A Few Odds and Ends

This post is going to be all over the place. An update of what I'm up to, a few links of potential interest, and the usual photo of books I've received. So, let's get to it.

 

•  And I'm behind on reviews again, which is a surpise to know one who actually reads this blog. I owe my review for Fortress Frontier by Myke Cole (Indiebound, Book Depository, Amazon) soon, though he's getting so much press from pretty much every other blogger that I may make it pretty brief. I also need to write a review for The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman (Indiebound, Book Depository, Amazon) , which I liked a lot.
 
• I just finished up The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher (Indiebound, Book Depository, Amazon) which was honestly a rather pleasant surprise. This may be the next review I write just so that it gets some press it deserves - it was released on Tuesday the 22nd. But until then, I'll throw out a couple of links - a guest post by Belcher and a interview with Belcher.
 
• Today Brandon Sanderson did a Tor Chat over on Twitter, mostly about A Memory of Light and The Wheel of Time (the transcript is here). Of course I asked a few questions and he answered a couple, but the most interesting to me was that he revealed the identity of the point of view for the deleted chapter that will be published as a short story in the forethcoming Unfettered anthology (details here). That point of view is Bao the Wyld - those who have read A Memory of Light know the other name we know him as. I'm excited! (my review of A Memory of Light, a spoiler reaction, and an interview with Brandon about it) Edit: below is the quote from the TorChat:

“River of Souls,” the forthcoming Wheel of Time short story featured in Unfettered is a collection of scenes that illustrate Demandred/Bao the Wyld’s story leading up to A Memory of Light.

• Along those lines, Jason over at Dragonmount has been good to me over the years with throwing a lot of traffic my way. So, I'll potentially throw some back at him - he's doing a Kickstarter for fantasy movie he's producing - it just needs the final touches at this point and the goal has just about been met. Consider giving it some support.
 
• The rebooted Amazing Stories is live now. I'll actually be contributing periodically.
 
• I've been fan of the Wheel of Time audiobooks for a while now - I use them as re-reads for the series and it's a great way to pass the time during my weekly 2.5-hour commute that I do for work. The folks over at Macmillan audio gave me a sample of Chapter 3 of A Memory of Light - check it out.
 
 
 
• And finally, below is the photo of books I've received in the last month or so.
   

Books Received: December 24, 2012 - January 23, 2013

Thoughts and Links

I don't typically do link posts these days, but I've seen a lot of fun and interesting things, so I decided it was worth a full post.

• Apparently a few copies of A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin  (Book Depository, Powell's Books, Indiebound) got shipped early by Amazon in Germany and fans are anxious, spoilers are appearing, and bunch of folks have their panties in a bunch. Oh well, I find it amusing, but I can see the issues.

• China Mieville created a monster for Mark Charan Newton - how cool is that!

• I can't say that I watch much many beauty pageants so it's through the links of others that I found out that the latest Miss USA show actually asked contestants if evolution should be taught in schools. As a scientist (and also as a religious person) I find the very concept horrifying and fear the future of a country that refuses to believe in science. Thankfully I'm not alone, and others are much more humorous than I - should math be taught in schools? (trust me, it's brilliant) Oh, and the actual winner was one of the few who stood up for evolution (and she's a big fan of George R.R. Martin).

• I posted a mini-review* of Wolfsangel by M.D. Lachlan (Book Depository, Powell's Books, Indiebound) last night. The good folks over at @tordotfantasy retweeted the link. Apparently M.D. Lachlan (@mdlachlan) - a pseudonym for author Mark Barrowcliffe - didn't like that @tordotfantasy would tweet an ultimately negative review. I find that sort of public reaction fascinating, amusing and a bit troubling and unprofessional. I also find it troubling that @tordotfantasy quickly tweeted a link to a more positive review that Lachlan suggested. It's not so much that @tordotfantasy tweeted another review, it's the apparent influence that the author has. The inevitable question is do authors advocate for what reviews get tweeted (or not) for folks like this?

• I've always considered Orson Scott Card to be a real asshat, but this old article that is new to me really brings home the point - oh, and it's entirely possible that OSC didn't actually write Ender's Game, which it turns out is basically retelling of the life of Hitler (according to the article anyway).

*For me, a mini-review is something short and to the point. There is very little detail or supporting evidence, just my quick opinion of a book. Basically, either I don't have the time or I don't have the inclination to write a full review.

