Robert Aickman wrote some of the best ghost stories of the last fifty years. He also edited one of the finest genre anthology series of his time:
The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories. Between 1964 and 1972, he curated eight volumes of horror fiction without repeating an author, favoring always the subtle, the psychological, the poetic, the rare, the neglected. 59 of his selections can be found online.
[more inside]
posted by Iridic
on Oct 25, 2012 -
21 comments
First Draft of the Revolution is a browser-based, interactive, epistolary story, where the process of letter writing is used to explore aspects of character and plot that might otherwise remain hidden. Plus, lashings of classism and magical references.
posted by Sparx
on Oct 10, 2012 -
3 comments
Television Without Pity re-capper
Jacob Clifton has written a short steampunk story for Tor.com. “There’s a level on which the story is an indictment of using steampunk as a fashion or trend. It came about because I wanted to see what would happen if you substituted Jane Austen for Jules Verne in the steampunk equation...”
The Commonplace Book
posted by The Whelk
on Oct 2, 2012 -
19 comments
In 2005, the Discovery Channel aired
Alien Worlds, a fictional documentary based on Wayne Douglas Barlowe's graphic novel,
Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV." Depicting mankind's first robotic mission to an extrasolar planet that could support life, the show drew from NASA's
Origins Program, the NASA/JPL
PlanetQuest Mission, and ESA's
Darwin Project. It was primarily presented through CGI, but included interviews from a variety of NASA scientists and other experts, including Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, John Craig Venter and Jack Horner. Oh, and George Lucas, too.
Official site.
Previously on MeFi. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 21, 2012 -
12 comments
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, went on sale 75 years ago today. The first printing, by Allen & Unwin, was for 1,500 copies (which now fetch a
premium at auction); the first reviewer, the son of the publisher,
was paid a shilling. Through a contorted publishing history, exact or even approximate sales figures are unknown; "over a hundred million"
is often quoted.
[more inside]
posted by Wordshore
on Sep 21, 2012 -
108 comments
In 2005, Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks produced a 6 episode miniseries that spanned the period of expansion of the United States into the American West, from 1825 to 1890. Through fictional and historical characters, the series used two primary symbols--the wagon wheel and the Lakota medicine wheel -- to join the story of two families: one Native American, one White settlers, as they witnessed many of the 19th century's pivotal historical milestones. The award-winning
Into The West can now be
seen in its entirety on YouTube.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 20, 2012 -
12 comments
"To aid the national security community in imagining contemporary threats, the Australian Security Research Centre (ASRC) is organising
Australia’s Security Nightmares: The National Security Short Story Competition. The competition aims to produce a set of short stories that will contribute to a better conception of possible future threats and help defence, intelligence services, emergency managers, health agencies and other public, private and non-government organisations to be better prepared." (
via)
posted by vidur
on Sep 12, 2012 -
44 comments
When publishing goes wrong. Mandy DeGeit was a first time author submitting to a horror anthology by
Undead Press. The contract included a line that they had the right to edit the story -- standard operating procedure. But when she got a copy of the book, they'd drastically changed the story: "They turned a non-gendered character into a boy, they named the best friend, they created a memory for the main character about animal abuse. They added a suggestion of rape at the end…"
[more inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me
on Sep 3, 2012 -
45 comments
What I wrote was unquestionably fiction — was fantasy. Among Others has magic and fairies. But I was writing fantasy about a science fiction reader who had a lot of the same things happen to her that happened to me. It’s set at the end of 1979 and the beginning of 1980, and it’s about a fifteen year old just when I was fifteen, and from a family like mine and in the time and place and context where I was. I was using a lot of my own experience and memories. But this is Mori, not me, and she lives in a world where magic is real. Jo Walton, who as editor for tor.com
revisisted the Hugos 1953-2000, now has one of her own, taking home
the 2012 Best Novel Award for
Among Others. Other winners include
Kij Johnson for her Novella
The Man who Bridged the Mist (excerpt) and io9 regular
Charlie Jane Anders for her novellete
Six Months, Three Days. The Best Graphic Story award went to the webcomic
Digger by
Ursula Vernon. E Lily Yu took home the Bets New Writer award (technically not a Hugo) and was also nominated for her short story
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees. A couple of TV shows you have heard of also got awards. Links to many of the nominated stories
here.
posted by Artw
on Sep 3, 2012 -
51 comments
James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime is one of those very rare novels that seems not so much to have been written as discovered. At its heart is a love story, an encounter, that transforms its relatively ordinary protagonists into beings around whom the entire cosmos shapes itself. The love story is delicate and ephemeral, put together out of bits and pieces, like a bird's nest. The vulnerable lovers tremble, in the most mundane circumstances, on the edge of catastrophe. Simply the way one of them moves across the room to meet the other seems miraculous and hazardous. Were they to become aware of themselves everything would be lost. But there is no danger of that. Oblivious, they tiptoe on a precipice. They do not and cannot know that their innocence cloaks them in a kind of divinity and infallibility. Actions and attitudes we expect to bring them down don't. They do things that seem so perfect, so poignant, without knowing they are doing anything at all. They arc beautifully across our path, and then vanish. -
Michael Doliner (previously) [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen
on Jul 31, 2012 -
8 comments
ChiZine Publications (CZP) is an independent Toronto-based book publisher that is single-handedly changing the face of genre fiction in Canada. Though CZP was founded just four years ago and put out just twelve books per year, they are responsible for four of the six nominees for the the
2012 Best Novel Prix Aurora (Canada's highest honour in genre fiction). CZP grew out of the self-styled "dark fiction" 'zine
The Chiaroscuro which has been publishing free genre fiction online since 1997. Their most recent release is David Nickle's tale of cold war psionic operatives gone rogue,
Rasputin's Bastards.
posted by 256
on Jul 19, 2012 -
6 comments
"Explosive sex with Mr Rochester," anyone? A
publisher decides to add more sex to
Jane Eyre and other classics.
posted by anothermug
on Jul 18, 2012 -
83 comments
A liquor store in Amsterdam. A veteran in Bagdad. A family in Rome. A WWII veterans memorial in Berlin. A house in Oxford. Edouard Levé photographed towns in the United States that shared names with famous cities. He photographed fully-clothed actors reenacting scenes from
rugby and
pornography [nsfw]. He also wrote some novels, influenced by
Oulipo.
