To be honest, there are already enough short fiction podcasts to make it tough to keep up with them, but the latest addition is far too cool to ignore: TTA Press, the publishers of the UK's major sf/fantasy and horror fiction magazines, as well as a rather good (if excessively infrequent) crime one, have launched Transmissions from Beyond, podcasting selected stories from their huge, multi-genre back catalogue. I'll be listening.

Another new podcast: Reality Break is putting out interviews with authors, most of them originally done for radio in the 1990s. Some notably big guns have already been deployed: Will Eisner, Cory Doctorow and the late Robert Jordan.

Free Fantasy Reading: you can download a free pdf of Black Gate magazine no. 12. Got to admit I haven't actually read it, but the magazine's got a pretty good reputation, and there's certainly a lot of content: 224 pages of it.

Since Watchmen featured in the last post here, thought I'd mention an interesting transcript of a 1988 round table discussion about the series. But first: BEWARE! This is as SPOILERIFIC a discussion as could possibly be contrived by the wit of Man. If you have not yet read Watchmen, or if you want to see the upcoming movie without actually knowing every last detail of the plot in advance (and, believe me, you really do), FLEE! The imminent link will utterly and completely ruin the whole thing, including all of the many surprises the story has up its sleeves. Seriously. For those who have already read Watchmen, it's a fascinating discussion, because Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are involved, and it unpicks in great detail a lot of the story's many layers, influences and concerns. It can be found here.

An interesting historical side note: The Picts appear to have had a whole lot more going on in their part of the world (Scotland) than was previously thought.

Thanks to everyone who's e-mailed asking about a release date for Fall of Thanes. It's nice that people care enough to be interested! I wish I had a more definitive answer to offer, but at the moment I don't. It's taken longer than I hoped and intended to finish the thing off, for a mixture of writing and non-writing related reasons, but it is almost done. Should be going to the publisher for consideration in the next few weeks. In the past, it's taken about a year to get from that point to publication. Sorry I can't be any more specific than that yet. More news as and when it's available.

It has been raining all day. Raining hard, for a lot of it. Frankly, it's all a bit disappointing, as the weather has been for weeks and weeks. So I thought I'd post a photo, grabbed in one of the few sunny interludes I remember from the last couple of months. It commemorates the chance discovery of a wonderful country lane, thick with wildflowers, bees and butterflies. As I sit here listening to the rain gurgling along the gutters and down the drainpipes, perhaps it will provide a little remembered warmth, and remind me that we do still notionally have things called summers, even if these last couple of years the only possible description of that season has been 'damp squib'.

Labels: Comics, Fall of Thanes, History, Magazines, Photos, Podcasts

Found the Bart Simpson Chalkboard Generator via Antick Musings.

EDIT to add: the youtube clip may get yanked at any time, I guess, so here's a link to the official trailer, which unsurprisingly is vastly better quality and really rather pretty. (Still got slight reservations about how well this is going to work as a movie, though ...)

Labels: Comics, Movies

At the risk of becoming a bit random, a few more pointers to how I've been spending my (increasingly limited) online time in the last week or so.

A handful of feeds I've subscribed to recently:

FreakAngels. An online comic written by Warren Ellis, distributed in weekly chunks. The comics industry, like book publishing, is still trying to figure out what the digital age means for it; this is one of the signs of change, I guess. I think it's got an 'adult content' warning, by the way.

Alt.Fiction Day. A blog for the one-day sf/f/h event in Derby this April. The early versions of the programme I've seen are full of good stuff. Big names like Charles Stross, Ramsey Campbell, Mike Carey doing their things: well worth a ticket if you're in that neck of the woods, I should think. I should be there, doing the panel thing and generally milling about, so say hello if you bump into me.

Best of Natural History Radio. I like me some wildlife, so this BBC podcast is overdue as far as I'm concerned: features on all kinds of things that crawl, fly, grow and eat each other.

Stephen Fry's Podgrams. Stephen Fry is one of those rare people who can talk for 25mins without a script and be conversational, coherent and engaging. (He's a very well-known and ostentatiously clever UK actor, writer and presenter, for any non-Brit visitors who've never heard of him). This is his new podcast, starting off with a report on what it's like to smash your arm to pieces in the middle of the Amazonian nowhere (answer: not much fun).

And don't forget you can find a feed for this very blog here, if you've got an itchy subscription finger.

A couple of links to stuff I've noticed recently:

Neil Graf offers a list of notional Tintin titles fit for the 21st century. My favourites are probably Tintin in Darfur and Tintin Parties at the Everest Base Camp, not because they're particularly funny but because I can immediately all but see those comics: perfect topics for dark, seriously twisted takes on Tintin's world. I think someone should write/draw them. Someone unafraid of litigation, probably.

Another minor signpost on the road to the end of liertature as we know it: fiction originally written on, distributed by and read on mobile phones dominates Japan's bestseller lists. Japan doesn't always play its tune to the same beat as the rest of the world, so this might not catch on elsewhere, but it's still a sign of the times. It's all quite entertaining, the multi-stranded digital Ragnarok that seems to be slowly closing in on the worlds of publishing and writing. God knows where it will all end up, but I expect things'll come out OK in the end. Majorly different, perhaps, but OK. The world does get destroyed at Ragnarok, I know, but a new one comes along shortly thereafter (albeit with a rather different set of Gods, which undeniably might be a bit worrying if you're a current God of publishing).

And finally, this, for no good reason other than that I found it curious enough to watch twice. What firefighters get up to when there're no fires to fight:

Labels: Comics, Podcasts

Alt.Fiction is a one day spec fic jamboree in Derby on Saturday, April 26th. Sort of a mini-convention. I will be there, but fortunately so will a whole host of much more interesting and famous folk. Those who have been in previous years tell me it's a good day. If you like the look of that list of attendees, why not come along?

Here's one of the most deserved blog-to-book deals I've ever heard of: Strange Maps is to be immortalised in print. I predict a big success, especially if the publisher's got the muscle to get some offline publicity going.

Advance notice of a potentially cool addition to the podcasting world: the long-delayed PodCastle will finally be starting April. If the quality matches that of its stablemates PseudoPod and Escape Pod, it should be good.

This here is a pretty good comic. Just saying.

I mentioned Public Lending Right a few posts ago, and Lo! It is under attack. Not life-threatening attack, but erosive 'if we make lots of little cuts maybe they won't notice' kind of attack. In government terms the amounts of money involved are microscopic, but for many authors and illustrators (not me at the moment, but one day who knows?) PLR income is a big chunk of their total earnings from their creative work. If you're a UK citizen, and happen to think PLR cuts are a bad idea, there's an online petition you could sign. Only if you feel like it, obviously.

I know 2007 feels like a long time ago already, but here's Locus' summary of the sf/f books that appeared on the most Best of 2007 lists. That'll be the 'best of the best ofs' or something, then. I have read precisely one of the books mentioned, which is clearly a pathetic effort of which I should be ashamed, but hopefully it doesn't make me a bad person. The one I have read is The Terror, which is very good in all sorts of ways.

Labels: Books, Comics, Events, Podcasts, Writing