Some items of interest to SF/F writers and readers to round out your year:
1. Juliette Wade writes about writing for Analog
Go check out Juliette’s post. She has good advice for anyone trying to crack the Analog market. Everything she says there is spot-on.
2. Michael Burstein talks about re-reading Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land
Over on the Apex Blog, my good friend Michael A. Burstein talks about re-reading Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. Stranger is the only Heinlein novel that I never liked. It took me 3 tries to get through it. That was more than a decade ago. Michael’s post has me considering the possibility of reading the novel again.
3. Z. S. Adani’s collection of science fiction stories is on sale!
Sophy is a talented writer–someone with whom I went through James Gunn’s online science fiction writing workshop and who has since become one of my trusted beta readers. You can check out her writing for yourself. The e-book version of her collection of short stories, The Last Outpost and Other Tales is on sale at Amazon for only $2.99. The book is also available in hardcover and paperback. I just picked up a copy for myself.
4. 40k Books is having a $0.99 e-book New Year’s sale!
10 of 40k Books best titles–including, as it turns out, my story “If By Reason of Strength” will be on sale for $0.99 through January 3. This is a great opportunity to catch up on some short fiction by folks like Paul Di Filippo, Mike Ressnick, Kaaron Warren, and Graham Edwards. It looks like the e-books are available via Amazon and the iBookstore. You can find all of the details here.
Now go forth and read.
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May I also recommend re-reading “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”? It’s actually a much better novel IMHO.
Michael, that one I’ve read much more recently (comparatively) in January 2006. I enjoyed it much more than Stranger, especially the ending.
I’m guessing that Michael read the 160,000 word (tightly-edited) original 1961 version while Jamie tackled the 220,000 word STRANGER released in 1991.
I’ve only read the 1961 version but am considering the longer version for 2012. James Gifford writes in his RAH guide that “… the longer version offers more richness of texture, but does not appreciably increase the story depth.”
Gifford then says that Heinlein’s cuts were “scalpel-like”- with words and phrases deleted and only rarely an entire sentence.
Mark, you are absolutely right, as least as far as my reading. I read the uncut version which I got from the Science Fiction Bookclub, circa 1994.
I’ve read them both, and Jamie, if you want to cast your mind back to 1961, read the book as it was originally published first. The uncut version is good, too, but there are some who would say it shows why editors are needed.