On this day in 1918, The USS Cyclops departs from Barbados and is never seen again, presumably lost with all hands in the Bermuda Triangle.

fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviews

Peter Pan illustration, by Alice Bolingbroke Woodward (1907)

Writing, Editing, and Publishing:

A new SFF bookstore might be coming to Charlotte, NC, if it is funded by this Thursday via Kickstarter. Regis Murphy has a dream to open a bookstore and bar called “Worlds of Wonder,” and it sounds pretty fabulous. He also makes a good case for why we need more indie bookstores, something I’m 100% on board with. Support this Kickstarter and help open a haven of nerddom or, as Murphy calls it, “a geek’s dream hangout” in Charlotte.

In other bookstore news, Borderlands in San Francisco gained its requisite 300 supporters and is going to remain open for another year.

SFWA named Larry Niven as the recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, citing his “invaluable contributions to the field of science fiction and fantasy. In addition to his contributions to the genre, Niven has influenced the fields of space exploration and technology.”

The nominees for the 2014 Bram Stoker Awards have been announced, including such luminaries as Chuck Palahniuk, Ellen Datlow, Emily Carroll, Joe Hill, and Joe R. Lansdale.

And the nominees for the Spectrum Award for Fantastic Art have been announced. Feast your eyes on these gorgeous entries.

I’ve been brainstorming a weird Southern town lately, gearing up to write a series of linked short stories set in this place. So I’ve been interested in SF cities: how authors create spaces, how they communicate the history of a place with a few well-chosen details, and mostly, how they make it weird. Carrie Patel from Tor.com talks about five different weird fictional cities here.

In this post on “nerds of a feather…,” authors Ian Sales, Aliette de Bodard, and Paul Kincaid attempt to define “science fiction.”

While Ursula K. LeGuin speaks up in defense of “fantasy” in her review of Kazuo Ishiguro‘s new novel, The Buried Giant.

Finally, SF Signal posted a great Mind Meld article with thoughts from a lot of great authors, talking about SFF books they wish there were sequels to. I was happy to see Katherine Addison‘s Goblin Emporer on the list.

Film and Television:

Leonard Nimoy, accomplished actor, writer, director, and singer, passed away this past week. John Scalzi gave a great tribute to him on his blog, accompanied by a couple of videos of Nimoy’s distinctive singing voice. NASA astronauts, William Shatner, and President Obama also paid tribute, calling Nimoy “generous,” “a great man,” and “extraordinary.”

There’s gonna be an Independence Day sequel, starring Jeff Goldblum and Liam Hemsworth! I am excited about this, although they already blew up a lot of the world’s best stuff in the first one, so I want to know what they’ve saved to blow up in this one. That’s all I care about: destroying the world’s landmarks.

Internet Stuff:

I feel like this product, Wine for Cats, on this website (aptly titled “Meowingtons”), belongs in a Terry Pratchett novel. At the very least, I’d like to read a story about drunk cats.

Clickhole takes on fairy tales, satirizing awful fairy tale endings.

And DesignTaxi shows us how much it would cost to build a Millenium Falcon.

In honor of Leonard Nimoy, you can buy this if you want to.

Author

  • Kate Lechler

    KATE LECHLER, on our staff from May 2014 to January 2017, resides in Oxford, MS, where she divides her time between teaching early British literature at the University of Mississippi, writing fiction, and throwing the tennis ball for her insatiable terrier, Sam. She loves speculative fiction because of what it tells us about our past, present, and future. She particularly enjoys re-imagined fairy tales and myths, fabulism, magical realism, urban fantasy, and the New Weird. Just as in real life, she has no time for melodramatic protagonists with no sense of humor. The movie she quotes most often is Jurassic Park, and the TV show she obsessively re-watches (much to the chagrin of her husband) is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.