You May Have Missed... Links 03/09/08

Somewhat belated links.  Apologies.  I had dinner with many many Tories last night.  Apparently Mrs. Thatcher (while in office) wouldn't tolerate being served french mineral water.  Is it just me or is that a little... odd?

• SFSignal's latest Mind Meld is on the question of media tie-ins (wookie books).  There are many mentions of Zahn's Heir to the Empire and they ask Kevin J. Anderson for his opinion.  Upon seeing his name I snorted and thought that they might as well have asked a drug dealer  for his thoughts about heroin but then Anderson saved me the trouble of pointing this out by saying "tie-ins are a gateway drug".  Good good.  Glad we're all on the same page. 

• Dan Hartland at Strange Horizons produces a really good review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

• In the category of "things I should have linked to yesterday but forgot to" is Paul Raven's critical examination of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash at The SF Site.

• In fact, The SF Site did an update yesterday and there are a number of splendid reviews there.

• Wes Fierce at Horror Film Magazine has a retrospective of the careers of the current crop of horror directors and suggests that what may once have been seen as a coming golden age of horror is going a bit... pear-shaped.

• Ron at Galleycat continues the examination of the economics of blogging by asking 'Can Book Blog become Self-Sustaining?' Answer: Not without the kind of moral compromises that would make the job effectively impossible.

• The New Issue of The Internet Review of Science Fiction has also gone live.  It includes a piece on the relationship between SF and Fantasy by Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold and a piece on Space Opera by Ross Hamilton.  Am I the only person who think that 'space opera' is an utterly useless critical term?

• Jetse de Vries has parted company with Interzone citing creative differences over the direction that the magazine is taking.  So that's what... 2 reviews editors and a co-editor in just over a year?

Comments

[Martin]

Am I the only person who think that 'space opera' is an utterly useless critical term?

In what sense? That it is vague? You can say the same of all sub-genres (all genres too.) Surely it's only critical purpose is to bunch a group of similar things together and this to me seems liek a handy thing to be able to do.