(date: 2024-11-10 09:48:03)
date: 2024-11-10, from: Locus Magazine
The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, India Holton (Berkley 978-0-593-54728-1, $19.00, tp, 384pp) July 2024.
Romantasy is a subgenre getting considerable attention and India Holton enters the field with a new series, that is a lot of fun. The first book, The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, introduces two academics, Beth Pickering and Devon Lockley, who specialize in the study and, if necessary, capture of thaumaturgic birds. These …Read More
date: 2024-11-09, from: IF Database News
The team has been hard at work on improvements to IFDB.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=151
date: 2024-11-09, from: IF Database News
You can now use the “Estimated Play Time” form on any game to submit a “vote” for how long it takes to finish the game.
We’ll display the median time vote near the top of that game’s page.
This feature is very, very new. We’ve got a lot of ideas for improvements, and we’ve got a public discussion going on the intfiction.org forum.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=150
date: 2024-11-09, from: IF Database News
Most of our IFDB API endpoints now support JSON.
All of the old APIs still work in XML mode, but JSON is the preferred format for all new code. (The API to add/edit games is still XML-only, for now.)
In addition, we deprecated the gametags API. You can view tags on an individual game with the viewgame API, or view your own tags with the search API, like this:
https://ifdb.org/search?json&tag&searchfor=tuid:xxx+mine:yes
https://ifdb.org/news?item=149
date: 2024-11-09, from: IF Database News
The IFDB “clubs” feature has been removed. Nobody was using the feature, partly because clubs didn’t do very much.
https://ifdb.org/news?item=148
date: 2024-11-09, from: Locus Magazine
In my previous article on Japanese science fiction, published in Locus in 2016, I likened my experience of living in Japan to Urashima Taro’s rise from his present world (eighth century) to the world of the future, with its fast-forward jumble of pop-culture iconography. This sense of Japan and its current state in science fiction is even more relevant in the wake of COVID, as these changes have only accelerated. …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/sf-in-japan/
date: 2024-11-09, from: Locus Magazine
Kree, Manuela Draeger (University of Minnesota Press 978-1-51791-512-4, $21.95, 280pp, tp) October 2024.
Manuela Draeger’s Kree is so immediately violent that I wasn’t sure it was going to be for me. Somehow, though, within just a few chapters, the novel’s mix of haunting imagery and almost humorous unpredictability grew so compelling that I found myself wanting to track down everything else the author has written. A midapocalyptic story set …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/kree-by-manuela-draeger-review-by-jake-casella-brookins/
date: 2024-11-08, from: Locus Magazine
The Ignyte Awards Committee has announced the winners of the 2024 Ignyte Awards, which “seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.”
Outstanding Novel: Adult
WINNER: The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-ignyte-award-winners/
date: 2024-11-08, from: Interesting, a blog on writing
What are you going to do about it? What can you do?
https://inneresting.substack.com/p/224-concern-influence-and-control
date: 2024-11-08, from: Final Draft blog
Nothing stirs the emotions like the death of a major character in a feature film or television series. Whether they’re killed off midway through a Quentin Tarantino movie or during a pivotal episode of a TV series, these moments get people talking and debating, sometimes for years if not decades.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/the-art-of-killing-off-major-characters-in-your-script
date: 2024-11-08, from: John August blog
Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week. This week, we look at stories that explore the stress, anxiety, chaos and occasional joy that comes with being a new parent. Our collection includes: Bridget Jones’s Baby by Helen Fielding and Dan Mazer and Emma […] The post Featured Friday: New Parents first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/featured-friday-new-parents
date: 2024-11-08, from: Locus Magazine
GigaNotoSaurus 8/24 Diabolical Plots 8/24 Small Wonders 8/24
The August GigaNotoSaurus story is Sarah J. Wu’s “Elves in Illinois”, which finds Linnet growing up in a small rural town that abuts a forest where fae live and hire out their services to farmers to ensure prosperous crop yields regardless of drought or blight. Linnet’s family is initially reluctant to pay the fees that the fae ask for …Read More
date: 2024-11-08, from: Locus Magazine
Ledia Xhoga, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Katherine Silva, Catherynne M. Valente read at the Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room in Industry City, Brooklyn NY on October 15, 2024 as part of the Brooklyn Books & Booze Reading series, hosted by Randee Dawn.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/brooklyn-books-and-booze-2/
date: 2024-11-08, from: Final Draft blog
“The streaming bubble finally popped, and I think the tip of the
spear that popped it was the double strikes we had last year and now
we’re calling it the great contraction. It’s a really tough time for
up-and-coming writers to break in. It’s tough for everyone, even
up-and-coming agents and managers, anyone coming out to Hollywood to
pursue a career. It’s one of the toughest times ever, so you need to be
patient,” says literary manager Jeff Portnoy, of Bellevue Productions.
