Romanians Love Seeds of Change

Horia Ursu of Romanian publisher Millennium Press had this to say about Seeds of Change: “SEEDS OF CHANGE was definitely a pleasant revelation and a powerful proof that engagement–in the good sense of the word–continues to animate a genre only apparently reserved for easy entertainment, asking questions and offering possible answers.”

You’ll just have to trust me that it says that, unless you read Romanian, because that’s the language his post is written in. (He sent me that translated excerpt.)

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Seeds of Change: Now Available!

I came home from Worldcon to discover that Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, both have stock of my new anthology Seeds of Change, so I’ve now launched the website www.seedsanthology.com for it. The stories aim to confront some of the pivotal issues facing our society today, such as racism, global warming, peak oil, technological advancement, and political revolution. It features original fiction from Tobias S. Buckell, Ken MacLeod, and Jay Lake, among others.

You can read the complete text of three of the anthology’s nine stories on the website, in HTML, PDF, or Mobipocket format. There are excerpts available of the remaining six stories.

Other bonus features include interviews with the authors and further reading lists for people who’d like to learn more about the issues discussed in the stories. And finally, the site also features a book trailer which features a short dramatized excerpt of each story, along with original musical score (which you can also download as an instrumental MP3 track).

 

It’s available in the usual online bookstores as well as in ebook format for Kindle, Sony Reader, and Mobipocket Reader, and are available in additional formats via ebook retailer Fictionwise. Also, through August 18th, you can download for your Sony Reader a free sampler featuring three stories from Seeds of Change.

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There is no Stargate (or so they say…)

During Worldcon last week, I went on a VIP tour of the NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain, which is known in SF circles for its relevance to the plot of the film WarGames and the television series Stargate SG-1. A bunch of other great authors were along on the trip, including Plague War author Jeff Carlson, who was the reason the tour came to be in the first place. I wrote up a report about our trip to NORAD for SCI FI Wire.  Annalee Newitz was also on the trip, and she wrote up a report for io9.com.

Worldcon itself was pretty good; not a great Worldcon, but lots of fun nonetheless–got to hang out with lots of cool people I knew already and met some new ones. More Worldcon musings may be forthcoming, but that’s all I have time for for now. So much work piled up when I was away!

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Off to Worldcon

I’m off to Worldcon in the morning. Will be back late on Monday. Probably won’t post much while I’m away…not that I’ve been posting much while at home, but just thought I’d post a notification. I might, however, be twittering up a storm. So if you gotta get your JJA fix, check out http://twitter.com/johnjosephadams. At the very least, I was planning to live-microblog the Hugos, so if you just can’t wait to find out who won, check my twitter feed on Saturday evening.

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Metal Songs Based on Fantasy Novels

Random House’s Suvudu blog has a cool post on metal songs based on fantasy novels. Of course, I had to chime in with some additions in the comments, which I’ll duplicate here:

  • Amon Amarth–who are obviously named after Mount Doom, though they generally sing about Vikings–have a song called “Amon Amarth,” in which they reference Mount Doom, but they also mention Vikings, so I don’t know if it counts as being “based on” Tolkien.
  • Every song by Battlelore. I knew that they sang about swords-and-sorcery sort of topics, but wasn’t sure until I checked Wikipedia just now–apparently ALL of their lyrics are derived from Tolkien. Which is appropriate, because I always pictured the dueling vocalists as an orc and an elf singing. (Give them a listen and you’ll know why.)
  • A band called Jester’s Funeral adapted a bunch of John Shirley stories into songs for one of their albums (which they released online for free), called Fragments of an Exploded Heart.
  • If Dante’s The Divine Comedy counts as fantasy, then this counts for the list: Sepultura did an album based on that.
  • White Zombie’s “I am Legend” is based on I am Legend.
     

Can you think of any others not mentioned by me, or the original list?

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Guidelines: Federations edited by John Joseph Adams

FEDERATIONS

EDITED BY JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS

federations From Star Trek to Star Wars, from Dune to Foundation, science fiction has a rich history of exploring the idea of vast intergalactic societies, and the challenges facing those living in or trying to manage such societies. The stories in Federations will continue that tradition.

What are the social, religious, environmental, or technological implications of living in such a vast society? What happens when expansionist tendencies on a galactic scale come into conflict with the indigenous peoples of other planets, of other races? And what of the issue of communicating across such distances, or the problems caused by relativistic travel? These are just some of the questions and issues that the stories in Federations will take on.

Genres: Science Fiction only. Original fiction only, no reprints.

Payment: 5 cents per word ($250 max), plus a pro-rata share of the anthology’s earnings and 1 contributor copy.

Word limit: 5000 words. (Stories may exceed 5000 words, but $250 is the maximum payment per story, and stories 5000 words or less are strongly preferred.)

Rights: First world English rights, non-exclusive world anthology rights, and non-exclusive audio anthology rights. See my boilerplate author-anthologist contract, which spells out the rights in detail.

Reading Period: November 1-January 1, 2009

Response Time: Most rejections will be sent out quickly, but stories that I like may be held until January 31 before a final decision is made.

Publication date: May 2009

Publisher: Prime Books

Submission Instructions: Email your story in .doc Microsoft Word format (preferred) or .rtf rich-text format to John Joseph Adams at [anthology now closed]. Include the title of the story and your byline in the subject line of the email.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

John Joseph Adams is the editor of the anthologies Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, Seeds of Change, and The Living Dead. He is also the assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and is the print news correspondent for SCI FI Wire (the news service of the SCI FI Channel). For more information, visit his website at www.johnjosephadams.com.

ETA 2/1/09:

Table of Contents

  • Mazer in Prison | Orson Scott Card (reprint)
  • Carthago Delenda Est | Genevieve Valentine
  • Life-Suspension | L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
  • Terra-Exulta | S. L. Gilbow
  • Aftermaths | Lois McMaster Bujold (reprint)
  • Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy | Harry Turtledove (reprint)
  • Prisons | Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason (reprint)
  • Different Day | K. Tempest Bradford
  • Twilight of the Gods | John C. Wright
  • Warship | George R. R. Martin and George Guthridge (reprint)
  • Swanwatch | Yoon Ha Lee
  • Spirey and the Queen | Alastair Reynolds (reprint)
  • Pardon Our Conquest | Alan Dean Foster
  • Symbiont | Robert Silverberg (reprint)
  • The Ship Who Returned | Anne McCaffrey (reprint)
  • My She | Mary Rosenblum
  • The Shoulders of Giants | Robert J. Sawyer (reprint)
  • The Culture Archivist | Jeremiah Tolbert
  • The Other Side of Jordan | Allen Steele
  • Like They Always Been Free | Georgina Li
  • Eskhara | Trent Hergenrader
  • The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousnesses | James Alan Gardner
  • Golubash or, Wine-War-Blood-Elegy | Catherynne M. Valente

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Stay off my lawn!

Look what I got for my birthday:

lawn_zombie1

A lawn zombie!

And here’s the Night of the Living Dead-esque shot:

lawn_zombie2 

I look forward to freaking out delivery people and other strangers who come by.

I have to say, it’s one thing to see a photo of it, it’s quite another to see it in your own backyard. It really amuses me to no end.

Thanks, Mom!

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