Author: kwoll

Liz Bourke, in her recent Sleeps with Monsters column, lists some highly anticipated new titles, including:

Winter’s Orbit by Everine Maxwell (February 2)
Two princes have to make an arranged marriage work, or their empire will fall. Secrets, lies, misunderstandings, romance, and space opera politics. I read an advance copy of this accomplished debut, and I look forward to seeing it out in the world.

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard (February 9)
I read an advance copy of Fireheart Tiger, a new standalone fantasy novella from the author of Tea Master and the Detective and In the Vanishers’ Palace, and yes, 2021 is sure to be improved by it. A jewel of a novella, concerned with power and affection, colonialism and independence, and complicated interpersonal interactions, it’s a delight to read.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine (March 2)
Sequel to the award-winning A Memory Called Empire, A Desolation Called Peace revisits Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass as a crisis on the Teixcalaanli empire’s borders—and on the borders of Lsel Station—calls for diplomatic skills. Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is faced with an alien threat that she can’t communicate with and that she can’t easily destroy. Mahit and Three Seagrass share an impossible task while negotiating the boundaries of an empire that, like all empires, is difficult to work for without being consumed by.

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (April 27)
Murderbot and a murder mystery. Who in the world could turn that down?

— read the full list at Sleeps With Monsters: Most Anticipated Books For 2021 at Tor.com

PS Publishing has announced that it will take over publication of Interzone magazine from TTA Press, which also produces the Black Static and Crimewave magazines. Ian Whates of NewCon Press will replace Andy Cox as editor.

PS co-founder Peter Crowther said, “The call came on the Saturday before Christmas Day, from Andy Cox, Main Man of Interzone magazine who wanted to know if I fancied taking on IZ’s production reins, thereby giving Andy a well-earned break.”

— Locus Online, https://locusmag.com/2021/01/ps-publishing-to-take-over-interzone/

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop made the famous science fiction theme tune and worked with the Beatles. Now it is preparing to make history

The Radiophonic Workshop has always broken new sonic ground, from the Doctor Who theme to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now they’re at it again – this time using the internet as a musical instrument.

A performance of Latency will take place at a special online event on 22 November using a technique inspired by lockdown Zoom calls. The band includes composers from the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which created soundtracks for most BBC shows from the 60s to the 90s and influenced generations of musicians from Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield to Aphex Twin, Orbital and Mary Epworth.

“The idea [of playing the internet] reflected our time,” said workshop member Peter Howell. “We’re all subject to the internet now in a way that we never thought we would be. And Bob and Paddy came up with an idea that is literally using what we’re all relying on for a creative purpose, using something that we’ve all taken for granted but in an artistic way.”

[…]

The internet has an unpredictable natural lag, or latency, caused by the milliseconds it takes for electrical signals from one computer to reach another, as anyone using Zoom has experienced.

The trick that Earland and Kingsland discovered was that they could extend the internet’s delay from a few milliseconds into several seconds. Instead of trying to play at the same time, the Radiophonic Workshop will play one after another – in sequence, rather than in parallel.

“We had the bright idea of using that latency to make a loop of music,” Earland said. “The sound gets sent to someone, and they add to it, and it keeps going round. So you’re not relying on everyone being on the same clock.”

By James Tapper, from The Guardian, 15 Nov

Last weekend saw several hundred sf fans enjoy an online sf convention designed to provide social spaces for people to chat, discuss, debate and play as they might in a face-to-face convention. Punctuation Con was organised by GUFF winner Alison Scott and her colleagues from the #octothorpe podcast; they used Zoom, Discord and Streamyard to present panels and talks, provide rooms for group games and discussion, and encourage fans to talk about their passions. The Aussie Drinks Room included people from Adelaide, Canberra and Wellington as well as the curious fans from around the world. Bilby and Kwoll agree that it was a very well done convention, and hope to use some of these ideas in a mini con in January next year. (VirConium?)

As part of planning for an online minicon, we’re going to hold some Zoom sessions to test out ideas on Saturdays over the next few weeks (around 8pm Adelaide time, so that overseas fans can join in if they wish). If you’re interested in taking part (we’re looking for guinea pigs), contact Roman (websmith@internode.on.net)

Over the past seven years, Michael Swanwick presented a new fiction series at Tor.com, consisting of stand-alone stories all set in the same world—an alternate fin de siècle Europe shot through with magic, mystery, and intrigue. The first nine in a projected series of 21 are published by Tor.

Please read a few or perhaps all of the stories in the series. They can be found on the Tor.com website, listed in order on this page: Mongolian Wizard

While this is the last in our set of formal meetings, we will be planning a gathering in early december. If we aren’t under strict lockdown, perhaps dinner in a restaurant; otherwise a zoom gathering for a chat/puzzle/game/panel*

The Midnight Circus, Jane Yolen (Tachyon 978-1-61696-340-8, 242pp, $16.95, tp) October 2020.

The Midnight Circus is the third collection of Jane Yolen stories from Tachyon in the last three years, following The Emerald Circus (which won a World Fantasy Award in 2018) and How to Fracture a Fairy Tale. Collectively these rather modest volumes are giving us a pretty good sense of what a Selected Stories volume might look like, and it might look pretty important. Yolen’s aston­ishing bibliography, closing in on 400 volumes as I write this (and who knows, maybe passing 400 by the time you see it) represents an almost unprecedented synthesis of centuries of worldwide tale-telling, at all levels, from kid’s board books to challenging novels of the Holocaust.

— full review by Gary K Wolfe at Locus