Books Eugene Fischer | 30 Apr 2009
The cover of the mass market paperback of The Last Colony, the third novel in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series:
The cover of the just-released mass market paperback of Zoe’s Tale, the fourth novel in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, with an unfortunate detail highlighted:
It seems that I am the first person to notice [...]
Clarion Eugene Fischer | 29 Apr 2009
Steffi wrote the first draft of this story at Clarion last summer, and after a couple of pages I put my pen down and forgot I was supposed to be critiquing because I was so engrossed by it. Steffi has a gift for marrying the mundane to the unsettling, and while this story of parasitic [...]
Books Eugene Fischer | 28 Apr 2009
The winner of my poll on what book I already own I should read next was A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge. I will read this book soon, but it isn’t going to be the next book off the stack. The real winner is: none of the above. Kat has convinced me, in [...]
SF/F Eugene Fischer | 25 Apr 2009
It’s an incredibly strong year for the best novel Hugo. The nominees are Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, John Scalzi’s Zoe’s Tale, Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, and Charles Stross’s Saturn’s Children. I’ve now read four of these five, and though I don’t know if I will be buying an Anticipation membership and [...]
Amusing & Writing Eugene Fischer | 24 Apr 2009
Well, at least, I’m big enough to have had my work plagiarized by someone ostensibly from Ghana. The Grin Without A Cat blog reports the receipt of a strange submission for an anthology of fantasy stories by Filipino authors:
Specifically, someone sent in a pseudo-submission with this intro:
From: samuel ansah asare
Date: Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at [...]
Books Eugene Fischer | 23 Apr 2009
After a couple of weeks of lacking the attention span to finish a book, I find myself recovered and on something of a reading binge. In just the past few days I’ve read Jedediah Berry’s The Manual of Detection, Charles Stross’s Saturn’s Children, and Joanna Russ’s We Who Are About To…. I’m currently working my [...]
Blog Eugene Fischer | 22 Apr 2009
From The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler:
Bernadette was our oldest member, just rounding the bend of sixty-seven. She’d recently announced that she was, officially, letting herself go. “I just don’t look in the mirror anymore,” she’d told us. “I wish I’d thought of it years ago….
“Like a vampire,” she added, and when [...]
Books Eugene Fischer | 21 Apr 2009
This book was shelved in mystery, but it read to me more like a fantasy novel that used the tropes of detective stories as an endlessly malleable playground. The main character, Charles Unwin, is easily likeable, as he moves through the story hopelessly in over his head. The set pieces are beautiful, even haunting. I [...]
Art Eugene Fischer | 15 Apr 2009
Today I felt too slow for fiction, so I made sculpture.