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After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.

Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear named in SFF misconduct allegations

Author Alexandra Rowland has accused fellow writers Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear (who are married) of abusing them, claims which they have vigorously denied. This story follows several other accusations of harassment in both the SFF lit field and in video gaming over the past two weeks.

This is a developing story and one facts are in some dispute. However, there has been enough discussion of it in the public sphere that at least a bald recounting of the events and claims is possible.

On Friday 26 June, author Alexandra Rowland wrote a blog post in which they accused fantasy author Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear, of abusing and grooming them for several years. Their full post can be read here. To summarise, Rowland contends that, in 2015 and at the age of 25 (twelve years younger than Lynch), they were propositioned by Lynch into having a relationship with him on the basis that he was talking his wife into having an open relationship. Rowland agreed but this subsequently triggered a series of hostile confrontations with Bear, who (in Rowland's contention) put the blame for the event on Rowland and not Lynch, and they subsequently walked away from the situation and cut all contact. Rowland also contends that this kind of problem has happened before with several other young writers (there have been several anonymous allegations of this type supporting Rowland's claim, but no other writer has come forward publicly).

Scott Lynch's initial response was angry and threatened legal action. A subsequent and more measured response rejected the claims in greater detail, although agreeing that he had a consensual relationship with Rowland with his wife's knowledge. Lynch rejected any notion of this being a pattern of behaviour on his part and he has had no contact with Rowland in three years.

Elizabeth Bear also gave a lengthy response (after Lynch's initial response but before his second) in which she categorised Rowland's behaviour as part of a pattern of inserting themselves, unwanted, into other people's spaces and not respecting boundaries. Writers CD Covington, Arkady Martine and Devin Singer provided some support for this assertion.

Writer Kurt Panakau also claimed that Rowland is acting in bad faith, and posted screenshots confirming a similar event happened with another married author three years before the Lynch relationship took place. It should be noted, of course, that bad things can happen to the same person twice. The other married author has not yet been identified.

An anonymous Twitter account provided support for Rowland's account of events, alleging that Lynch behaved towards the account-holder inappropriately at a convention.

Elizabeth Bear has further posted a claim that this issue has reignited long-standing Twitter feuds dating back a decade to previous clashes between SFF writers over other issues (particularly the RaceFail controversy of 2009-10), and anonymous accounts may be posting false information to further their own agenda and even scores. Other commentators have accused this of being deflection.

Many of the previous stories of abusive behaviour and taking advantage of power dynamics in the SFF field have had multiple witnesses and the alleged perpetrators have owned up to their own bad behaviour. This story is much more contentious and contended, and involves multiple allegations and denials on both sides, which is why I was more reluctant to cover it versus other allegations since the facts are in much more dispute. However, the story has become dominant in the SFF field in the last few days.

For my part, I have met Scott Lynch three times and Elizabeth Bear once (briefly on all occasions), and have had positive but brief online interactions with both. I have reviewed some of their books positively in the past. I had not heard of Alexandra Rowland prior to this story breaking.

Further developments are expected.

SFF field rocked by multiple allegations of improper behaviour and abuse

Over the last 48 hours or so, the science fiction and fantasy literature field has been rocked by multiple accusations of multiple authors of improper behaviour, abuse, gaslighting, racism, misogyny, sexual coercion and authors using their platforms to engage in dogpiling and bullying.

The number of accusations has been almost overwhelming. Genre Grapevine is currently running a list of the allegations where the facts of the matter are not in dispute. Authors Paul Krueger, Myke Cole and Sam Sykes have been accused of inappropriate behaviour (Cole has subsequently been dropped by his publisher and agent, and Krueger by his agent) and others of enabling that behaviour.

Two other authors have also been accused of inappropriate behaviour but in their case they deny the claims vociferously and have been supported by others with knowledge of the events that the initial accusations were untrue, but the initial accuser has also received some support. This matter continues to develop.

The incident comes a week after the video games industry underwent its own such events, resulting in writer Chris Avellone and voice actor Cas Anvar both being accused of inappropriate behaviour. Avellone's work at a number of venues was subsequently cancelled; Anvar's future on hit SF TV show The Expanse remains unclear.

It should go without saying that these allegations are deeply disturbing and the end result is hopefully a more inclusive and safer space for all people in SFF fandom.

10 Years of The Wertzone: Stats

Monday marks the 10th anniversary of The Wertzone. I know, where does the time go? Well, into the past, of course, thanks to the energy-sapping effects of universal entropy. Maybe that should have been a rhetorical question.

Anyway, the anniversary is on Monday but I probably won't get much of a chance to post on that day. So today and tomorrow I'll be throwing out some articles related to the occasion.

