Speaking of Strange Horizons, they’re currently heading toward the end of their June 2008 fund drive, and they’ve still got quite a ways to go to meet their goal. So why don’t you drop by and donate a few bucks? If you donate $25 or more, you can get this swell membership card featuring original art by my pal Jeremiah Tolbert.
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Over at Religion Dispatches, Gabriel McKee has a thoughtful review of Wastelands. Here’s a snippet: “Editor John Joseph Adams has chosen stories that show so much variation, not just in setting but in tone. There are several elegiac tales here, to be sure, but there are just as many optimistic ones, and even one or two comedies. It’s far from a tedious series of stories about savage motorcycle gangs—there’s real diversity here, and you’re hard pressed to find two stories that are alike.“
In other Wastelands news, there’s an interview with me up at Strange Horizons, in which I talk about the anthology, as well as other projects and other topics, including a bit about The Living Dead. There’s also a sneak-peek at the preliminary cover design–at least I hope it’s still preliminary…see if you can spot the typo. I’ve tweaked the cover to correct the error.
Also cool: io9 blogged about Seeds of Change, which they call “terrifically interesting.”
Is anyone out there a Google Docs wiz? I was able to embed the data entry form for the Dystopian Fiction Database into a page on my website, but I can’t figure out how to do the same thing with the database itself (the spreadsheet which shows all the entries). The redirects I have setup make it simple to pass along the URL to someone, but I’d like to actually have the spreadsheet reside on my server, if possible.
By the way, has anyone had any trouble with the database? Any suggestions for tweaking anything?
Publishers Weekly has a nice review of my forthcoming original anthology Seeds of Change: "This thought-provoking anthology of nine original stories posits near-future paradigm shifts in everything from race relations (in Ted Kosmatka’s vivid and moving “N-Words,” where cloned Neanderthals encounter violent hatred from Homo sapiens) to the morality of uploaded consciousness (in Blake Charlton’s clumsy but charming “Endosymbiont”), with varying success. The hero of Jay Lake’s “The Future by Degrees” invents an energy-saving thermal superconductor only to be pursued by corporations protecting their business, with predictable results. Pepper, the mercenary hero of Tobias S. Buckell’s Crystal Rain, refuses to assassinate a dictator in the morally contrived “Resistance.” Considerably more powerful is Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s “Spider the Artist,” which combines African folk tales and advanced robotics in a chilling story about a rising social conscience in the Nigerian oil fields. Despite weak spots, this anthology accurately reflects many of today’s most pressing political and social issues, and will give readers plenty to think about and argue over."
Which, if you truncate it down, looks even nicer: ""This thought-provoking anthology of nine original stories posits near-future paradigm shifts in everything from race relations …to the morality of uploaded consciousness. … Accurately reflects many of today’s most pressing political and social issues, and will give readers plenty to think about and argue over."
Now’s as good a time as any to announce that my next project for Night Shade Books will be a dystopian fiction reprint anthology called Brave New Worlds. Release date is currently unknown, but it will probably come out sometime in late 2010. Though that’s a long way away, I’m already working on putting it together, and I need your help. As I did with the Zombie Fiction Database, I’m soliciting recommendations of dystopian fiction for this new project. So if you have any recommendations, please visit my Dystopian Fiction Database and enter some of your favorite works that fit into that sub-genre. If you’d like to browse though the works that have already been entered into the database, you can do that here.
The web address for the database entry form is johnjosephadams.com/dystopian.htm, so if you’d like to spread the word, please use that URL. Meanwhile, the spreadsheet displaying the recommendations can be viewed at johnjosephadams.com/dystopian2.htm.
Any questions, let me know!
Okay, so I’ve been missing in action for a while here. Sorry about that, folks.
Here’s what happened:
The thing is, the longer you go without blogging, the harder it is to get back into the swing of things. Mainly because it requires a post like this one–a "where the hell have I been" sort of post. So that’s why I’ve been missing from the blogosphere. I’m going to attempt to return to form now.
