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Announcements and Errata

Review Doors Open: Authors/Publishers/Creators — Bring It On!

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If you didn’t hear the cool news, we’ve added four lovely people to our blogging crew:  Trish Matson, Cecily Kane, Daniel Haeusser, and Ciaran Roberts.  They’ll primarily review books, comics, and other things here, and they’ll help us fill the gap that poor Paul has been unable to fill on his own!  You can learn more about each of them on our contributors page. That means we’re opening our doors to more reviews, which is a fairly new thing for us.  Full guidelines are listed here, but you might also be interested to know that our reviewers are happy to cover a wide variety of formats, including: Novels and novellas Anthologies and collections (we have one dedicated reviewer to this category) Comics Movies UK authors will also be happy to know that one of our reviewers is located across the pond.  If you have a book releasing in the UK, do get in touch! International Authors:  our 2014 theme is “the World SF Tour.”  If you’re a non-U.S./U.K. author, don’t hesitate to contact us, whether for a review or to participate in a podcast episode. If you’d like to have your work reviewed, send a description of the book(s) (press release or pitch) to at skiffyandfanty[at]gmail[dot]com.  Additionally, it is helpful for our reviewers if you provide a link to the publisher’s site for the book and to an excerpt (if available).  Intended release date is also useful for determining the urgency for a review. As the title says:  bring it on!

Blog Posts

Book Review: Phantasm Japan edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington

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Occasionally, I read something and don’t particularly want to review it so much as say, just read this. Or produce a review consisting of nothing but quotations from the text:  let the evidence speak. Phantasm Japan, a 2014 anthology edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington, is such a book. Pardon me while I spend the next several hundred words embarrassingly fangirl-gushing about it. There are a few different ways to measure an anthology’s success. The one that is used most often is determining how many of the stories the reader liked versus how many they didn’t. While there’s nothing wrong with this as a metric, it’s not the primary one I use. My favorite anthologies shift my perception in some fundamental way, whether by some of the stories taken individually or by the aggregate body. Phantasm Japan does both. Considerably. Of course, producing a collection that’s bold and smart is not without risk; two or three of the more cerebral stories in this anthology sailed right over my head. There were several more that blew my mind in the best possible way.

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Book Review: SOFT APOCALYPSES by Lucy A. Snyder

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Soft is a particularly ironic description for this collection of short fiction by Lucy A. Snyder. Brutal. Grisly. Unflinching. These are all words that are easier to associate with the dark nature of her stories. Indeed, a cover blurb by Seanan McGuire states that Snyder’s work “attacks the page with the raw, manic intensity of an early Sam Raimi.”

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

221. Nordic SF (LonCon3 Panel) w/ Tore Høie, Anna Davour, John-Henri Holmberg, Sini Neuvonen, and Marianna Leikomaa

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode221NordiceSFAtLonCon3/SandF%20–%20Episode%20221%20–%20Nordice%20SF%20at%20LonCon3.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSMoomin, the Arctic Circle, and volcanoes, oh my!  In our first panel recording from LonCon3 / Worldcon, Tore Høie, Anna Davour, John-Henri Holmberg, Sini Neuvonen, and Marianna Leikomaa discuss sf/f from the Scandinavian countries.  ‘Nuff said. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 221 — Download (MP3) Show Notes ((I may have missed a few things mentioned in the podcast.  If pick anything up that is not listed in the show notes, please leave a comment!): Panelists: Tore Høie (Moderator) Anna Davour John-Henri Holmberg Sini Neuvonen Marianna Leikomaa (Cheryl Morgan popped in to offer up titles towards the end, so she gets an honorary slot here) Finnish Weird Magazine Risto Isomäki: Sands of Sarasvati by Risto Isomäki Jaybird by Lauri & Jaakko Ahonen Sing No Evil by JP Ahonen and KP Alare Finnish Tolkien Society (where the Mirrormere Awards are given) Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Best Swedish Crime Novel Award Hans Christian Andersen Song for Eirabu by Kristine Tofte Hulder by Tonje Tornes Odinsbarn (Odin’s Child) by Siri Pettersen Landet under isen (Land Under the Glacier) by Lars Mæhle Jotnens hjemkomst by Andreas Bull-Hansen Strupesang by Liv Margareth Alver Bian Shen by Torbjørn Øverland Amundsen Lucifers evangelium by Tom Egeland Prost Gotvins geometry by Gert Hermod Nygårdshaug Sjelkaagenten by Mari Moen Holsve Lasarusfenomenet by Kjetil Johnsen The Twistrose Key by Tone Almhjell (available in English!) Thale (film by Alexander Nordaas) Huset mellom natt og dag by Ørjan Nordhus Karlsson (some of his other work has been translated) The Sami Hannu Rajaniemi The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen Leena Krohn Tove Jansson Moomin! Anne Leinonen John Ajvide Lindqvist Anders Fager Fruktan (Swedish author collective) Asgard Park by Ronald Simonar Edmund W. Hansen Neils E. Neilsen Peter Høeg The Man Who Remembered by Eiler Jørgensen Jannick Storm The Billion Year Spree:  The History of Science Fiction by Brian Aldiss Sky City:  New Science Fiction Stories by Danish Authors edited by Science Fiction Cirklen Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff Vladimir Semitjov Dénis Lindbohm The Martin Beck Series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö Sture Lönnerstrand Swedish SF (see the paragraph on “Swedish Social Fiction”)(term invented by German author and academic Ulrike Nolte, in German “Schwedisches soziale fiction”) Hulder (fairy tale) Fantastik Podd (Swedish podcast) Boel Bermann Anders Björkelid Erik Granström The Kalevala Johanna Sinisalo Irmelin Sandman Lilius Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder Partial Recall (blog on Finnish fandom) Rising Shadow (reviews; has a Finnish site) Archipelacon Science Fiction Encyclopedia Entries: Sweden Finland Denmark Iceland Norway Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

Blog Posts

“The Mysterious Appeal of Tintin” by Jonathan Wood

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Hey guys, I’ve got this great idea.  I’m going to write detective stories about a Belgian man-child and his alcoholic best friend.  For kids! Clearly that shouldn’t work.  It’s madness.  Except Hergé started drawing his Tintin cartoons in the 1930s, and in 2011 the series was still popular enough for Steven Spielberg to turn it into a blockbuster movie.  Hell, I’ve loved Tintin since I discovered him about twenty-five years ago.  Clearly, there is some curious Belgian alchemy at work here.   But what the hell is it?

Blog Posts

My Superpower: Corie Weaver

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My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Corie Weaver to talk about how the power of Overcomplication relates to The Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide (Kickstarter). ——————————– If you asked my husband, he’d say my superpower is overcomplicating things. The other night, we grilled out, and at the last minute, I decided I didn’t want ketchup. I could *taste* what I wanted. Tomato paste, a tiny bit of red wine, chili powder. I was right – it was delicious, but it did create an unexpected bump in the dinner plans. And that may be how, when I had planned to spend the summer putting the final touches on a new YA space opera, we’re instead editing an anthology of science fiction stories for middle grade readers. Like a lot of the sudden complications in our life, it started from a few diverse ingredients.

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