In the meantime, here's some pointless stats to muse over:

Number of Books Reviewed: 599
Number of TV Seasons Reviewed: 178
Number of Video Games Reviewed: 148
Number of Films Reviewed: 85

First Book Reviewed: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
First Review Copies Received: The Prefect by Alistair Reynolds, Black Man by Richard Morgan and Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
First TV Show Reviewed: Battlestar Galactica (Season 3)
First Film Reviewed: Sunshine
First Video Game Reviewed: Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

Paul Kearney's new novel out now

Paul Kearney's new novel, The Wolf in the Attic, is out now (UK, USA). This is the author's first new novel in four years, since he completed his Macht Trilogy with Kings of Morning in 2012.

This book is set in Oxford in 1929 and sees the protagonist, a young Greek refugee named Anna, drawn into unusual events involving her father, the loss of her home in Smyrna and two Oxford dons named Lewis and Tolkien. It's a move away from the epic fantasy series that Kearney is perhaps best-known for, and more of a return to his early stand-alone novels that melded the fantastic with the real world.

There's been some good coverage of the book and some excellent reviews:

Guest blog from Paul at Pat's Fantasy Hotlist.
Interview at Sci-Fi Bulletin.
Interview at Rising Shadow.


Review at Living For Books.
Review at My Books, My Life, My Escape.
Review at Lipstick and Libraries.
Review at Bastian's Book Reviews.
Review at Queen of Blades.
Review at Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing.
Review at Bookhaunt.
Review at City of Lost Books.
Review at My Bookish Ways.
Review at The Quidnunc.


I am currently about halfway through the novel and hope to bring you all a review shortly.

Blogging in the Age of Austerity

This week the veteran, multi-award-winning science fiction and fantasy blog SF Signal announced it was shutting down. The news sent shockwaves through SFF fandom: SF Signal was founded in 2003, in the earliest, most nascent days of the blogosphere when the world was still young. Other blogs had come and gone, but SF Signal was an eternal presence on the scene. Indeed, with three Hugo Awards to its name and a large number of guest and contributing editors providing content under the eyes of founders John DeNardo and JP Frantz, the future looked quite bright for SF Signal.

Their reasons for shuttering the blog are very understandable: even if others could provide content, the blog was still their baby and still consumed a lot of their free time. Both editors had reached a point where they could not justify giving up that time at the expense of spending time with their families, so decided to shut down the blog. No doubt there were options for passing SF Signal onto other writers and editors, but the site was theirs and they didn't want it to continue without them, hence the closure. This news came on the heels of Charlie Jane Anders stepping away from SFF mega-site io9 to concentrate on her fiction. That was a different case, as Gawker Media who hosted, paid for and maintained io9. Anders was the co-founder and helped establish the tone and direction of the site, but as a corporate entity io9 could keep going under new management in the form of long-time contributor and arch-snarkmaster Rob Bricken. More distinctively, as a corporate media concern, the people working on io9 get paid. The people working on SF Signal do not.


Back in the autumn of 2005, for the first time in my life, I was finally able to move into a house with broadband. Before that my web-browsing was carried out in internet cafes and libraries. As a lifelong fan of SFF, this had been rather frustrating but I wasted no time in hanging around. Within hours of getting my first broadband connection installed I had signed up on several of the major SFF forums: Westeros, Wotmania (defunct), SFX (defunct) and Dragonmount. In the following weeks and months I would join many others: SFF Chronicles, SFFWorld, Malazanempire, Paizo and SFX. Due to good timing and good fortune, I would meet George R.R. Martin for the very time within a few weeks of that time and post a detailed report of that meeting on Westeros, leading to me becoming a moderator there. I posted numerous book reviews over the following months, which led to people suggesting that I start my own blog, which I finally did in November 2006. And here we are, ten years later (well, nine and a half).

Writing the blog has been immensely satisfying, especially when I've reviewed a less well-known book and seen dozens of people go and buy a copy. For a few people, it was on the Wertzone that they first heard there was a new Star Wars movie coming out, or that A Dance with Dragons finally had a publishing date, or that Fallout 4 existed. The satisfaction of writing and working on the blog for a reading audience is tremendous, and I often feel the need that my readers deserve and need the best content I can put out. Hence how a planned mild rebuttal to a cheesy "Best Fantasy Evaaah" article on another website ended up becoming a 66,000-word series on the history of the entire genre. I like to think that this commitment to original content, long posts and a fairly prolific output is why the blog is doing so well. Since 2011, during the period when I've been repeatedly told that blogging is dead, the Wertzone has increased its hit rate to unprecedented heights. All of this is fantastic and has had significant knock-on effects: attending conventions, hosting and taking part on panels, and - very occasionally - doing paying work for publishers or magazines.

