Day: June 27, 2006

Flag amendment fails. Yet again. Back into its hole for another year. Thank you to the 34 senators whose brains are not made of cottage cheese on this matter.

I’ve been informed that most copies of Subterranean Magazine issue #4 were mailed today and the rest will be mailed tomorrow, so those of you who have ordered copies: Here they come!

(And those of you who have not ordered a copy: It’s not too late to turn away from a life of deprivation. Here’s the link. Just $6 for 18 fabulous stories! Come on!)

A banner day for SF/F lovers, today is, because four big novels drop into the stores: Fellow Campbell nominee Sarah Monette’s The Virtu, which has gotten a lovely starred review in Publishers Weekly (“This sequel is every bit as original and satisfying as its predecessor”); Scott Lynch’s debut novel The Lies of Lock Lamora, which received a starred review in Booklist (“Expect it to be among the year’s most impressive debuts”) and whose movie rights have already been snapped right up; This year’s Best First Novel Locus Award winner Elizabeth Bear’s Blood and Iron : A Novel of the Promethean Age, which is also nicely reviewed (“Campbell-winner Bear overturns the usual vision of Faerie, revealing the compelling beauty and darkness only glimpsed in old ballads and stories like ‘Tam Lin'”); and last but certainly not least fellow Hugo-nominee Charlie Stross’s Glasshouse, which — surprise, surprise — is getting all sorts of reviewer love as well (“Stross’s wry SF thriller satisfies on all levels, with memorable characters and enough brain-twisting extrapolation for five novels”). The question is not which to buy, merely which to buy first. That’s my question, anyway.

Actually, I do have a complaint, which is that all of these are coming out just as I’m buckling down to finish The Last Colony, meaning that even if I buy them — which I will — I won’t be able to enjoy them until after the end of July. And that’s just cruel. Really, I can’t understand why they didn’t put my needs first. Writers can be so mean sometimes.

As I’ve just unleashed a veritable torrent of pimpery here, I declare the comment thread below to be a self-pimp zone: If you’ve got a something you want to promote, this is a fine place to do it. No link too self-serving! Pimp yourself! Pimp your friends! Hours of fun for the whole family!