A Few Links, Comments and Commentary

Yesterday Representative Matt Dean, the Republican House Majority Leader in Minnesota learned a hard lesson – petty insults (pencil-necked little weasel) and misrepresentation of facts (lying) regarding Neil Gaiman are a big mistake. He had the gall to say in a speech on the floor that he hated Neil Gaiman and then called him a thief for taking a speaking fee at a Minnesota library (that came from a voter-approved fun in part to support the arts). Gaiman’s intelligent, slightly understated, and always creative reactions to it all have only made Representative Dean look like a complete idiot. Minnesota Republicans – do you really want that guy representing you? Links of relevance: Neil Gaiman’s blog about it, an interesting interview with Gaiman, and Representative Dean’s sorry excuse of an apology that only makes him look like more an idiot.

Naill Alexander, aka The Speculative Scotsman, wrote an interesting post about George RR Martin with quite a bit of it dedicated to discussion of the long delay between books and the fans that are very unhappy with it. Really, the post or the comments don’t add anything new to the debate – it’s all the usual talk complete with Adam of The Wertzone stepping into defend Martin. The exception of course is Hal Duncan’s comment – which is absolutely brilliant. I really wonder what Martin thinks of it.

Some Interesting Sh!t

It's been a while since I've done a link post, but enough things have caught my eye over the past few days that I think it's worth it. So, enjoy!

• The Hugo Award nominations came out over the weekend and as usual people have been reacting - often negatively. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of awards in general, and I'm especially not a fan of the Hugos. But here are a couple of interesting reactions that have inspired me to comment.

• Check out this essay about authority, heroism, death and fantasy. It's long but interesting.

• It sounds as if George R.R. Martin has actually finished A Dance With Dragons (Book Depository, Powell's Books, Indiebound). I've always said I'll believe it when I see it, so until the book is in hand I'm in official denial that he killed Kong.

Updates and Info

Struggles in my personal life both continue and continue to improve. But I’m still not even back to full time with work, so if I don’t have time for work, I certainly am not left with much time for something like blogging. I still manage an hour or two a day with reading (sometimes longer if I let my daughter sleep on me during the day), so I’m reading quite a bit, I’m just not finding the time to write up my reviews. They will come, just slowly. Below is a list of books I’ve finished but not yet reviewed (except The Crippled God which I’m about half-way through).

Forthcoming reviews (when I can get to them):

·         The Dark Griffin by K.J. Taylor (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound)

·         The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound)

·         The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound)

·         Never Knew Another by J.M. McDermott (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound)

·         Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound)

·         The Crippled God by Steven Erikson (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound)

The state of those reviews ranges from nothing to detailed notes to (really) rough drafts. Even though I list them in the order that I finished (with The Dark Griffin finished back in early January) I doubt reviews will come in that order. I expect I’ll publish a review for Wise Man’s Fear on the day it’s released – March 1^st. The Crippled God will also get priority once finished. Never Knew Another is a bit closer to publishable review than others so it could show up as soon as early next week. We’ll see.

And because I don’t want this post to all about me, below are a few links that may be of interest.

A few links of potential interest:

·         Here are the details to Steven Erikson’s upcoming UK tour. Unfortunately there are no plans for a US tour any time soon (maybe someone should start up a campaign to get him over here). Also, Erikson has posted up a few series-ending notes of appreciation for his fans – awww shucks…that was nice of him.

·         So, the blogosphere got it’s panties in a bunch when some nut-job conservative said a bunch of stupid and ill-informed things about the modern state of the fantasy genre – pointing fingers at some its most popular authors. Reactions have been swift and varied, sometimes quite reasonable and informed, sometimes they are even more crazy than the original post, and some try to set themselves above it all. And various author-types keep showing up in the comments – especially in Abercrombie’s reaction. For me – apathy.

·         A mass coronal eruption could affect technology – or at least result in cool aurora visible pretty far from the poles.

