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Friday Miscellany
Jim C. Hines — ... 3. I'm working on a follow-up post to the anger issue. Right now it's simmering in my brain, but hopefully I'll have something coherent soon. In the meantime, Mary Anne Mohanraj wrote up a long and thoughtful post about racism and privilege on John Scalzi's blog which I think is worth reading, even if you don't agree with 100% of what she says. She's planning a second post specifically for writers. I'm looking forward to it. ...

Race and Culture and Writing and Stuff
The Mumpsimus — ... There are now a variety of ways to get summaries of what happened, and some of them are linked to in the first part of Mary Ann Mohanraj's excellent two-part post at John Scalzi's Whatever blog. Here's part one. ...

Links for 14th March 2009
Velcro City Tourist Board — ... cheap. Getting in a car or on a train or a plane? Analogue. Expensive. Non-renewable. By contrast, downloading an album, watching a webcast concert, watching TV: digital. Endlessly replicable, virtually instantly transmitted, cheap." Tagged with: technology • futurism • economics • travel • oil • price • virtual • digital • telecommuting • Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed, Part I "I learned (or re-learned, because ...

March 16, 2009 Links and Plugs
Bibliophile Stalker — ... interviews Peter S. Beagle. Alethea Kontis interviews J.F. Lewis. Critical Hits interviews Monte Cook. Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast interviews Dave McKean. BBC interviews Bruce Sterling. Publishers Weekly interviews Tom Lloyd. Bookspot Central interviews Peter Brett. Advice/Articles Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed (1, 2). Jeff Vandermeer on Finch in 24 Hours and Finch Finished: Killing Deadlines ...

Essay: Why I Promote Philippine Speculative Fiction
Bibliophile Stalker — ... here in the Philippines (which is to say we--especially myself--are not without our own prejudices and biases). My honest reaction to the debate is that I sympathize with both sides. Both parties bring up good points. But on the other hand, there's also parts where I'm simply shaking my head and again, participants on both sides are at fault. It's difficult finding the balanced response and thankfully, I didn't have to write it: Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed Part 1 and ...

Science Fiction, Race and Fandom
Biology in Science Fiction — ... that breaks the fictive illusion for me. I just re-read some Heinlein, and while I still have a terrible fondness for the old man, his women are so painfully unrealistic, so lacking in identity, that I can't read them as real people. Which means I can't care about them, which means that on a deep and profound level, the story has failed.3 (Mary Anne also has two posts on John Scalzi's blog on race, science fiction and fantasy: Part 1 and Part 2.) Puella Nerdii: RaceFail '09; or Art Does Not Exist in a ...

John Scalzi - "Alien Animal Encounters" (short story, humor, free)
Variety SF — ... of short tales about human encounters with alien animals (plus one of an alien's encounter with an earth animal). Light reading. Joke in the last one went over my head, & is probably comprehensible to only US folks. Fact sheet. First published: Strange Horizons, 15 October 2001. Rating: B. Download full text from publisher's site. [via Mary Anne Mohanraj] Related: Stories of John Scalzi. ...