Pornokitsch

Something different today. It has been a frantic - and, frankly - miserable - few weeks, and it feels like we've all had our fair share of grumpiness, death, argument and general awfulness.

So let's remind ourselves of nice things, and head into the weekend on a positive note.

The rules, such as they are:

Leave something nice in the comments - a link to something cool, a joke that made you laugh, a person that's done something that impressed you, or just a piece of good news

Please, no animals. I know internet behaviour is now based around cheering ourselves up with cat pics, but, for now, let's try to this with nice things people are doing. So no cat gifs or goats on things or adorable baby llamas. For now.

Please, no self-promotion. I bet you're all really nice people. But the purpose of this exercise is to point out nice things that other people have done. Which is a nice thing as well. 

That's it! I'll start us off with a few.

Happy Friday!

Out now!

In Jews vs Zombies and Jews vs Aliens, editors Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene have gathered together brand new stories from the light-hearted to the profound with almost twenty tales of zombies, aliens and the Chosen People.

With authors including Orange Prize winner Naomi Alderman, Big Bang Theory writer/producer Eric Kaplan, BSFA Award winner Adam Roberts and best-seller Sarah Lotz, these are undoubtedly the must-have anthologies of the year. (Plus, check out the sexy covers by Sarah Anne Langton!)

Jews vs Aliens - Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk / Kobo

Jews vs Zombies - Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk / Kobo

Details and TOC and whatnot.

Also, for today only...

The Book of the Dead is completely free! This is to celebrate the unveiling of Amelia Edwards' English Heritage Blue Plaque. As well as the founder of the Egypt Exploration Fund (later Society), Amelia Edwards was a suffragette, archaeologist and author of brilliant supernatural fiction. All of which is why we dedicated The Book of the Dead to her in the first place.

We're delighted to see her honoured, so please - grab a copy of this terrific anthology (the one and only collection of all-original mummy fiction) and tell your friends!

The Book of the Dead contains original stories from Gail Carriger, Paul Cornell, Adam Roberts, Roger Luckhurst, Jesse Bullington, David Thomas Moore, Lou Morgan, Molly Tanzer, Jenni Hill, Michael West, Sarah Newton, Den Patrick, Glen Mehn, Jonathan Green, Louis Greenberg, Will Hill, Maurice Broaddus and Maria Dahvana Headley. The illustrations are by Garen Ewing, and the introduction is courtesy of John J Johnston, of the Egypt Exploration Society. 

The  Book of the Dead - Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk

Terra Incognita, the new anthology from Short Story Day Africa, is out today. There's a launch tonight at the Book Lounge in Cape Town - I am sad to be on the wrong continent. (Also, Facebook.)

The anthology features nineteen new short speculative stories from the fringes and hidden worlds of Africa. It is edited by Nerine Dorman and features a gorgeous cover by Nick Mulgrew.

Annoyingly, I was one of the judges for the SSDA competition (humblebrag!) so I can't review this. I can, however, say that the stories - and I've read all 19 - are absolutely gorgeous. I've got a lot of favourites, not least of which is Diane Awerbuck's filthy, delicious "Leatherman", which won the competition.

Via SSDA:

The collection includes well-known and award-winning and authors Cat Hellisen, Diane Awerbuck and Gail Dendy, alongside emerging stars like Dilman Dila, Nick Mulgrew and Chinelo Onwaulu. The stories in the collection encompass all forms of speculative fiction, from literary magical realism to science fiction to dark horror, and pulsing through each is a new African paradigm. Here be vampires, tokoloshi, ghosts, unnatural obsessions and the unspeakable things that lurk beneath land and in the water.

As the blurb says, there are monsters of all shapes and sizes, as well as a lot of very shifty, very crafty explorations of the idea of place. It is an exceptional anthology, and I feel very lucky to have seen it early. Congratulations to everyone in it, and everyone involved in its creation. This is an awesome book.

You can find the full table of contents here.

And go shopping for it on Amazon, Amazon.co.uk and Smashwords.

1.

"Blast them!" the writer groaned in bitter accents. "How I hate those B. E. M's.!"

"Hang them!" the artist yelled. "How I hate those B.E.M.'s!"

"Darn them!" the B.E.M. moaned. "How I hate those humans!"

Seven books from February that all got tagged for later consideration. Or, barring actual consideration, at least some sort of hastily-assembled round-up.

Read on for Wolf Winter, Day Four, Easy Death, and Don't Even Think About It!