Autoportrait, describes his life in 120 pages of unordered vignettes and brief, declarative sentences—"The girl whom I loved the most left me. [...] I am uneasy in rooms with small windows."
and so on. His fourth novel,
Suicide, is a one-sided conversation between an anonymous narrator ("I") and his friend ("you"), who committed suicide twenty years ago. It's a painfully intimate meditation on the act and its fallout on its own merits—
"Your life was hypothesis. Those who die old are made of the past. Thinking of them, one thinks of what they have done. Thinking of you, one thinks of what you could have become. You were, and you will remain, made up of possibilities."—but few will read
Suicide unburdened with the knowledge that Edouard Levé killed himself several days after completing it, at the age of 47.
[more inside]
posted by spanishbombs
on Jul 7, 2012 -
7 comments
"Book TV's
After Words features the author of a recently published hardback non-fiction book interviewed by a guest host with some knowledge, background, or connection to the subject matter of the book." There's also a
podcast version (link goes to XML feed), for those who'd rather listen. Many more non-fiction author interviews can be found at
Booknotes (transcripts and streaming video). If your tastes run to interviews with authors of fiction, check out the BBC's
Modern Writers archive.
(BookTV (but not specifically After Words) previously, Booknotes (but before the series ended) previously.)
posted by cog_nate
on Jun 22, 2012 -
7 comments
In 1989 the Japanese Government passed the Media Betterment Act, permitting censorship of any media deemed to be harmful to society. On the basis of the imperative for libraries to resist any attempts at suppression of free speech, local governments created an armed resistance force to combat censorship. The conflict between the government and library forces continues to 2019, where the story of
Library War begins.
[more inside]
posted by 23
on Jun 15, 2012 -
12 comments
"You are a junior spelling champion. Your parents have been teaching you at home since you were four."
Bee: a choose-your-own-bittersweet-coming-of-age novella by
Emily Short.
[more inside]
posted by Iridic
on Jun 5, 2012 -
36 comments
Tove Jansson's short stories about artistic creation are often chillingly cold. The artists she portrays have become lost in their isolated solitude, their creativity, which shuts other people out. Portraits of such loneliness are drawn in three short stories in the collection Lyssnerskan ('The listener', 1971), 'Ekorren' ('The squirrel'), 'Svart & vitt' ('Black & white') and 'Vargen' ('The wolf’), which probably frightened many readers - particularly those who knew and loved her Moomin books - away from Jansson's work. In their cosmos, warmth is unknown; their landscapes are frozen, just like the people who seek expression for their artistic dreams. [more inside]
posted by smcg
on May 31, 2012 -
19 comments
Stan's Report (a short story). Stan waited for me to ask him a question, hoping to tease some curiosity out of me, I suppose, though I don’t want to make assumptions about Stan’s intentions. Whatever his intent, I chose not to ask anything about it, not wanting to start my thinking down that road. It wouldn’t have been fair to B. to talk about him and what he said or meant since he wasn’t there to defend himself or to amend the tone or the full context. I preferred to turn my attention to my e-mail, but I didn’t want to ignore Stan or imply that I disapproved of his interest in sharing his news with me. He had a right to say whatever he wanted and it was up to me to choose how I’d deal with it.
posted by shivohum
on May 27, 2012 -
24 comments
Spoiler. The zombie apocalypse happened -- and we won.
But though society has recovered, the threat of infection is always there -- and Los Angeles coroner Tommy Rossman is the man they call when things go wrong.
posted by Drexen
on May 27, 2012 -
44 comments
On Why Soup Is So Bad for Diurnal Rhythms:
“Certainly. Carrot soup mimetically resembles a carrot only in color.” John was worried by the mainstream diet of soup. Not only is frantic chewing part of the joy of feeding, but widespread and protracted ingestion with minimal effort could derail diurnal cycles. Originally food was partly invented for sustenance, and partly to pass time and to mark it, and so John, in any given day, would scrupulously observe all nine meals: an early breakfast on rising; a second breakfast, in the German tradition, as rumbling recurred around nine; brunch, closely followed by elevensies, or vice versa if you favor Bohr’s algorithm; lunch; tiffin at four, with the focus on small savory sandwiches rather than cake, to avoid a mid-afternoon sugar coma; dinner; supper, and, of course, a final midnight feast to salute the day as it retires. Each meal consists of one, two, or three courses, plus intercourses where appropriate, and the main cycle might be accessorized with any number of subcycles of casual snacking.
posted by shivohum
on May 22, 2012 -
33 comments
simply read
Finnegans Wake. Since it is said to make more sense when recited aloud, you could start with
this recording of James Joyce performing a passage from the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" section - which has been described as "one of the most beautiful prose-poems in English".
[more inside]
posted by Trurl
on May 18, 2012 -
40 comments