On today’s podcast, guest host Lee Jessup, Hollywood’s leading
screenwriting career coach and judge of the Big Break screenwriting
competition, interviews Jeff Portnoy, literary manager for Bellevue
Productions. They discuss the current state of the industry and how it’s
affecting writers.
“We’ve been encouraging a lot of new
writers to focus on features at the moment and explaining how bleak the
TV staffing market is right now. So if they have hopes of getting
staffed, it’s very difficult right now. Typically, if we had a client
who wants to write in the TV space, we’d help them get a TV agent and
we, the agents and I, would go out and try to get them staffed. But
agents aren’t really signing anyone below mid level right now, so
they’re not taking on those up-and-coming writers,” says Portnoy.
But there is hope considering business trends are always cyclical.
Portnoy shares this advice about writing spec features in this climate:
“You want to stand out and that comes down to your ideas. The execution
has to be great. It’s about choosing ideas that really stand out in a
pack – the words I like to use are loud, bold, audacious. Managers,
agents, producers – we see thousands of loglines a month and if we see a
logline that’s loud, audacious and bold, it’s going to stand out.”
To hear more about the state of the industry, listen to the
podcast.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-screenwriting-coach-lee-jessup-literary-manager-jeff-portnoy
date: 2024-11-08, from: Author’s Union blog
Last month, we blogged about the key takeaways from the 2024 TDM exemptions recently put in place by the Librarian of Congress, including how the 2024 exemptions (1) expand researchers’ access to existing corpora, (2) definitively allow the viewing and annotation of copyrighted materials for TDM research purposes, and (3) create new obligations for researchers […]
date: 2024-11-07, from: Locus Magazine
Welcome back for the first video of November, the month has just begun and we’ve got a fantastic collection of new SF, Fantasy, and Horror new releases for the week of 11/05/2024! Come check us out on the Locus YouTube channel! Don’t forget to subscribe to support what we do and stay up-to-date on all the new books hitting shelves every week!
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/new-book-releases-for-the-week-of-november-5th-2024/
date: 2024-11-07, from: Locus Magazine
Clarkesworld 7/24, 8/24
“Every Hopeless Thing” by Tia Tashiro in the July issue of Clarkesworld is a sweet story about a spacefaring pilot, Elodie, who while scavenging on a supposedly abandoned Earth discovers a whole population living underground. The story carries emotional weight and paints a lovely picture of finding hope in seemingly hopeless times. “The Best Version of You” by Grant Collier is another story …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/clarkesworld-short-fiction-reviews-by-a-c-wise-2/
date: 2024-11-07, from: Locus Magazine
In September 2024, Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin launched a free new weekly newsletter called Shelfies. Each week they feature a photo of a bookshelf from an author, artist, collector, or book lover, along with a brief essay “discussing some of their most treasured or interesting books.” Contributors so far include Jeffrey Alan Love, Cheryl S. Ntumy, George E. Osborn, Kieron Smith, and Kaaron Warren. For more, or to sign …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/shelfies-newsletter/
date: 2024-11-06, from: Final Draft blog
Warning - spoilers
ahead!
It’s rare for a superhero spinoff to become
great prestige TV, but that’s exactly what The Penguin is
doing. Written and helmed by showrunner Lauren LeFranc, The
Penguin follows Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell) in the weeks after
the events of Matt Reeves’s 2022 The Batman, as he rises
through Gotham’s criminal underworld to become the
Penguin.
