deceased before that judgement can take place. Hell blames Heaven. Heaven thinks it’s Hell doing a false flag operation.The rules are going out the window, and Bobby is in the middle. Add in the fact that more souls are disappearing, everyone thinks Bobby has something unique, special and oh-so-coveted, and Bobby is in a run and gun for stakes that are getting larger moment by moment… As I said, Bobby Dollar has a tough job, but he’s also not an ordinary angel by any means…

Announcements and Errata

Top 10 Episodes and Blog Posts for May 2014

/

May was a busy month.  Here’s what you were all enjoying! Top 10 Episodes: #20. Captain America: the Winter Soldier (2014) — A Shoot the WISB Subcast 204. Caribbean SF w/ Karen Lord, Tobias Buckell, and Stephanie Saulter — #WorldSFTour Episode 4.2 — Torture Cinema Meets The Wicker Man 205. Mary Anne Mohanraj & Cecilia Tan at ICFA (An Interview) #WorldSFTour 203. Stephanie Saulter (a.k.a. The Jeweler) — Gemsigns (An Interview) #worldsftour 201. The Hugo Awards (A Discussion w/ Justin Landon and Natalie Luhrs) #19. Babylon 5 (S1D5&6: Eps 17-22) — A Shoot the WISB Subcast #22. Godzilla (2014) — A Shoot the WISB Subcast w/ Rachael Acks 199. Sofia Samatar (a.k.a. Malkia wa Ndoto) at ICFA (An Interview) #WorldSFTour 141. Final Hugo Thoughts + the Hugh Howey Fiasco w/ Justin Landon and Jonathan McCalmont Top 10 Blog Posts: Book Review: Veil of the Deserters by Jeff Salyards (by Paul Weimer) Language in the Written Word by Charles Tan Thoughts on the Hugo Nominated Short Stories by Adam Callaway Book Review: The Best Fantasy and Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 8 (by Paul Weimer) 2014 Hugo Award Episode Pack: Download away! On Recent South(east) Asian SF/F by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Guest Post) My Superpower: James L. Sutter My Superpower: Cassandra Rose Clarke Business Time – Many Paths up the Mountain by Mike Underwood Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic (by Paul Weimer) Enjoy!

Blog Posts

When Calls for Diversity Are Not Enough

/

As a writer and reader based in Southeast Asia, I’ve been pondering the term “diversity” — at least, in the context of it’s use on the Internet. First, it’s focused on the Western publishing industry. Filipino publishers publish Filipino-authored works for example (although our publishing industry has different issues of diversity). The same goes for publishers in Malaysia, China, South Africa, etc. I do think it’s important to focus on the Western publishing industry, because it’s usually a one-way street:  books from the Philippines rarely go out of the Philippines, but books from the US or the UK gets distributed around the world. A novel like Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, published by both Jacana Media in South Africa and Angry Robot Books in the US/UK, is the exception to the norm. And in my case here in the Philippines, there are some Filipino books that might not have been picked up by a local publisher if it weren’t acquired by a US/UK publisher first. And for all the talk about diversity in the US publishing industry, we have conversations like the ones mentioned by Jennifer Pan & Sarah McCarry.

Blog Posts

Book Review: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

/

Jeff Vandermeer has always been a frustrating author to me. He is an incredible anthologist and an adroit genre critic. I want to love his books. I should love his books. The New Weird movement got me into writing in the first place. But, for some reason, I’ve had a hard time getting into them. Not so with Annihilation, and that’s a relief. Annihilation is the story of “Area X,” an irrational, transitional landscape in the south. With shifting, horrible borders that must be passed through under hypnosis, it’s at once part of and separated from the mundane world. Inside Area X, monsters come in familiar forms, and nothing is what it seems. Expeditions have been going into Area X for a long time, with few survivors. The mysterious organization dubbed the “Southern Reach” controls Area X. They also condition and “prepare” each expedition, but there is so much unknown about Area X.

Blog Posts

Business Time – Many Paths up the Mountain

/

This last weekend, I was at BaltiCon in Hunt Valley, MD. I had the pleasure of being on a number of business/business of writing panels, and I noticed something very cool that I wanted to loop back around to talk about. In one of the panels, I was the only traditionally-published author out of a group of five, but there was no animosity, no rancor, no posturing. It was five creatives who had all taken different paths to getting their work out into the world. It is my hope that we’re at a place where writers and creators looking to work in the SF/F prose field can approach the business with open eyes and a sense of freedom — of possibility. There are many paths up the mountain, and as many ways of having a career as there are authors (and considering how some authors reboot their careers, there may be more ways than there are creators). It’s not just Traditional and indie/self-publishing — there are a hundred gradations and combinations. Here are just a few:

Scroll to Top