Links for a Slow Day

Work at the moment is boring me to death, so I’ve decided to distract myself and share with you some those disractions. So, what’s up around the blog – well, I’m about halfway through The Passage by Justin Cronin (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound). This is one of the huge $$ acquisitions that created quite the bidding war in the publishing industry a few years ago. One result is that it’s being pushed hard and is a book that you’ll probably hearing quite a bit about. So far I have to say that it is very good and I can see why it’s getting this level of attention (not sure about the million dollar+ advance though). Stephen King’s The Stand (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) with better writing and vampires (well, kinda-sorta vampires anyway) – but it’s even better than that. Anyway, on to a few links…

• Lightspeed, a new science fiction magazine – Why a New Science Fiction Magazine, and Why Now?

• An interesting post and an interesting anthology that I’d love to read: Give Me Something to Believe In: Spriritual Quests and the Search for Truth in SF and Fantasy – partially about Dark Faith anthology edited by Maurice Broaddus (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound)

• Author Jim C Hines on writing about rape

• Sam Sykes has a fun recap for the Phoenix Comicon – John Scalzi has several as well (don’t miss the one about Sam).

• On the subject of John Scalzi – write fan fic about John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton for a good cause.

• N.K. Jemisin rants about African American Sections in book stores and libraries and objects to her book being placed there.

• I recently reviewed Shadow’s Son by Jon Sprunk (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) – read the first chapter on-line.

• And for something more random and geo-related: A really spectacular sink hole opened up in Guatamala during the floods last weekend (hopefully no injuries occurred, as reported).
  
  

Links O’Stuff

So, as usual, here I am saying just how busy I am. Part of it has been very satisfying (my garden is looking pretty great), but the rest has just been exhausting. Busy with work, busy at home, life decides to throw me a curve ball that nobody saw coming, but I persevere. I hope I can even find some reading time soon (in the last week, I’m guessing I’ve only managed 2 or 3 hours of reading). I’m almost finished with Kraken by Miéville (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) – just one more evening should do it. Maybe tonight, maybe I’ll take a break from work this afternoon, or maybe I won’t get to it until next week. We’ll see, but I hope to have a review up soon.

I’ll be traveling to St. Louis for a few days and then I’m hoping things will slow down enough for me to breath, sleep and read. Of course the reality is that I’ll probably come back with even more responsibilities and be busier than ever. *sigh*

Anyway, onto some interesting links:

• NPR’s Fresh Air has an interesting story all about ebooks, Amazon, publisher, the iPad, etc. I only heard parts, but it sounded informative.
  


• I have 299 followers on Twitter. Let’s see if we can bump that over 300.
  


• What happens when a snarky social columnist attends a books signing for authors of SFF/urban fantasy/paranormal romance and records everything on Twitter?
  


• Corvus Books is a new independent publisher imprint of Grove/Atlantic with a very promising looking catalog for SFF fans. Authors include Jeff VanderMeer, Chris Beckett, David Wingrove and Tim Powers.
  


• And because I’m a geologist and lots of cool geological things have been going on lately…a video of that volcano in Iceland that no-one can properly pronounce. You can actually see shock waves from the explosions. And to go with it, a link to a collection of some great pictures of the eruption.
  
  
  

Links to Stave Off….

It’s been a mix of a ‘blah’ kind of week and extremely hectic with lots of work to do. And I’m not finding near enough time to watch curling. Anyway, here are a few links.

As the picture shows, I got mail from Patrick Rothfuss – how cool is that? I won prize in for donating to his Heifer International Worldbuilder’s charity fundraiser, which raised nearly $200,000. I got a signed copy of The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound, my review) – free signed books are always cool, but I wish it were a book I didn’t already have. Not that I’m complaining.

SyFy is Time Magazine’s third worst corporate name change.

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) won’t be published in the US until Spring 2011 at the earliest – hopefully there’s still a chance of 2010 release for the UK.

A snarky interview with authors Blake Charlton and Gail Carriger.

I was mind-melded again at SFF Signal – this time about SFF TV shows that should be remade. I have no qualification for this at all, so I attempt humor.

Mark Charan Newton has an idea, a crazy idea. It’s an opportunity for writers to plagiarize remix his fiction. Personally, I’m holding out for Pride of Newton and Zombies – clearly a best-seller.

Author Sam Sykes interviews some bloggers (supposedly I’m in line – last I believe). An aside – what would you do if you found out that this guy lives in the same area as you?

And last, since I am a geologist and landslides are cool…

Links that Happened While Amazon Failed

So I wanted to start this week out with a good, efficient go at work. Well Amzonfail over the weekend pretty much ended that, but here are a few other things of interest that happened (didn’t Apple make some announcement last week?).