All of this requires a substantial time investment, however. It's frequently involved coming in from eight hours at the day job to jumping straight into four or five hours on the site, several times a week. Sometimes that's been fine and sometimes it hasn't, and I've scaled things back. The balance of investment and reward in any activity needs to be weighed, and for the most part I've been happy with that balance.

As I get older, though, it becomes harder to justify spending so much time blogging in favour of doing other things, such as spending more time with friends, family or a significant other or just more time relaxing after work. Right now, I don't actually have a significant other (for the last couple of months) or a day job (for the last month), hence why the Wertzone was unusually busy in April. I made a conscious decision last month to, whilst undertaking my normal jobsearching activities, to also put eight hours a day into the blog and treating it like a day job. This is why there double the normal number of posts last month, and a corresponding rise in hits, social media activity, getting new Twitter followers etc. It was fortuitous that a couple of big, attention-grabbing stories came up during that time (most notably the Wheel of Time TV series news).

This never happens.

For bloggers who do have day jobs and families, it's become clear that the lack of material reward for blogging means greater pressure to step away and spend that time instead with loved ones or doing other things. And that's why it's easy to see why the guys at SF Signal decided to step away. If I get one of the several jobs I'm currently going through the recruitment process for, the amount of blogging on the site will have to fall as I devote time to that instead.

Is there a way around this? Should there be? Kind of. For a lot of bloggers, blogging is a springboard into writing fiction and once they make that transition, the blogging is left behind. For me, I have no interest in writing fiction day in, day out. I may one day try my hand at writing a short story or a novel if a story demands to be told, but I'm never going to be a career fiction writer. I much prefer writing about the genre as a critic, but the paid market for that is much smaller. After over five months doing the rounds with my agent, A History of Epic Fantasy has failed to garner as much as the merest flicker of interest from a professional publisher, despite the people nominating it for awards (and in any year but this one, it might even have stood a chance of making the shortlist) and clamouring for the book version (look for an update on that soon). But even if that takes off, that's just one project. Being an SFF critic isn't much of a career path these days, especially with venues drying up (even the mighty SFX Magazine seems to be in financial trouble and may not last much longer).

This never happens. Well, not any more anyway.

Hey, don't you get paid in free books?

Nope, or at least not any longer. Back in the day, being a successful book-focused blogger meant receiving lots of ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies), pre-release editions of books sent out for free to reviewers to drum up interest in novels before they come out. Some took this to be a reward in itself, and for a year or two there was a "controversy" about conflicts of interests and these things constituting bribery and so forth. But ARCs have largely become a thing of the past: I received over 150 in 2010 and in 2016 so far I have received exactly four (Children of Earth and Sky, The Call and The Wolf in the Attic for those curious, with The Great Ordeal on its way). ARCs have been largely replaced by e-ARCs and NetGalley, and since I can't read novels from a computer screen (vision issues; sometimes even just the blogging and internet research causes me problems), the result of that is that I no longer receive, and almost never ask for, ARCs any more. So they're out, and that's not a problem. I still have the better part of 200 books on the to-read pile and that will take me years to get through if I never buy or receive another book during that time.

So to justify continuing to blog at my current rate, I really need to make the blog pay, either enough for me to work on it full-time or enough to mean that I only need to get a part-time job. And to date I've tried two ways of generating income from the blog.

The first thing I did was put up a tipjar on the blog for contributors to make donations. I did that on 30 October 2012, so three and a half years ago. In that timeframe, I've received in total about £300 (and £100 of that from one very generous donor). That is absolutely fantastic, and that money went back into the site in the form of sourcing more content, travelling to events and buying more books and other media for review on the blog. But, to put it in perspective, that's about one-quarter of one month's pay at the UK minimum wage (and rather less than the actual living wage). It's a lovely bonus, but it will never pay for me to work full-time on the site.

More recently, back in October last year, I instigated advertising on the site, at a (hopefully) low-key and unobtrusive level. This brings in approximately £60 every four months. Again, excellent and gratefully-received, but it's not going to be paying for me to run the site any time soon. I could ramp up the advertising, even do those wrap-around adverts that would bring in a bit more, but I find those insanely annoying and it really would constitute a conflict of interest if I got paid to host an advert for a book I then reviewed.

