Finalists for John W. Campbell Memorial Award announced

Via SF Awards Watch, the finalists are:

( Read more... )

Not revelant to any on-going real world situations involving me

Long polls

( Read more... )

Not revelant to any on-going real world situations involving me

Long polls

( Read more... )

Uh oh

I was going to nick from Buckell but instead I will just link to his post, which inexplcably is not called Solar Power in the 21st century: will the living envy the dead?

, with all the benefits that not depending on foreign oil as much will accrue,

Anything that threatens Canadian exports to our rightful markets in the US is a legimate casus belli.

Haikasoru Reviews 10: Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince by Noriko Ogiwara

What is Haikasoru?
Space Opera. Dark Fantasy. Hard Science.

With a small, elite list of award-winners, classics, and new work by the hottest young writers, Haikasoru is the first imprint dedicated to bringing Japanese science fiction to America and beyond. Featuring the action of anime and the thoughtfulness of the best speculative fiction, Haikasoru aims to truly be the “high castle” of science fiction and fantasy.

Added note: these are not manga but novels.


Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince/Tales of the Magatama, Book II
by Noriko Ogiwara (Trans. Cathy Hirano)
Haikasoru/VIZ Media LLC
? pages [1]
$21.99 USA / $25.99 CAN / £14.99
ISBN 978-1-4215-3725-2



This, on the other hand, I did like.

The page count is ? because when I read this for Romantic Times, I read it in electronic form. Chapters says this is 500 pages; if so, they were a very fast 500 pages.

( Read more... )

James Wray's Europa on the ropes

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

-- 2010: Odyssey Two
Arthur C. Clarke wrote these words three decades ago, when Europa's uniqueness as a potential alien habitat was first realized. Unfortunately, we have obeyed this fictional command.

Partly that's because Europa's surface is a terrible place. We often say this about Mars, but Europa is worse in practically every way. It is over three times farther from the Sun, and so receives ten times less sunlight. As a result, while a warm day near the Martian equator can exceed 0°C, Europa is at best 140 degrees below. Whereas Mars has less than 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure, Europa's "atmosphere" is a billion times more rarefied. Neither provides much protection from ultraviolet or particle radiation, but at Europa the bombardment of charged particles from elsewhere in the Jupiter system leads to crippling radiation doses that accumulate millions of times faster. All of these factors make Europa's surface a difficult place for spacecraft (or life) to operate

I'm not going to link to it

Because I think doing so could have the undesirable effect of facilitating hostile attention on a community I like but I will say Artcomm is making me consider adding "everything is worse with doctrinaire polyamorists" to my list of tags. oh, except it's too long to be a tag. Bother. And so is " if you were more evolved you'd agree with me."

Question

1: Do not, and I cannot put this strongly enough, expect these characters to suddenly embrace 21st century liberal values. It's not going to happen, no matter how much better things would be if the Children of Light were reduced to figureheads and the land ruled by a parliament of elected representatives.

Has anyone written a fantasy book set in a nation with a monarch genuinely descended from a god or gods, where the nation is a constitutional monarchy like Canada or Japan, one where the monarch has limited powers and parliament rules supreme?