Despite being rooted in the superhero genre—one recently
declared “dead” after a string of box office bombs and underperforming
TV projects—The Penguin has been praised for its
Sopranos-like quality. From mob politics to the complex
morality of its villains, The Penguin brings audiences to new
and intriguing places in The Batman universe.
Let’s look
at three elements of The Penguin that hooked audiences, and
made the superhero genre prestigious TV.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/how-the-penguin-brings-the-sopranos-to-the-superhero-genre
date: 2024-11-06, from: Locus Magazine
Drill, Scott R. Jones (Word Horde 978-1-95625-209-5, $19.99, 256pp, tp) August 2024. Cover by Matthew Revert.
Sometimes you’re reading a book and suddenly ask yourself, “What the hell am I reading?” This can be a bad thing or an excellent thing. In the case of Scott R. Jones’s Drill, it’s the latter. Slightly surreal, angry, smart, Lovecraftian, chaotic, and written with the kind of prose that dances between …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/drill-by-scott-r-jones-review-by-gabino-iglesias/
date: 2024-11-06, from: Literature & a Latte blog
date: 2024-11-05, from: Locus Magazine
Boop, David, ed.: Last Train to Kepler-283c (Baen 9781982193768, $18, 272pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 11/05/2024)
Original anthology of 13 Weird West space stories, third in the series. Authors include Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Mark L. Van Name, Chesya Burke, Kevin Ikenberry, David Mack, and John Stith.
Compiet, Iris & Bende, S.T.: Star Wars Bestiary, Vol. 1 (Insight Editions/Titan Books UK 9798886630985, $40, 208pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 11/05/2024) …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/new-books-5-november-2024/
date: 2024-11-05, from: John August blog
John and Craig look at how writers (and other humans) handle the anxiety of uncertainty, from election nights to green lights. We’ll talk through strategies for navigating situations where your circle of concern doesn’t match your circle of control. Then we travel back to the 1980s and 90s, when many studios were run by ambitious […] The post Hollywood Got Old first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/hollywood-got-old
date: 2024-11-05, from: Locus Magazine
State of Paradise, Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-37461-220-7, $27.00, 224pp, hc) July 2024.
I move from one instance of weird Florida (Area X is a distorted version of North Florida) to another: Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise. I’d say that reading VanderMeer and van den Berg back-to-back (alliterative surnames aside) is a remarkable coincidence, except that Florida, to outsiders such as myself, has …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/state-of-paradise-by-laura-van-den-berg-review-by-ian-mond/
date: 2024-11-05, from: Literature & a Latte blog
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/competition-win-a-freewrite-traveler-and-a-copy-of-scrivener
date: 2024-11-04, from: Locus Magazine
The 23rd Indian Association for Science Fiction Studies conference was held July 21, 2024. The highlights included a special guest lecture by renowned Romanian SF author George Dimitriu and scholarly presentations of papers on the theme ‘‘Spotlight on the Works of Professor Jayant V. Narlikar.’’
The conference began in the Indian traditional way, with the lighting of the lamp by the founding members of the association.
The event coincided with …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/sf-in-india-2/
date: 2024-11-04, from: John August blog
I first met Kamala Harris at a small lunch in 2010. Just four or five of us around a table. Harris was running to become California’s next attorney general, so a friend suggested we meet her. I found Harris to be incredibly bright and charismatic. I donated to her campaign on the spot. Afterwards, I […] The post At the table with Kamala Harris first appeared on John August.
https://johnaugust.com/2024/at-the-table-with-kamala-harris
date: 2024-11-04, from: Locus Magazine
Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution (MCD) debuts solidly on all four print lists compiled here, ranking as high as #7 on the New York Times and Los Angles Times lists.
Other titles debuting this week are by Alex Aster, Richard Chizmar, Susanna Clarke, Kim Harrison, John Gwynne, and CJ Leede.
Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 11.10 LAT 11.03 USAT 10.27 PW 11.04 Amz (11.04) UK: Amz UK (11.04) Canada: …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/weekly-bestsellers-4-november-2024/
date: 2024-11-04, from: Final Draft blog
“I think [ Here] has some of the imagination of Forrest
Gump, but it’s not Forrest Gump. It’s a different animal.
I mean, it has the same kind of humanity to it, which is what I’m pretty
good at,” says Eric Roth about his latest film Here, co-written
and directed by Robert Zemeckis and reuniting actors Tom Hanks and Robin
Wright.
