I hope those of you in the USA enjoyed your Labor Day weekend. 

Obituary:

Jim C. Hines, who had reported that his wife Amy was living with cancer and cancer treatments,  let people know via Twitter and his blog that Amy has passed away. Our condolences to the Hines family.

Contests:

Interzone’s James White award for unpublished stories announced its short list.

WorldCon:

File 770 highlighted this charming write-up of Dublin’s WorldCon, by Not Another Book Blogger.

What? Another controversy? Yes, George R.R. Martin’s annual post-Hugo party became a big deal when people couldn’t get in right away. Lots of chatter on Twitter. Here, Martin provides a long (shocker, I know) and detailed explanation of what went wrong. He sounds defensive in a few places.

Giveaway:

One commenter I choose at random will win a copy of Shadowblade, signed by author Anna Kashina.

Books and Writing:

Over at Kirkus, the Books Smugglers review Pet by Awaeke Emezi. This book sounds intriguing!

Turning Darkness into Light CoverFrom last month, a roundup of promising speculative fiction books, courtesy of the UK Guardian.

Max Brooks, the author of World War Z, is bringing us a novel about Bigfoot.

On Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Marie Brennan discusses her new book Turning Darkness Into Light, and the character she loves to hate.

Tor.com shares Barnes and Noble’s speculative fiction picks for September.

Check out our New Releases Page too. See anything you like?

TV and Movies:

Here’s the first trailer for the latest in the interminable Terminator Franchise: Terminator: Dark Fate. Welcome back Linda Hamilton! Welcome back everyone’s favorite line! (About 2:20 minutes long and loud.)

Camestros Fellapton points out the flaws in Amazon’s new series The Boys.

Internet:

Sit Arthur Conan Doyle believed in the supernatural. When demonstrated the trickery that explained psychic phenomenon and a ghostly visitation, Conan Doyle doubled down on his belief and expressed skepticism of the facts. Sound familiar? This article from BBC Future discusses “metacognition” and the ways out highly adapted cognitive system can be used to fool us.

Another thing Camestros Felapton does on his blog is track dinosaurs in fiction and pop culture. (I know…) Anyway, here’s a handy graph of popular dinosaurs of the 1990s. Surely you can drop these factoids into casual conversation at your next Jurassic Park viewing party.

When Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s own account was hacked, the service managed to shut it down within fifteen minutes. During that time the hackers managed to post several anti-Semitic and racist comments. Twitter was quick to announce that the vulnerability that allowed the hacking came from a mobile service provider and not Twitter. The group claiming credit for the hack calls itself the Laughing Squad.

Two sites form the backbone of this column; File 770 and Atlas Obscura. The weird-travel site comes through this week with a photo roundup of train stations.

Speaking of Atlas Obscura; the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is trying a bootstrappy legal argument to stop elephant poaching. They want to declare the (extinct) wooly mammoth an endangered species. Why? Because then, ivory from mammoth, which is currently legal to buy and sell, would become illegal to buy and sell. And therefore, there would be no source of ivory to provide “cover” for poached elephant ivory. Brilliant, and probably doomed.

This video has nothing to do with genre, but it’s hilarious. Personally, I think she does use too much autotune, but still, great work, Madilyn Bailey! (Thanks to File 770.)

Author

  • Marion Deeds

    Marion Deeds, with us since March, 2011, is the author of the fantasy novella ALUMINUM LEAVES. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthologies BEYOND THE STARS, THE WAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, STRANGE CALIFORNIA, and in Podcastle, The Noyo River Review, Daily Science Fiction and Flash Fiction Online. She’s retired from 35 years in county government, and spends some of her free time volunteering at a second-hand bookstore in her home town.