INTERACTION

The Demolished Man undemolished in the Guardian.

And now HP Lovecraft

Writer and vampire expert Kevin Jackson whose latest book is Bite: A Vampire Handbook,
lists his top 10 vampire novels in the Guardian.

plus

Alison Flood of The Guardian has done a nice interview with Kim Stanle Robinson about his new book 'Galileo's Dream' here:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/10/kim-stanley-robinson-science-fiction-realist

_________________
My Blog: http://bob-lock.blogspot.com/

Debut novel site: http://www.flamesofherakleitos.com/

Alison Flood looks at what follows "When authors attack"
Candace Sams's threatens to report bad Amazon reviewers of her SF romance to the FBI.

I read some of that thread on amazon, bloody hilarious =D

I was bemused by what appears to be the literary world's equivalent of Rage vs Joe:-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/de ... number-one

Do we feel happy that it's not another celebrity in the #1 spot, or depressed because it's Dan Brown?

Tricky! Very tricky!

_________________
http://trumpetville.wordpress.com
http://ttapress.com/blackstatic/casenotesblog/

Three varied but interesting posts by Alison Flood
Johnathon Ross joins our game on the graphic novel side

Getting banned by US schools is easy, ask Chris Beckett. This is a good one though not SF related other than last century someone might have written of it in a satirical novel.

World of fantasy: The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers reviewed at her readers behest.

Finally got round to listening to this Guardian book blog on SF to find news of a previously unpublished novelby John Wyndham Plan for Chaos from Penguin. They seem to have slipped that out without much publicity. (Seems to be a Dash of Hammett with a slice of Levin except it predates Levin's Boys from Brazil.)

Also The City and the City discussed with China Miéville. Worth a listen despite the prediction we're axiously waiting for George RR Martin's A Dance with Dragons, so boring I can't be bothered to embolden the title.

Didn't quite sound like vintage Wyndham, did it? Interesting though. I believe he wrote quite a lot of formulaic pulp stuff in the 30s under various pseudonyms, before finding his own voice soon after the war.

_________________
http://www.scan-tech.co.uk/mikealx
http://www.myspace.com/veldtmusic
Folder printing high quality presentation folders

I just looked him up on ISFDBand yes he has a raft of material, novels, serialised novels and short stories - under other names - going back to 1931. 20 years prior to Triffids.

'Formulaic'? I don't know. Maybe he found the non-formulaic was rejected.

Sorry, I didn't intend to sound too pejorative, but I think Wyndham himself grew exasperated with the stuff that was popular pre-war, and after WWII developed a very clear vision of what he did and didn't like and what kind of stories he wanted to tell. In particular he wanted to move away from heroic characters and concentrate on the everyman overwhelmed by events (perhaps anticipating PKD's typical "little man" protagonists).

_________________
http://www.scan-tech.co.uk/mikealx
http://www.myspace.com/veldtmusic
Folder printing high quality presentation folders

No worry, I was surprised I'd not seen much publicity. I rang Penguin suggesting they advertise in IZ as a tribute to JW's long history with magazines and SF magazines in particular but the chap dealing with Plan for Chaos said there was no budget for advertising.

Penguin brought low so I thought I'd mention it here. We're a generous lot at TTA.

Not a great review for Plan For Chaos here....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/ja ... hn-wyndham

_________________
"Beyond Lies the Pub"