Say Happy Birthday to my dawg, Charlie Finlay. And to wish him a happy birthday, why don’t you drop by his new blog and tell him how great it is?
UPDATE: Or, better yet: go buy his book, and tell him how great that is. Because it is, and I’m not just saying that because he’s my friend.
Here is a complete list of all the Slush Writer Appreciation Month interviews:
Interview
with Brian Bieniowski
Slush Reader, Asimov’s Science Fiction
Interview
with Douglas Cohen
Slush Reader, Realms of Fantasy
Interview
with Kelly Link
Slush Reader, SCI FICTION
Interview
with Aaron A. Reed
Author of “Shutdown/Retrovival,”
F&SF, March 2003
Interview
with Kate Mason
Author of “The Millstone,”
F&SF, April 2004
Interview
with Jaye Lawrence
Author of “Kissing Frogs,”
F&SF, May 2004
Interview
with George Tucker
Author of “Welcome to Justice 2.0,”
F&SF, January 2004
Interview
with Jeremy Minton
Author of “Halfway House,”
F&SF, January 2003
Interview
with Ef Deal
Author of “Czesko,”
F&SF, Forthcoming
Interview with Mike Shultz
Author of “Old as Books,”
F&SF, July 2005
If you’re a publisher, or publicist, or author, and you’d like me to consider your book for review, I’d be happy to do so. If I read the book and I like it, I might talk about it on my blog. I might even write a review of it and get it published elsewhere AND talk about it on my blog. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
For examples of my blog-reviews, click here.
Since I’m not about to post my home address on the Internet where crazy and vengeful slush writers can see it, material to be considered for review may be sent to:
John Joseph Adams, c/o Fantasy & Science Fiction, P.O. Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030
Or, you can email me, which you’d probably want to do first anyway, and I’ll probably give you my home address via email.
So, who’s going to Readercon? Sound off on the message board.
Spielberg:
“Science fiction for me is a vacation, a vacation away from all the rules of narrative logic, a vacation away from physics and physical science.
“It just let’s you leave all the rules behind and just kind of fly.”
from Reuters.com
So, with the Aaron Reed interview, I published my last completed slush survivor interview (some of my other survivors were not available for interview), but Slush Writer Appreciation Month continues! In the coming days, I’ll post a few interviews with the slush readers in the field. And first up is Kelly Link, slush reader for SCI FICTION.
New this month: an A.I. tale from Albert E. Cowdrey; the story of an unusual father/son relationship from new writer Trent Hergenrader (one of Gordon’s Clarion students from last year); an examination of the problems with publishing from Robert Reed; a Holy Grail tale from James L. Cambias; the account of a war with roaches by C. S. Friedman; a story that might remind you of your time in school from Mike Shultz; a far future tale of religion, enlightenment, and sexual expression from Gary W. Shockley; and another new slush survivor: Donald Mead, who makes his F&SF debut with a 15,000 word novelet of African historical fantasy, set in the days leading up to The Battle of Isandlwana in the late 19th Century.
My first audiobook review for Publishers Weekly just appeared in the June 6, 2005 issue. But if you want to read it, you can just go visit the Amazon.com page for the unabridged CD edition of Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat and read it there.
My next review for PW will be of the abridged edition of David McCullough’s follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning John Adams, 1776.
I read a non-fiction book recently called THE WORLD IS FLAT, which is about outsourcing and the global economy. I listened to it on audio, and the book brings up an interesting point in regard to audiobook publishing. As an audiobook reviewer, I have found myself frequently frustrated with the fact that audiobooks have nearly no lead time from production to publication, so reviewers have very little time to get their reviews done in a timely fashion (resulting in audio reviews that are “older” than desirable). The reason THE WORLD IS FLAT got me thinking about this, is because it discusses Wal-Mart, and how being the industry powerhouse it is, it was able to make certain demands to its suppliers in order to make its business more efficient (i.e., they forced all suppliers to use a certain type of tracking device with all packages which made Wal-Mart’s distribution system more manageable).
A powerful publication, like Publishers Weekly, or some other high-profile venue, could be in some position to dictate demands to audio publishers…namely, that they figure out a way to get reviewers audiobooks in a more timely fashion. With high-speed internet and digital audio publishing (more FLAT WORLD stuff), there’s no reason that reviewers shouldn’t be able to get audiobooks a bit faster than we are. Surely, publishers could get audiobooks to reviewers in a stripped bare-edition, without packaging, perhaps even just a single MP3-CD. But MP3-CDs aren’t even strictly necessary — publishers could set up ways for reviewers to download audiobooks via secure web servers (they would still have to be in a compressed format like MP3, as regular CD files [WAV files] would be much too large). New audio publisher Paperback Digital sells audiobooks to consumers this way, and Audible.com, of course, has a similar setup.
If a call center in Bangalore can field my customer service requests, or talk me through a computer problem, surely an audio publisher in my own country can get me a review copy of an audiobook at least a month before it goes on sale.
Mike Shultz‘s story “Old as Books” (F&SF, July 2005, on newsstands now) was just reviewed in Tangent Online (along with the rest of the issue, of course), in which reviewer Aimee Poynter called it her “favorite story of the issue” of an issue filled with so much good stuff she was inspired to subscribe. It also received a a glowing review from bluejack in The Internet Review of Science Fiction.