On today’s podcast, we speak with Oscar winning
screenwriter Eric Roth about the challenges of writing the screenplay
for Here that mostly takes place in one room, with a fixed
camera that never moves. The movie explores the ordinary lives of
multiple generations of families in a way that many will find relatable,
heartbreaking and, at times, claustrophobic.
“I’m not sure
[the characters in Here] are extraordinary or not, but they
show the length and breadth of what people can and can’t do and when
they’re trapped. I think when it works that way dramatically, it’s quite
lovely and quite beautiful. I don’t want to use the word profound, but I
think the [movie] is profound to a certain extent because it is just
about the regularity of life. And that, from dinosaurs to the future,
it’s going to keep going. Hopefully people will find great joy in how
they’re living and I’m sure great pain too, but I think that’s just sort
of the circle of life,” he says.
We also discuss some of his
other films like Forrest Gump, for which he won an Oscar, and
Killers of the Flower Moon.
He shared this advice
about using subtext in screenplays. “I think that I’m always trying to
find a way to enhance the scene with not only subtext, but with some
kind of metaphor and make it possibly more interesting as to getting to
the root of people’s feelings without them having to vomit out what
they’re saying you know. It’s not easy, but I think as I’ve gotten more
successful and more accomplished at it,” he says.
To hear more
of Eric Roth’s advice for screenwriters, listen to the podcast.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-here-screenwriter-eric-roth
date: 2024-11-04, from: Locus Magazine
Les Sentiers de recouvrance by Émilie Querbalec (Albin Michel Imaginaire) won the 2024 Prix Julia Verlanger.
The award is presented by the Foundation de France, and is awarded to “a science fiction work of adventure, fantasy or fantastique.” The award was created by Jean-Pierre Verlanger in memory of his wife, who wrote under the pseudonym Gilles Thomas.
The award was announced on November 3, 2024, during the Nantes Utopiales Festival. …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/querbalec-wins-prix-julia-verlanger/
date: 2024-11-04, from: Locus Magazine
The six-title shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize has been announced, with works of genre interest including James by Percival Everett (Mantle) and Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape)
The £50,000 prize is “open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.” This year’s judges are Sara Collins, Justine Jordan, Yiyun Li, Nitin Sawhney, and chair Edmund de Waal.
Shortlisted authors
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/2024-booker-prize-shortlist/
date: 2024-11-04, from: Locus Magazine
Smothermoss, Alisa Alering (Tin House 978-1-959-03058-4, $17.95, tp, 256pp) July 2024.
Alisa Alering’s debut novel Smothermoss is a master class in conveying both a physically and psychologically oppressive atmosphere. Set in a small rural Appalachian town in the early 1980s, the novel follows the tough adventures of sisters Sheila and Angie. At seventeen years old, Sheila is acutely aware of her ‘‘otherness,’’ a kid all too often bullied and …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/smothermoss-by-alisa-alering-review-by-colleen-mondor/
date: 2024-11-04, from: Locus Magazine
Let’s start with two obvious facts:
That means that every single policy question related to the internet will have:
With that out of the way….
Late last August, Pavel Durov – the billionaire owner of the Telegram app – was arrested by French authorities after he landed his private …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/cory-doctorow-hard-sovereignty-cases-make-bad-internet-law/
date: 2024-11-03, from: Locus Magazine
Fiyah Summer ’24 Flash Fiction Online 7/24 Escape Pod 7/25/24 Strange Horizons 7/15/24, 7/29/24, 8/12/24
The Summer ’24 Fiyah theme is disability. The issue seeks to break down stereotypes and expectations that Black people are monolithic and separate from experiences with disability, and it does sharp work of just that, as in F. Kirk’s “Worms Fill My Mouth”, which finds Isaac experiencing an acute horror that the …Read More
date: 2024-11-03, from: Locus Magazine
Publishers Weekly has announced its list of the best books of 2024, divided into 13 categories.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link (Random House) and James by Percival Everett (Doubleday) were on the overall Top 10 list.
The best books in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category are:
https://locusmag.com/2024/11/publishers-weekly-best-books-2024/