Two additional ideas have been floated to me. The first is that I try my hand at podcasting. I've always been reluctant to try this because I read information at a vastly faster rate that watching or listening to it. I once sat down and tried to listen to the A Game of Thrones audiobook and it drove me crazy because in the time that it took Roy Dotrice to read the prologue I could have easily read three or four chapters of the book with my actual head-eyes. However, I am assured that there a lot of other people don't have that issue and there are certainly time efficiencies from podcasting (being able to listen or watch them on the move, at work, on headphones, in the car etc) that text blogging can't compete with. I don't actually have any equipment to do podcasting with, but it is something I'll probably look into later this year, especially when we move closer to the History of Epic Fantasy project moving forwards, as that would be a good way of introducing the book.

The second one is a bit more straightforward: Patreon. For those unaware of it (as I was until a few months ago), this is a crowdsourcing site where you basically get people to pledge a monthly payment in return for exclusive content/rewards (either completely exclusive or time-sensitive, so you'd get an article a month before non-pledgers). This doesn't seem like such a bad idea, although I'm dubious about the support I'd get and I do have a slight location-based issue: I have the temerity to be based in the UK, with a highly unfavourable exchange rate with, well, most of the rest of the world but especially the USA, where a large number of my readers are. But it's certainly worth a look and I'll probably be pursuing that in the near future.

Like Neo, I do always have the option of making a new Bill & Ted movie to fall back on.

But what if you fail?

Er, then I'll carry on as I am now. I don't see a situation where I'll ever quit, give up or retire from blogging, but certainly I can see situations where I have to drastically reduce my output and contributions due to other commitments. Which would suck.


But hey, do we even need bloggers in the first place?

I think the genre needs as many voices in it as possible discussing books, authors, TV shows, video games and the other things that make the genre what it is. The more voices, the more chances of the good stuff rising to the top and the stronger and healthier the field. Whether the field needs me, or any individual blogger specifically, is a different question and one that's down to the readers.

SF Signal closes down

In a surprising move, SFF website SF Signal is shutting down after thirteen years.

The blog's editors, John DeNardo and JP Frantz, have announced the news is because the time invested in making the website work had become overwhelming and they wanted to spend more time with their families. The website has won three Hugo Awards and over the years has become one of the tentpoles of online genre discussion.

I wish the editors well in their future endeavours, and it is a shame to see such a powerhouse of online discussion shutting down.

The Ink Dribbleth Out

And so it has come to pass. Fantasy blog A Dribble of Ink has dribbled its last. Aidan Moher has called time on the blog to concentrate on his writing career.

A Dribble of Ink started in 2007 and has been providing top-notch coverage of the SFF scene ever since. Erudite reviews, memorable guest posts (which have won awards) and a keen enthusiasm for the genre made the Dribble one of the best genre blogs on the Internet.

Aidan will still be involved in the fandom through his new website and Twitter, but will now be focusing more on his fiction, which I'm looking forwards to reading.

* salutes a fellow blogger and fires a twenty-one Death Star salute *

Worldcon 2014 After Action Report

Worldcon! The World Science Fiction Convention is one of the highlights of the SFF scene, taking place each year in a different city, often alternating between the United States and other parts of the globe. This year it was in London, the first Worldcon in the UK for nine years and the first in the capital for forty-nine. With over ten thousand attendees, it was also the largest Worldcon ever.

  Aidan represented.

It was also my first Worldcon, although not my first SFF con. Fortunately, it was held on the closer side of London to my home town of Colchester and was enjoyably easy to get to: just over an hour from home to the door of the con. If I attend next year's event in Spokane, Washington (which may be - just about - possible) it will be a rather longer journey. I missed the early events as I only had a hotel room from Friday to Monday, so rolled up on Friday morning just in time for George R.R. Martin's reading.

Martin read from an account of the reign of King Aenys I Targaryen and the strained relationship between Aenys and his brother, Maegor the Cruel, which focused on the beginnings of the civil war against the Faith Militant. It was good stuff, even though we're not going to get the full story for a long time: this was a section that Martin has removed from The World of Ice and Fire (which will feature a briefer summary of these events) and will instead be part of a book called Fire and Blood (formerly nicknamed the 'GRRMarillion'), a much more detailed account of the reign of the Targaryens. This book will probably be mostly written and published after A Dream of Spring comes out, so don't expect it any time soon.

The Comparative Criticism panel in extreme close-up.

In the afternoon I grabbed a cup of tea with fantasy author Kate Elliott and her daughter, along with blogger and author Foz Meadows. I've long been a fan of Kate's work and it was fun to sit and talk to her about various issues (including dodgy SF books of the 1970s). After that I had my first panel, Comparative Criticism with Paul Kincaid, Roz Kaveney, Nick Lowe and Mahvesh Murad. This panel was interesting as we moved between discussions of the various different forms of SF (as games, TV, film and literature), and Mahvesh gave a fascinating insight into the popularity of SFF and how it is perceived in her native Pakistan (she hosts a very popular literature radio show in Karachi). One of those panels which took a little while to get into its groove, but when it did it was great and of course we ran out of time.