• Steven Erikson is blogging (sort of) – we’ll see where this goes.

• RIP Kage Baker – I really enjoyed her books and short stories, she’ll be missed by many.

• I’m in another Inside the Blogosphere over at Grasping for the Wind – Who introduced you to the love of reading?

• Suvudu takes on George R.R. Martin Detractors (again). This time he asks for support from A Dribble of Ink, The Wertzone, and Jeff’s Fantasy Review. I predict this will end in a flame war (because I am just that good).

• The Speculative Scotsman and Floor to Ceiling Books are two new blogs that I’m enjoying.

Snow Day Links

I’m looking out of my office window to beautiful blue skies reflecting on the snow covered trees and 10 inches of new snow. Storm number 2 is expected tonight with another 12 inches or so of snow. And the big storm gets here on Thursday. 2-4 feet of snow are expected with that one. Preschool is canceled and my wife and I will take turns working and playing until school is back in session (my guess is it won’t be until next week). So, it’s a snow day and I’ll need to get some work done, so it’ll probably be quite around here until next week. Enjoy!

• World’s collide when two Arizona book bloggers meet (not really, just a fun coincidence that surrounded the Brandon Sanderson signing last November). Plus a giveaway for a signed copy of The Gathering Storm.

• Charlie Huston comes to terms with not having a new book in the next 2 years – now, can the readers?

• Adam at The Wertzone celebrates the 20th Anniversary of The Wheel of Time. The Eye of the World was published in January, 1990. I started reading The Wheel of Time about 15 years ago – reading this series led me to the internet to talk about books. Which lead me to participate more and more on forums. Which let me to my love of the SFF genre. Which led me to start a blog. The Wheel of Time will always be special to me.

• Matt Stover has some new on-line digs.

• Bloomsbury still insists on white-washing cover art. Shame, shame, shame.

• Some interesting thoughts on racefail in SFF from author N.K. Nesmin. As the above link indicates, there is still a long way to go.

• Toby Maguire as Bilbo Baggins (please, please, NO!)

• “You keep using that book. I do not think you know what it means.”

• In case you haven’t heard – Kage Baker is battling cancer. And the outlook is grim. Wish her well.

• Congrats to Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer on their engagement

Some Links to Keep Your Mind Off of Being Back at Work

Are you lamenting being back at work? Waste some time…

• It’s comic book appreciation month over at Temple Library Reviews

• Pyr is nominated as publisher of the decade – I have to agree, they do great stuff

• Tor has a new podcast: The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

• Go buy the Sci Fi Songs by John Anealio CD – great original songs inspired by SFF books and movies.

• Realms of Fantasy is doing a “Women in Fantasy” issue – men need not apply. What do you think – lots of discussion going on at Jim C. Hines’ blog.

• Rumors are that Kirkus Reviews may come back to life.
  

Holiday Week Links

Well, many of us unplug from the internet around the holidays – and then quite a few us retreat back to the ‘net after (too) much time with family :). As a result, it can be slow but there are also a number interesting happenings going on. So, here are some links that I’ve busied myself with lately.

• Larry at the OF Blog of the Fallen has a few observations about ‘best of’ lists, primarily a lack of female authors making these lists. Jeff over at Fantasy Book News and Reviews contemplates this further – his a gender-biased reader?

• Mark C. Newton started some interesting discussion on review blogs and I jumped right into the middle of it.

• The David Gemmell Legend Award long-list is up for voting. I’m not a big fan of voting scheme. There is also the new Morningstar for Best Fantasy Newcomer/debut – Edit: voting is open.

• SFFMeta is a new website that collects reviews of SFF books. It’s a great site, though I’m not a big fan of their scoring system.

Links Return

I haven’t done a link post in a while, but I think there’s some interesting stuff out there these days, so here we are.

• Patrick Rothfuss’ Worldbuilder’s fundraiser through Heifer International – give to a good cause and win cool prizes.

• Mark Charan Newton says ‘Science Fiction is Dying and Fantasy Fiction is the future’. A few people disagree – I think he has a pretty good point.

