This link gathering isn't as easy as it seems. In any given week there's always some interesting stuff floating about but on any given day? That's less clear. I'd say that, for every solid substantial piece, there are probably 8 pieces of advertising (either direct or indirect) and 3 pieces of what this place refers to as 'me stuff'. It's also interesting to note the more popular subject matter. The YA scene, for example, is far more healthy and productive than the SF scene and the 'get people to watch rubbish TV shows' scene is always a favourite.
- Nice Daily Graun piece by Graeme Allister about why David Simon is a 'TV Goliath'. Personally I wasn't convinced by Generation Kill... I think it's too soon to produce really good fiction about the Iraq war. Hollywood has tried to overcome this problem but the result is 75 films by lefty Hollywood types, none of which have anything particularly insightful to say about the problem.
- Stephanie Cross, again at the Daily Graun, has a piece about realism in fiction based on some remarks by Will Self at a WG Sebald conference. I mention it as I've been really wrestling with precisely that issue of late... the artifice of SF.
- Nic Clarke at Strange Horizons has a very good review of MacLeod's The Night Sessions. Nic reaches a lot of the same conclusions as me about why the book doesn't work, but she's a good deal more patient and detailed with it than I was.
- Paul Raven at Futurismic raises awareness about a new news-aggregation SF site called 42Blips. He notes with pleasure that a few literary links were on the front page. I note with displeasure that the front page now contains two links to something dreadful called Gossip Girl and another piece about celebrities at the Emmies. Good old viral marketers eh? where would we be without them?
Comments