The long-standing GRRM fan group, the Brotherhood Without Banners, hosted a party in the Worldcon Fan Village on Friday night which was a lot of fun, although limited by atmosphere (try hosting an intimate gathering of old and new friends in the corner of an aircraft hanger to get the idea). The excellent punch made up for it though.

The Wheel of Time panel.

Saturday was a busy day on the blogging front. My first panel was on the Wheel of Time, which I helpfully discovered I was moderating fifteen minutes before it started. With WoT legends Harriet McDougal (Robert Jordan's widow) and Maria Simons (his research assistant) on hand, along with fantasy writers Wesley Chu and Peter V. Brett, this was more than a little nerve-wracking. Fortunately, we rallied and a fun panel was had in which some major news was unveiled about The Wheel of Time Companion (see the previous post) and some hope was kindled for those waiting for a WoT screen adaptation. After the panel I got a chance to meet Aidan 'Dribble of Ink' Moher, Justin 'Staffer's Book Review' Landon and authors Myke Cole and Robert Jackson Bennett. We repaired to a local pub for lunch, where (courtesy of Gollancz's Gillian Redfearn) I also met up with French authors Pierre Pevel and Antoine Rouaud. And then Tobias Buckell joined us, because at Worldcon you can't swing a cat without hitting a well-known SF author.

I power-napped through the afternoon (apparently I'm getting too old for these things), which means I missed the 'Coming of Age in Game of Thrones' panel, which by all accounts was a bit of a disaster. Panellists who hadn't read the books (despite the panel being billed as a spoiler zone for all of the novels) and got spoiled on upcoming events, not to mention being considerably less knowledgeable than the audience. I get the idea of bringing in a fresh perspective on the story and that could make for an interesting panel, but this was not billed as such.

I rallied in the evening for a Gollancz-hosted party in the hotel next door and rounded off the evening with a mini-concert in the fan village, because that's just how it rolls at Worldcon.

Sadly, a mock-up.

 Sunday was pretty good. Normally at cons things start winding down in the last few days and fatigue sets in, but not on this day. I picked up some good bargains in the dealers' room and was briefly imprisoned by the HarperCollins team on their stall before making good my escape (having triumphantly blagged an advance copy of the next Joe Abercrombie book). In the afternoon I took part on the 'My Opinions, Let Me Show Them' panel which was tremendous fun. Foz Meadows moderated and myself, Justin Landon (catchphrase: "Brutally, brutally honest"), Aidan Moher and Thea from the Book Smugglers talked about blogging and reviewing for an hour or so. Ken Neth (Nethspace) and James Long (the defunct Speculative Horizons) got shout-outs and there was an important discussion of the differing levels of hostility faced by male and female bloggers.

Our opinions, we showed them.

The evening saw the Hugo Awards. I'd been warned by many people that the Hugos can be an endurance test of epic proportions, complete with scary stories of long ceremonies punctuated by angry rants and tedious back-slapping. This didn't happen in London, with hosts Justina Robson and Geoff Ryman keeping things moving with breezy ease. The whole thing was done in two hours and we could get on with the partying. There were roars of approval as Kameron Hurley won (twice!) and Aidan collected his award, with Ann Leckie taking home the Best Novel award for Ancillary Justice (although part of me still wished Wheel of Time had taken it, for its huge impact on the genre). I was also impressed that the crowd restrained itself from any booing or jeering when the less-popular nominees were announced, with some polite applause and stiff-upper-lippedness ruling the day.

The Hugo Awards, people.

The evening party was mighty, with the ruthless and unrestrained deployment of karaoke. I must confess to partying a little too hard and having to leave rather bleary-eyed on Monday morning.

It was an epic Worldcon, marred a little only by the insane length of the convention hall (approximately 900 metres) which I had to walk six times a day and some chaotic planning with people finding they were moderating panels only minutes before they started. But given the sheer volume of panels and the vast number of attendees, this was by standards a phenomenally-well-organised event. Same time next decade?