• It’s a couple weeks past it’s Twitter prime, but I really laughed at this:
  
  
  

Milestone Links

So, a couple days ago I reached a technical milestone – the SiteMeter hit counter that I put on the blog within a couple of days of it’s creation back in February 2006 officially went over 100,000 visitors. Of course, this is something of an imaginary milestone since SiteMeter reportedly misses up to 30% of visitors and since something around half of my readership occurs through RSS feeds and wouldn’t be counted. So, the reality is I probably crossed over 100,000 quite some time ago (and who knows where it really stands in terms of unique vs. repeat and all that). But anyway, it’s a milestone and source of a bit of pride (even though in terms of my blogger peers, I’m only mid-level in terms of visitors – for comparison, I’m roughly an order of magnitude less than Pat over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist).

Anyway, enough narcissism around here and on to a couple links:

Brandon Sanderson’s tour dates for The Gathering Storm (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound) have been announced. I plan on being at the Arizona signing. In related news, apparently there will be some big Wheel of Time announcements at this-weekend’s DragonCon.

The Agony Column interviews authors from The Very Best Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound), including Peter Beagle, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Swanwick, Mary Rickert, Jeffrey Ford, John Kessel, Delia Sherman, Ellen Klages, Gene Wolfe, Charles de Lint, and Fantasy and Science Fiction publisher Gordon Van Gelder.

That’s it – enjoy your holiday weekend (if you’ve got one anyway).

A Link Post Where I Once Again Say How Busy I Am

The title kinda says it all – I’m busy. Work is busy, I’ve been traveling a lot, we’ve had visitors at the house, and I’ll be camping next weekend. The truth is that I love being busy, but the result is that I’m not as active here as I like – and I’m now 3 reviews behind and counting (though I suspect it’ll take me a while to get through the nearly 900 pages of Dust of Dreams).

Anyway, I like to do the occaisional link post, and I’m behind on that too – but here are few that I just can’t let slide.

• Grasping for the Wind doesn’t want anyone’s Technorati ranking to slide, so he’s got an even bigger SF/F/H Reviewer Link-Up Meme. It’s really a great database, but far too long for me to post here.

• Peter over at Ubiquitous Absence wants to jump into the blogger-interview game. His first taker is Pat from Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. Pat has some very kind words to say about Neth Space. Without the help and support that Pat has given me over the years (both public and private), Neth Space wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful as it is. So Pat, the beer is on me if/when we ever get to meet-up in person.

• Matt Staggs has (re)invented GreenPunk.

• EDIT: Lev Grossman, author of the new fantasy novel THE MAGICIANS and book critic at Time magazine, will be doing a live chat this Wednesday from 12:30pm – 1:30pm EST at Penguin’s Water Cooler site.

Links Before the Break

As with quite a few people out there, work has been a bit slow (which explains the number of posts in June being much higher than typical). I’m still gainfully employed and I’m not worried for my job, but it also means I can’t be choosy about the work I accept. So, after all this rambling, I’ll be largely out-of-pocket next week working in the field in the high plains of north-eastern Arizona. Days will be long and internet access is an unknown quantity (though I should have it in the evenings). Combined with my typical quite over the weekends (family time and generally far too hectic for much time on-line), Don’t expect to see much activity around here for a while (the following week I have a family reunion on the back end, so it could be a long while). The good news is that I expect that the field world will allow me a fair bit of reading time as I watch other people do actual work.

Anyway, here are a few links that I’ve found interesting.

• A publisher weighs the value of blogs

• A huge discussion over at Jeff VanderMeer’s blog – honestly, I haven’t read any of it

• SciFi Songs had an anniversary last week – go get some cool, geeky songs

• Orbit books is looking for the most awesomely bad SFF cover

• It going to be an El Nino year – looks like it’ll be a snowy winter

• Brandon Sanderson answered a bunch of questions over Twitter – it kind of worked, but had bugs (like when he had to log-in with his wife’s account because Twitter locked him out). Now he’s over at the Barns & Noble book club forum.

Links Seeking Independence

A 3-day weekend approaches for the US and I’m sure I’ll be off-line for most of that time. So, I figure I’ll share some links that have found my eye over the past few days.

• It shouldn’t be a surprise that some SFF authors are suffering the same sort of troubles as many around the world. Two of them have reached a point of desperation to keep food on the table that leads to inspiration – they are publishing stories on-line and asking for donations to support their efforts. If you can, do them a favor, read the stories and donate. Catherynne Valente – The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and Tim Pratt – Bone Shop.

