SF/F Links: The Giveaway Batch
Because there are a lot of book giveaways going on during the month of May, I thought I would have a post dedicated specifically to them. Here goes: J. Kaye’s Book Blog has a copy of Starfinder by John Marco up for grabs. Presenting Lenore has a prize pack of fantasy novels from Penguin to give away. She also has a prize pack of realistic fiction there too, which might be worth checking out. Wendy’s Minding Spot is giving away a copy of Worst Nightmares by Shane Briant. Happy Are We is tossing up some Michael Scott books (The Alchemyst and The Magician), as well as a mug! Sounds good to me! Reading, Writing, and Ranting is letting you choose between winning The Host by Stephanie Meyer or Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris. Fantasy Dreamer has Blue Diablo by Ann Aguirre up for grabs. Win a copy of Dead and Gone: Charlaine Harris plus a signed copy of The Sweet Scent of Blood: Spellcrackers.com, Book 1, here at Suzanne McLeod’s blog to celebrate Dead and Gone being No. 1 on the New York Times list and Suzanne’s book 2’s upcoming release on 16th July 2009. And that’s it for now! Thanks for reading!
SF/F Links: May and a Half!
Another roundup of links for the month of May. The interesting stuff keeps coming and coming. So here goes: Redneck Catholic talks about military science fiction and some classics in the genre. The Other Side of the Story has some great advice on how to write stories the follow the antagonist rather than the protagonist. Will Shetterly talks about anti-racism, which might be worth a look if you’re interested in discussions on the subject of race. Tor.com asks whether alternate history is science fiction. I don’t think it is, except in certain cases, but that’s neither here nor there (or is it? I don’t know, I just say things that sound right sometimes). Attention science fiction writers: these are the 7 unnecessary science fiction worldbuilding details you might want to take note of. Seriously. Jeremiah Tolbert has a short list of four excellent tools for writers. Definitely some good stuff in there. Love books? Me too. Which is why this collection of images from some interesting bookstores around the world made me squeal. Giveaways: So Many Precious Books, So Little Time is also joining in on the Asian Heritage Month giveaways here and the Latino Book Month here. If you read this and decide to enter, please let them know you found out about it here. Ultimate Book Hound has a copy of Sea Changes by Gail Graham to give away. Review From Here has a copy of Stephenie Meyers’ The Host up for grabs. Reviewer X has a copy of The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams to give away. You can also see Steph’s review here. BSC Review has a copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s Secret Lives up for grabs. Cool stuff. Oh and it’s signed! Jenn’s Bookshelf has a huge lot of 20 books up for grabs. Holy moly! Win a copy of Blood Ties: Season 1: DVD [reg 2] and a signed proof of The Cold Kiss of Death at Suzanne McLeod’s blog to celebrate her book’s upcoming release on 16th July 2009.
SF/F Links: Another May Linkup
I’ve got so many links to interesting articles it’s ridiculous. I’ll have another post going up at some point later on in the month too, by the way. Anyway, here are this batch’s links: Here is a really interesting reading list. Some science fiction and fantasy, and some other interesting titles. What happens to your MMORPG characters when you die? This seems so…bizarre and ridiculous. Is online gaming culture this obsessed? Scratch that, they are, I’m just not ready to face it yet. Publiteriat has a great article on three myths in writing. Well worth checking out. Sharon’s Share tells us about a site called Ether Pad, which might be useful for collaborative writing projects. Hmm. Ivor W. Hartmann: New African genre fiction superstar? You be the judge. The Book Publicity Blog talks about sending review copies to bloggers (part two, apparently). Centurean2 has an amazingly long and detailed post about the terrible things happening to freedom in England right now. That’s right: England. One of the supposedly free lands. Read it. It’s disturbing and terrifying. Jeremiah Tolbert tells us about five books on writing that made him a better writer. Might be worth checking out. He also has a list of five lies writers believe about editors, which is quite humorous and pretty much all true. Oh and don’t forget his argument about why Jason Stoddard is wrong about SF (a bit old, but it’s an interesting argument on both sides). Horror World talks about a possible future model for short fiction. It’s interesting and might work. And that’s it for the links this time around! Hope you found them interesting.