My Worldcon schedule

I'm attending LonCon 3, this year's Worldcon in London, and, insanely, have been drafted to appear on three panels. These are as follows (details tentative until confirmed):

Comparative Criticism

Friday 20:00 - 21:00
What are the challenges and constraints of reviewing different kinds of media? Reviewers of books, TV, film and games discuss. Is it possible or desirable to be "an SF critic" when SF is found in so many different forms?
Paul Kincaid, Nick Lowe, Mahvesh Murad, Adam Whitehead, Roz J Kaveney

The Road Goes Ever On and On: The Wheel of Time

Saturday 12:00 - 13:30
With the final volume, A Memory of Light, published last year, and a Hugo nomination for the entire series this year, this seems the perfect time to look back on twenty-four years of the Wheel of Time. Our panel will reflect on Robert Jordan's achievement in creating the series, its runaway success, Brandon Sanderson's completion of the work, and the lasting influence of WoT on the fantasy genre.
Adam Whitehead, Harriet McDougal, Maria Simons

My Opinions, Let Me Show You Them

Sunday 16:30 - 18:00
There are many different approaches to book blogging: some focus on news and announcements, running author interviews and ARC giveaways supported by publishers; others concentrate on reviewing and opinion pieces; still others are devoted to raising awareness of certain types of writing, like SF Mistressworks or the World SF Blog. Our panel discusses how they chose their blogs' format and focus, how the blogs evolved over time, and how they found their 'voice' and their audience.
Foz Meadows, Thea James, Aidan Moher, Adam Whitehead

The rest of the time, I suspect I will be in the bar or gawping at unaffordably rare SFF collectibles.

Blogosphere SOS

My fellow SFF blogger Bookworm Blues has had some major problems just drop on her and is looking for some help. If you can, either through financial donations or are able to provide info or leads on jobs, please check out her post. Many thanks.

Graeme's Fantasy Book Review closes its doors

Graeme's Fantasy Book Review is sadly shutting up shop after almost six years of blogging on everything SF.

Graeme and Pat Rothfuss engaging in a terrifying stare-off. Pat might have won this round.

Sad news. Having enjoyed his blog for many years, met Graeme at quite a few signings and had many a great chat with him, it's a shame to see him hanging up the blogging gloves. Best wishes to him in his future endeavours!

An interview with, er, me

The Fantastical Librarian blog has posted an interview with myself about blogging, reviewing and so forth. Some interesting questions there on why I started the blog and why it has such a silly name :-)

Genre for Japan Appeal

Following the recent devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a group of SF bloggers and professionals have gotten together to raise funds to help in the relief effort.


Blogger Amanda Rutter (of Floor to Ceiling Books), author Louis Morgan, Solaris editor Jenni Hill, blogger Ro Smith and writer Alasdair Stuart have joined forces to create the 'Genre for Japan' appeal, auctioning limited collectibles, rare items and signed books to raise funds for British Red Cross efforts in Japan. Bidding for the items begins on Monday and The Guardian has coverage of the appeal here.

Farewell to Speculative Horizons

Speculative Horizons, that most puissant of blogs, is sadly closing its doors, it was announced today. James Long has joined the mighty SF publishing behemoth that is Orbit and has decided to wind down the blog.

Sad news. Spec Horizons has done some great work over the last few years and it will be sad to see it go. On the other hand, great news for James and his career!

Welcoming the Iceberg Ink Blog

New SFF blogs are ten-a-penny these days, but Iceberg Ink is worth a look as it's been launched by Scott 'QuickTidal', a stalwart contributor over at Malazanempire. The blog looks set to cover a variety of books and comics and, intriguingly, the organisers are willing to accept submissions from people who fancy the idea of writing reviews but not running a blog full-time. Contact details are available via the blog or the thread linked at Malazanempire.

Good luck to Chris, Scott and their future collaborators!

Mine is a Fabulous Blog (apparently)

The Wertzone is apparently a 'fabulous blog' according to the Fantasy Cafe blog. Many thanks for that. Apparently now I have to list 'five things I cannot do without' and my own favourite blogs in response. I would feel compelled to return the favour to Fantasy Cafe, except I hadn't come across it until ten minutes ago, which is quite embarrassing.


Five Things I Cannot Do Without

The Internet.
Books.
Music.
DVDs.
Curry.

Five Blogs of Fabulousness

Graeme's Fantasy Book Review (absolutely not because he bought me a beer once)
Antick Musings (the genre from the publisher's POV, an interesting and different perspective)
A Dribble of Ink (why does everyone else's blog have a better name than mine?)
Speculative Horizons (ah, who also nominated me as well :-) )
Galactica Sitrep (for services to BSG fandom above and beyond the call of duty)

Some new blogs for your consideration

I recently came across SciFiGuy's blog, which is an interesting read covering various strands of spec fic. Plus kudos to him for coming up with a great blog name.

Also, my (actual, real-life) friend Liz has literally just set up her blog Redshift for reviewing books and other items of interest. With a reading speed that puts me to shame, she's already posted four book reviews in as many days. I now feel wholly inadequate. However, that does increase the number of Colchester-based SF&F blogs by 100% that I know of :-)

Online Round-Up Part 2

Forums
Ah, forums. In the grand tradition of the classical civilisation concept that gave them their name, SF&F forums are enlightened places of civilised discussion and debate, where everyone's opinions are respected and the partipiants enjoy partaking in a mutual exchange of ideas for their mutual enrichment.