• A colony of ants is taking over the world – seriously. One-Thousand welcomes to our new ant overlords!

• Libraries often sell books for the benefit of charity, but have problems getting the word out to people who happily give those books a home. BookSaleManager aims to make this easier.

• Most people never realize that around the world at any given time there are some spectacular volcanic eruptions occurring. Saraychev in the Kuril Islands (part of Russia, and north of Japan) has been blowing its top off lately – messing up air travel in that part of the world and emitting enough sulfur dioxide to make sunsets look nice world-wide. Anyway, NASA caught some incredible images of the eruption a few weeks ago. Enjoy!
  
  
  

Links of Infamy

Well, I did some links earlier this week, but today there is enough of interest going on that I need to share some more.

• First, blogger Adam of The Wertzone (posts as Werthead on many message boards) and some others have uncovered what appears to be the infamous Robert Stanek on a campaign to defame some popular SFF authors – most notably Patrick Rothfuss, but also David Louis Edelman and Jim C. Hines. This despicable beyond words and Amazon’s refusal to act on this over the years amounts to complicity in my mind – another point against them. You can find discussion on the matter blossoming across the web.

• Tor has a ‘publisher-agnostic’ bookstore. Basically, they want to a specialty on-line bookseller of SFF books, and they will happily sell books published by other publishers. Press release and blog announcement.

• And Tor was kind enough to pass on the following interview with Brandon Sanderson where he discusses Warbreaker (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound) – which I hope to read soon – and his forthcoming series, The Way of the King (which has some very humorous fake reviews on Amazon).

Yawnday Links

It’s Monday and I’m thoroughly unmotivated. I’m tired and the beautiful day outside makes me just want to sit back and read in the backyard instead of working (I really need a hammock for days like today). So, while avoid work and even writing a review of Green by Jay Lake (which was pretty good), I’ll give you some links that have helped me along with my procrastinating.

Note: As I was writing this up yesterday (which is why the day referenced above is off), my computer blew up in a weird metaphorical way. I spent some time reading outside while the anti-virus programs were doing their scans. Things are pretty-well back to normal now.

• China Mièville shocks the world by proclaiming that J.R.R. Tolkien actually rocks

• Nightshade Books has a 50% off sale

• Christians seeking their right to publicly burn gay books (and sue because of all the harm those evil books cause)

• SF Signal asks about the influence of Literary Awards (particularly those in the SFF world)

• A SFF-review blogger takes up the challenge of small and POD press. I predict Sturgeon underestimated in this case, but I’m curious to see.

• Another Indiana Jones movie in the works? Please no – you destroyed franchise enough with that last movie which shall remain nameless.

• Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt Coming to the US

Links to Waste Time With

It’s been a busy week for me, but here are a few links I’ve found interesting.

• Orbit is looking for a summer intern – I’d be interested if I lived anywhere near New York, if I could afford to live on what I imagine is much less than I currently make, and if I was actually qualified in any way.

• I’ve pretty much avoided what is the SFF blogosphere controversy of the week – all those professionals are getting their undies in a bunch.

• Mark Charan Newton responds to my review of Nights of Villjamur – kind of anyway.

• Welcome to the blogosphere: Sci-Fi at Borders: Babel Clash

• Matt Staggs lets me know of a contest he’s running (and Jeff VanderMeer one-ups him).
  
  Have you ever struck a blow for anarchy? Done something surreal just because it felt good and they couldn't stop you? Crossed the border just to say you had? Stuck your gun somewhere you shouldn't've? Been chased across countries while trying to remember who you are? Okay, so that last one is the novel "Chaos" by the hot Dutch writing couple Escober, but you get the point. Tell us about the biggest thing you ever done to spread "chaos" and we'll enter you in a drawing for a one-of-a-kind gift pack featuring our new book "Chaos", plus:
  
  A military issue map bag containing:
  (1) compass with sighting mirror
  (1) copy of the U.S. Army's Guerilla Warfare and Special Forces Ops field guide
  (1) beret
  (1) grenade (deactivated - you think we're crazy?)
  (1) pair of leather bootlaces
  (1) camouflage T-shirt, suitable for disappearing without a trace
  
  Send your story of complete chaos to deepeight@live.com before June 30, 2009 to enter.

• Edit: And one more. After this discussion on conflicts of interst in reviewing, is this declaration a bit over the top?