SF/F Links: May Won’t Leave Me Alone
What a better way to keep may interesting than to provide a whole bunch more links to nifty articles around the Interwebs? That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Here goes: Want to know how chocolate can save the world? Look no further than this Futurismic article. H. R. Williams talks about writing, the present, the future, and much more. It gets a bit religious-y at the end, but mostly Williams makes some great observations. SMC Philosophy Club talks about the consequences of time travel. Some old stuff here, but also some good observations and thoughts. Futurismic talks about a drug that can drastically improve your ability to recover “lost” memories. Most likely applicable to Alzheimer’s patients, but still wicked awesome! Ursela K. LeGuin gives anti-SF people what for. Damn good stuff, even if you don’t like her writing. David Kramer has an interesting idea for atheists: protest by putting the Bible into the science fiction section of your local bookstore. It’ll probably get you in trouble, but might be worth trying (and might be a funny joke for anyone who isn’t an atheist). China Mieville tells us about fifty SF/F titles that every socialist should read. Crazy list! Michio Kaku answers some interesting questions about time travel, robot takeovers and other physics-related things. Here’s an interesting video interview with Mahmood Mamdani on the politics of genocide. Might be worth a look if you’re interested in history and the present, and colonialism, of course. Book Giveaways: Booking Mama has a copy of The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams to give away. Literary Escapism has a whole lot of books up for grabs to honor Asian Heritage Month and Latino Book Month.
SF/F Links: the Sorta-Bimonthly May Batch
Well, I’ve got quite a lot of links to share with you all. So here goes: Here is some excellent advice on how to take criticism from Copy Write. Great article from Larry Niven on making up words in SF/F. This is a bit old, but I like it: 11 literary references people make without realizing it. I don’t agree that all of them are unknown, but it’s a good list nonetheless. Want to flood the world and see what will happen if Global Warming melts all the ice? Well go no further than here! I’ve used this site for a couple short stories, actually. This writing site is really quite cute. I thought it was for kids at first, but really it’s just using cute monster things to further the writing agenda, which is awesome. Old Bat’s Belfry talks about how she uses social networking for her blog. Might be of interest to some of you out there who are blogging or are interested in it. Also from the author of Old Bat’s Belfry (Mulluane) comes this awesome Squidoo lens that highlights all the twitter feeds for various authors, book bloggers, etc. in the SF/F community. I’m in it, in case anyone is curious (and you can certainly vote me up the list to make me feel more awesome than I already do). I’m not sure how legal this is, but here is a program that allows you to download books from Google Books. The Book Publicity Blog asks whether email is outdated. I don’t think it is, what about you? The Big Bad Book Blog has an awesome list on how much money authors make, along with some nifty sales figures and other interesting stiff about publishing you might want to know. Job Profiles has a list of 50 open source resources for writers. A lot of really nifty stuff there that you might want to check out. Book Giveaways: Books By Their Cover has an enormous giveaway of books. Too many to list here. Go check them out! S. Krishna has a collection of 5 books to give away for Asian American Heritage month! Check it out! Fantasy Dreamer is giving away a copy of S. J. Day’s Eve of Darkness. ScifiGuy has a copy of Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carrey to give away. Reviewer X is giving away a copy of Saundra Mitchell’s Shadowed Summer (a debut novel!). Also of interest is Saundra’s publishing story, which I think is a neat feature over at Reviewer X. Suzanne McLeod is giving away another copy of her new book The Cold Kiss of Death. That’s it for this batch. Enjoy!
SF/F Links: More Early May Stuff
Well, I have many more links. Not much more needs be said. Here goes: From a Sci-Fi Standpoint has an interesting post about why science fiction shouldn’t be seen as an avenue to teach us science. I don’t know if I entirely agree, but it’s still interesting. This is by far one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. It’s called Greater America News and it’s essentially a fake news site set in the future. It’s not completed, unfortunately, but it has a whole bunch of videos highlighting terrorist attacks on a space elevator, and a whole load of other things. You should check it out. Tis awesome and genius. Want to see where popular science fiction and fantasy writers work? Well, go no further than here. Identity Theory has an article on how to read rejection letters. I completely agree. Interested in some interactive maps of war? Well, this site has some in-depth maps showing the various steps during some of the biggest wars in history. Might be worth a look. And now for some book giveaways: Booking Mama has a set of Patrick Carman’s Atherton Series to give away. Suzanne McLeod is giving away a copy of The Cold Kiss of Death. Reviewer X is giving away Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink. You can also find a neat publishing story by Ms. Zink here. And here is the cover for Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix:To add, here is a pretty cool book trailer for the same book as above: You can find more about Silver Phoenix and the giveaway going on here. Prizes include an Amazon gift card! And I think that’s all for this!