Okay, maybe not, but relatively SF&F forums are, believe it or not sometimes, among the best out there. Venture into a computer game or TV-based forum, and it won't be long before you're decrying the state of the education system amd the rise of functional illiteracy, whilst pondering if you should be hiring a bodyguard given the reaction you provoked when you very gently suggested that maybe, just maybe, the new Doctor Who isn't quite the single most fantastic thing since sliced bread.

My forum of choice is Westeros. Technically, this is supposed to be the forum dedicated to George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. However, since new novels in the series come out at rather irregular intervals, the fanbase on the forum spends enormous amounts of time discussing other books and authors, as well as TV shows, games, politics etc. You know a forum has 'made it' when increasingly more people are joining up to take part in the discussion who have never read the author the site is supposedly supporting. With nearly ten thousand members, Westeros is also one of the biggest forums out there. The quality of discussion is usually high, and you can find me hanging out there most days, whilst authors such as Peadar O'Guilin, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Pat Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, Brian Ruckley and Richard Morgan have been known to stop by from time to time.

My oldest forum is Wotmania, specifically the 'Other Fantasy' subforum. I first visited this forum ten years ago, not long after it was established, and lurked there for many years. The quality of discussion is likewise high, and unusually for an epic fantasy board discussion of other types of genre is quite frequent. Few people would probably credit a Robert Jordan board for hosting so much discussion of Hal Duncan, M. John Harrison and Jeff VanderMeer. Interestingly and conveniently, the Other Fantasy subforum lumps TV, films and books together, making navigation a breeze compared to some other forums. On the other hand, the forum software is ancient, and the site has an extremely old-fashioned look to it these days.

Malazanempire is of note for Steven Erikson fans who haven't got a clue what is going on in the books. The posters there are extremely knowledgeable of the series and if you poke around you'll find my map of the entire Malazan world, as approved by Erikson himself (although it's not canon and I had to guess at a lot of the stuff, it's apparently pretty close).

SFX is the forum of the British SFX Magazine and is notable for its heavy British bias towards SF&F. Whilst I can't recommend the book discussion section too much (it's often dead for weeks at a time, aside from the 'what are you reading now?' threads), the TV discussion is pretty interesting and it's one of the few forums I've come across with a dedicated anime discussion subforum.

SFFWorld is one of the bigger multi-topic forums out there. Not dedicated to any particular author or subgenre, the breadth of discussion is impressive and the mods and admins know their stuff. There are two criticisms. First off, there sheer mass and number of subforums (14 of them) is a bit off-putting when first confronted. I can't help but feel that other forums have handled having a large breadth of discussion topics somewhat more elegantly. The split between the SF and Fantasy subforums, one of the few boards to do this, also means slightly more work for the casual browser as he has to move between both forums. There are also technical issues. Possibly down to the sheer volume of topics out there, the board is sometimes slow to load and posting a reply can take a long time (often you can hit 'Post Reply', go off to make a cup of tea and come back to find it still hasn't gone through). Despite these minor issues, the quality of discussion on the board is high and there quite a few authors who participate in discussions there, including the likes of Gary Wassner, James Barclay and Scott Bakker.

In terms of membership (although it should be remembered that the membership of any board can be misleading, as old, inactive accounts and alts belonging to the same person are usually counted alongside current accounts), Chronicles Network is allegedly the biggest SF forum out there. However, it's clunkily designed with the number of subforums verging on the insane. Whilst they do keep SF and Fantasy together (but separate Horror from both), they have separated out reviews, a curious decision given that reviews are a primary driver of discussion. Again, however, there is a lot of great discussion to be had there.

Other authors such as Paul Kearney and Brandon Sanderson also run their own forums where interesting, decent discussion can be found. Scott Bakker's forum, Three-Seas, has recently made a bit of a comeback from a long period of quiet and has had a bit of smart makeover. Good to see this board gearing up after the three-year-drought of new material from the author. The new-ish board dedicated to Peter F. Hamilton's works, The Unisphere, is also a good read for those looking for more info on Hamilton's works.

Okay, so that wraps that up. I may continue to update the list as time goes by as other, interesting forums are pointed out.

Online Round-Up Part 1

I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the other blogs that are on the go out there and see what they bring to the table.

Newsletters
The only SF&F-related newsletter I make a point of reading every month is David Langford's Ansible. Langford is a consistently funny, offbeat look at the genre and is an excellent resource for rounding up all the news in the genre in any one month. He's won nearly thirty Hugo Awards for it and his other projects over the years, and it's certainly worth taking a look every month.