Plus: The Trouble with Bubbles, The Tunnel Under the World, and Steampunk Salmagundi.

The new

Wolf Winter (2015) by Cecilia Ekbäck - Anne handed this one to me, saying, "this is one of those books that you call fantasy but no one else does. You'll love it.". And, she was right. (It also says something  about me. Of all the windmills to tilt at, this may be the silliest.) 

Wolf Winter is a historical murder mystery set in 18th century Sweden. It is shockingly intense: there's a palpable sense of abandonment that heightens the stakes.. The predators (human and otherwise) feel overwhelmingly, pervasively, inescapably evil. This is also the coldest book I've ever read - even more than, say Dan Simmons' Terror or other novels of Arctic misery. In Wolf Winter, the reader feels every icy droplet of shivering despair - the freezing temperature is exacerbated by the loneliness and isolation. It is less about life feeling cheap than death feeling inevitable, with every new dawn a triumph of survival.

The fantastic elements, a bit like Jenni Fagan's Panopticon, are - uh, well, are they even there? I'd argue (of course) that they are. Whether or not the reader, from our (cozy, cynical) modern position sees the supernatural - the characters certainly do. Witchcraft, visions, shades, these all exist for Maija and her daughter. Whether or not they exist 'objectively' (that is, within the confines of a work of fiction) is beside the point. It helps that Wolf Winter is, in no small way, a discussion about the very role of belief: be that the church, the government or witchcraft - all these systems built on faith come under scrutiny, if not outright attack. It isn't just that humanity (as little bags of quivering meat) has a fragile existence, but our structures do as well. A brilliantly dark, and oddly triumphant, book, and highly recommended.

(And, yes, that's the German cover. The UK and US ones are fine, but I think the German one nails it.)

The One Comic Podcast is back, and taking on Ryan North & Erica Henderson's The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1. We cover a potted history of this potty superhero, compare it to many other hipster reboots and Bex and Jon beat up on Jared until he appreciates the art properly.

Trying to think of stories or books or movies or whatever that involve science fiction and business.

Examples:

James McKimmey - 'Confidence Game'

Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Efficiency Expert [not SF/F; I'm terrible at this already]

Robert Heinlein - The Man Who Sold the Moon

Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (lots of weird marketing, business, etc. stuff in there)

John D MacDonald - 'The Mechanical Answer'

Edward Hale - The Brick Moon (land speculation and crowd-funding!)

Richard Morgan - Market Forces

James Lovegrove - Days

I feel there are probably a lot by Heinlein, Asimov, et al. - (Vonnegut?! Ellison?!) that all look at taking management 'techniques' to some sort of goofily improbable conclusion.

Think of any? Please chuck them in the comments! I'm pretty broad-minded on what might 'qualify' for either business or SF/F, so the more thoughts the merrier...

Ade Spink previously directed us to five songs (some ... barely qualifying as such) with bad science. This time he returns with science even more dubious - five songs all about time travel! Did he miss a classic? Let him know at @AdeSpink. 

Did Doc and Marty McFly inadvertently make 2015 a landmark year in time travel culture, or did they somehow know back in 1985 that this was going to happen? Why not enjoy five time-traveller based songs while you unravel that paradox.

"Passport To The Future" – Jean-Jacques Perrey

“What the MOOG SYNTHESISER opens up for the future of music is beyond dreams” reads the hyperbole on the sleeve for Moog Indigo from 1970. Perrey was the archetypical out-of time genius, a synthesiser pioneer who sequenced his music by hand, meticulously cutting tape into tiny fragments and splicing it back together.

"Passport To The Future" closes the Moog Indigo album, arguably the pinnacle of Perrey’s output. This particular track is a hopeful jaunty vision of what he saw music would eventually become; a clean electronic sound eschewing such prosaic concerns as bands and instruments. Thinking multi-dimensionally, maybe there exists a world where people took notice of this track, and now we all travel to work by jet pack in our gleaming silver cities?

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama - Bill Driscoll and myself - when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition", but we didn't find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Equally amazing: an astronaut brought an invader into space!

Cyberpunk worlds from vintage Japanese video games.

Really nice piece from the Cultural Gutter, on how Dynamite (!) have shaken up the comics industry by handing their pulpiest titles to female creators.

Very long article on how publishers haven woken up to the need to collect audience data. TLDR version: "they haven't figured out how yet".

Below the jump - more links, a long list of upcoming events and a round-up of what the extended Pornokitsch family have been doing elsewhere.