PW on Seeds of Change

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."

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Dystopian Fiction Reprint Anthology

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!

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The Return of Me

Okay, so I’ve been missing in action for a while here. Sorry about that, folks.

Here’s what happened:

  • I went on vacation. Visited my sister and her family down in North Carolina (Fayetteville area). That was in early May, and responsible for the what I thought then to be temporary cessation of blogging.
  • I was swamped when I got back from vacation. Played catch up for a while, and blogging got put on the back burner.
  • Got obsessed with Grand Theft Auto IV. I’d never played any of the games in this series before, so it was a real revelation to me. I’m still rather obsessed with it, but I finished the game once already, so I don’t twitch when I go long periods of time without playing.
     

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.

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Get a Free Copy of the July 2008 Issue of F&SF

Over on the F&SF Forum, editor Gordon Van Gelder posted the following note:

We’re going to do a promotional giveaway with this issue. There’s a box of copies of this issue on its way to me and I’d like to give away the copies people who will blog about the issue. So here’s the deal:

1) Go to our "Contact Us" page: http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/contact.htm

2) Tell us where to mail your copy of the issue.

3) Receive the issue and blog about it. Naturally, we prefer if you read the issue before blogging about it, but I’m just insisting that you blog about it. (The first time we tried this promotion, people mistakenly thought they should blog about the magazine before receiving the issue. No. Get the issue first, then blog about it.)

4) Send us a link to your blog.

That’s all there is to it. I’ll post here when we run out of the giveaway copies.

Spread the word!

That’s 160 pages of top-notch science fiction & fantasy. Here’s the table of contents:

 

THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION
July • 59th Year of Publication

NOVELLAS

  • The Roberts – Michael Blumlein
     

NOVELETS

  • Fullbrim’s Finding – Matthew Hughes
  • Poison Victory – Albert E. Cowdrey
     

SHORT STORIES

  • Reader’s Guide – Lisa Goldstein
  • Enfant Terrible – Scott Dalrymple
  • The Dinosaur Train – James L. Cambias
     

DEPARTMENTS

  • Books to Look For – Charles de Lint
  • Books – James Sallis
  • Plumage from Pegasus: Galley Knaves – Paul Di Filippo
  • Films: Superpowers Do Not a Superhero Make – Kathi Maio
  • Coming Attractions
  • Curiosities – F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
     

CARTOONS

  • Bill Long
     

COVER

  • Mondolithic Studios for "The Roberts"

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Get a Free E-Copy of My New Anthology

For all you reviewers and bloggers out there: Prime Books, the publisher of my new anthology, Seeds of Change, is encouraging me to send out free PDF copies of the anthology to folks who might be willing to review it and/or blog about it. If you’d like to see a copy, send me an email (or leave a comment, etc.) and I’ll shoot one over to you.

(Now, bear in mind that the book is not out until August, so we’d want you to hold off your review coverage until then.)

Update: This promotional giveaway has ended. Thanks!

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May 11th is Review Matt Hughes Day

F&SF regular Matthew Hughes a free electronic copy of his new novel Template:

Special offer for reviewers, bloggers, newsgroup posters and people who just like to talk about books in public: in May, PS Publishing will release Template, a stand-alone Archonate novel that I consider to be my best work yet (even though it was written in 2003). I will send an rtf file of the book to anyone who commits to review, blog, post or otherwise harass the world about it. Just send me an e-mail at "himself(you know what symbol goes in here)archonate.com" and I’ll shoot you a copy.

James Nicoll, meanwhile, is trying to organize a review-a-thon:

I find it tremendously annoying that Hughes is not better known than he is. My cunning idea is that it might be fun if a bunch of reviewers on LJ should all agree to read and review Template on the same day. LJ doesn’t lend itself to the same kind of communal participation as rasfw but I think this could be worthwhile. Any volunteers? [Current Target Date: May 11th] I probably should have encouraged people to mention this on their blogs and livejournal accounts. Consider this said encouragement.

I also find it tremendously annoying that Hughes is not better known than he is. I read an advance copy of Template, and I have to say, it’s one of the best–if not the best–things Hughes has written to date. So please consider participating in the review-a-thon. Or just go out and order a copy!

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