Blogs
The biggest blog out there is Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, which recently passed its 1 millionth page-view milestone. The Hotlist remains a valuable resource for reviews, interviews and competitions on the web, even if Pat's scoring system is so complex that it has confounded expert mathmaticians.

Blood of the Muse is a newer blog that has emerged in recent months featuring good book reviews and author interviews and picks up on the defunct Hope I Didn't Give Away the Ending's tradition of showing author's signatures to aid collectors. A good read.

The Bodhisattva is a long-running blog run by Jay Tomio, who knows of what he speaks. Jay gives good quote, does good reviews and expands beyond the standard literary reviews to take in comics as well.

The Book Swede is a solid review blog which also delves into the murky realm of television on occasion. Well worth a look.

Dark Wolf is a newer blogger who has come along in the last few months with a fine site and some good reviews on there.

The Deckled Edge is another solid blog, and carries on a fine tradition of summing up each new week's releases and bestsellers.

Aidan Moher's A Dribble of Ink has become a more impressive blog as time has gone on, adding excellent interviews and keeping abreast of the latest debates and discussions rocking the SF&F blogosphere, as well as doing a good line in those articles about various facets of the genre I occasionally think of doing and then don't because, well, people like Aidan do them better then me. Worth checking out.

In a similar manner, Fantasy Book Critic has become a more intriguing blog of late, with the team of writers expanding to ensure more regular updates and a greater range of subjects covered.

Fantasy Debut has been around for a year now, but missed my attention for quite some time. This blog concentrates on new authors to the genre and on their debut novels. It's a slightly different approach and emphasis which is distinctive, and the blog is quite interesting as a result. You may pick up the first hints of the 'next big thing' here.

Another (relatively) long-term blogger is Ken, whose Nethspace continues to offer worthwhile commentary on the genre (most recently with a scathing attack on the Locus Awards controversy) and is always worth a look.

Fellow 'lemming of discord' (long story) MinDonner runs her blog Sandstorm Reviews at this location, and is well worth a look for her great reviews as well as the colleting of various, merciless parodies of the works of Terry Goodkind.

Larry, aka 'Dylanfanatic', brings a slightly different sensibility to his appreciation of the genre over at OF Blog of the Fallen, which is always interesting.

Graeme's Fantasy Book Review has become one of my most commonly-visited blogs and features good round-ups and review of everying book-related. And I just realised I haven't got this in my links bar. Whoops, sorry Graeme!

Similar apologies must also go to James, whose Speculative Horizons is another excellent blog that's similar gone un-linked by me up to now.

Gabe Chouinard, always one for an interesting debate or review, has his blog Mysterious Outposts here. I will point out that this entry has always been here and was absolutely not added after the fact in the spirit of Soviet revisionism because he commented on the entry. Of course not. Ahem.

Unfortunately, some of my other favoured sites and blogs have gone on hiatus in the last few months:

Darren 'Ariel' Turpin has sadly recently mothballed his excellent UK SF Book News website and reduced his online presence via his blog, The Genre Files, due to a heavy workload in his new job working for Orbit. Best of luck to Darren in his new endeavour, but I hope we continue to hear from him in the future.

My fellow BwBer Race has likewise reduced his blogging frequency over at The Human Race, but hopes he might make a bit of a comeback soon, which would be most welcome.

For various reasons, some of them I believe outside his control, William 'Stego' Lexner's blog, Hope I Didn't Give Away the Ending, continues to be on hiatus. No-one does a good rant like William, but few are as strident in their passion for the genre, and we can but hope for his eventual return to the blogosphere.

Author Blogs
Frankly too many to mention, although I'm sure most people already have Neil Gaiman and George RR Martin's blogs on tap (although in the latter case the constant flamewarring over the release of his new novel is getting a little tiresome). Joe Abercrombie's blog is also becoming an enjoyable blog to read, with occasional TV and movie reviews interspersed with shamelessly outrageous self-promotion. I can also recommend the blogs of Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Melinda Snodgrass (whose latest novel, The Edge of Reason, I've just started reading and is a bit of a stormer), Kate Elliott, Daniel Abraham, Brandon Sanderson, David Deveraux, Tom Lloyd (whose books I really need to read), Lisa Tuttle, Peter F. Hamilton and in particular Peadar O'Guilin, whose blog is quite amusing to read.

Also, not quite an author blog, but I've found the blog of Mojo, a CGI artist who has worked on many major SF TV shows including Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager and Battlestar Galactica, to be thoroughly enjoyable and extremely funny.

This is getting a bit long, so I'll leave off here. Next time, I'll be taking a look at the myriad SF&F fan forums out there.