F&SF News & Links
The Slush God quotes from a bunch of writers who have seen the Transformers movie, most notably Cherie Priest, who made me laugh out loud with things like “I think that now I can DIE OF AWESOME POISONING because that was more awesome than a whole SWIMMING POOL THAT HAS BEEN FILLED WITH AWESOME, and then someone shoves A PAIR OF GIANT DUELING ALIEN ROBOTS INTO THE SWIMMING POOL, and there’s a UNICORN STANDING IN THE BACKGROUND, GRANTING WISHES and SHITTING DIAMONDS.”
Maureen McHugh explains the attitude of a writer towards a work in progress, via this handy chart.
Jacob Weisman, publisher of Tachyon Publications, recently got married, and both Frank Wu and Susan Palwick were there. The best part: they recited the Green Lantern oath (the one written by Alfred Bester) to each other as part of the ceremony.
The Edmonton Jourrnal proclaims that the serious science fiction movie is dead, and that George Lucas killed it with his little Star Wars. Because, of course, there were so many more serious SF movies in the thirty years before 1977 than there have been in the last thirty years…
The LA Daily News reports that producers of the Watchmen movie are already looking for look-a-likes for such incidental characters as Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Albert Einstein, and Larry King. Now, I’m not saying your movie dream could be accomplished with only some expensive plastic surgery and a trip to the Coast, but… [via SciFi Wire]
SciFi Wire reports that Catherynne M. Valente has won the storySouth 2007 Million Writers Award for her story “Urchines, While Swimming.”
The Guardian asked a bunch of people (writers, scientists, and broadcasters) six basic scientific questions, and got some interesting answers. (Though Will Self came off pretty well – I wouldn’t have expected that.) [via Blog of a Bookslut]
Justine Larbalestier compares the writer’s life in W. Somerset Maughan’s time to her own.
Lewis Shiner has brought forth the Fiction Liberation Front and started posting all of his short work for free on the web. [via Boing Boing]