The Weeks that Were
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Another two weeks have gone by and they've been busy ones.
Red Tentacle winner (and Kitschies judge) Lauren Beukes swung through town and we buddied up with the Arthur C. Clarke Award to throw a little party for her and cover-guru Joey HiFi at the British Library. The turnout was amazing - thanks to everyone for coming. (More photos over on the ACCA's Facebook page)
Our other big news - our first anthology - was also announced at the event. Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse will be out in October, and features apocalyptic musings by some of the biggest names & hottest newcomers in science fiction. For all the details on "Project Panda", see the website (and sign up for the mailing list for the latest updates).
We've still got one big corker of an announcement left, but we're hammering out the details now.
Meanwhile in the actual "business" of Pornokitsch, here's what's been happening 'round these parts.
- Iron Men and Silver Stars (1967), edited by Donald Hamilton [and dodging the grand literary tradition]
- H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales (2011) and Robert Howard's Conan the Barbarian (2011) [and becoming introduced to the greats]
- Gary McMahon's The Concrete Grove (2011) [and how bad people can make a good story]
- Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides (1987) [and the glory of pirate noir fantasy adventure rumpunk]
- Jo Walton's Among Others (2011) [and the agonies of growing up as an unreliable narrator]
Monsters and Mullets summoned Beetlejuice (1988) and found a lot to like about the afterlife, while Rattle & Boom was impressed by Formula One (1962), despite not knowing a thing about cars.
We weaseled interviews with Richard Morgan ("Part of my thesis has always been that heroes are problematic...") and Simon Morden ("Science fiction allows us to choose the future we want to live in").
On the Features front, Bex damned Peggle (but then played it for three days running) and looked at the appeal of mobile games. And our Friday Fives listed prompted a long chat about our favorite RPGs and a shorter one about Internet distractions (everyone clicked the links and disappeared).
Off the site, both Anne and Jared donned their fedoras and guest-posted over on Tor.com for "Noir Week". Anne looked up to Big Jim Thompson and Jared hit Vegas with John D. MacDonald. Early readers for House of Fear (edited by Jonathan Oliver) will have spotted a new story from Rebecca Levene, "The Windmill".
Finally, if you've got a lazy Sunday planned, check out Dark Fiction Magazine and their "Epic Flash Fiction" competition, closing 31 August. And be sure to raise a glass to H.P. Lovecraft, whose birthday is today. (We forgot to get him a present.)