Lewis Nordan Memorial

Buddy Nordan Passed away on April 13 this year. I miss him so much, I have to do something about our ignorance of wonderful world of his fiction. So I'm now holding a big memorial to him. There will be original materials on him and his works. Please drop by and join our celebration of Lewis "Buddy" Nordan.

The Steampunk special issue of Hayakawa's SF Magazine is now released. It features The Mad Scientist's Daughters by Theodora Goss; Reluctance by Cherie Priest; Silver Lining by Tim Pratt; Clockwork Fairies by Cat Rambo; The Stoker Memorandum by Lavie Tidhar; The Age of Miracles, The Age of Wonder by Aliette de Bodard; Atuhor interview: Cherie Priest, Gail Carriger; Clockwork Dreams, Steampowered Films by Chise Soeno (film review); What is Neo Steampunk? by yours truly (introduction) I edited the special section and translated Pratt, Tidhar and de Bodard. Our members Hiro Takasato did Rambo and Junko Suzuki did Goss. We'll feature more on our website, too.

The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer (Nightshade, July 2010: $14.95)

Following Tim Pratt, another great editor of Locus Magazine makes a giant leap into a novelist career. Amelia Beamer is a staff writer of SF&F newszine, Locus. She’s also a critic and writer, writing for small magazines and Interfiction anthology. Now she’s a novelist, too. Her debut, The Loving Dead is a novel of zombie romance, but I can’t resist an old impulse to call it a novel of Love, Sex, and Death. Well, especially love. It’s the most poignant love story our genre has ever produced. Forget the terrible review of Publishers Weekly. The ending is beautiful. The story is rather simple. In the streets of Berkley, weird looking homeless guys start to attack the pedestrians. Our heroine Kate finds a strange behavior of her girl friend and it turns out she’s a zombie now. Zombies are lascivious, and her friends easily become their prey. Kate sees zombies everywhere and trying to escape, she and her boyfriend seek refugee in Alcatraz prison. OK, there’s a very useful cell phone app to tame zombies and that kind of modernity and hilarity are everywhere in the novel. It’s sensuous, with a lot of sex scenes, and it’s humorous. Entertaining and witty. But the last scene is very moving and memorable, despite dark and disconsolate. Wow, Amelia Beamer has a very bright future now.

Steampunk

Hayakawa's SF Magazine will run a steampunk specla issue this month. Here's TOC of the feature part:
Fixing Hanover by Jeff VanderMeer
Shattered Teacup by George Mann
Tanglefoot by Cherie Priest
Chain of Fools by Jay Lake
What's the Soundtrack of Steampunk? by Brian Slattery
The Corset Manifesto by Katie Casey
And a brief book list and an introduction by Takashi Ogawa.
We've done the translation. It'll be published in a week.

Clifford's Love of Books

Clifford has a serious taste for books. He first found love for Hardcovers.




And then he found a very handsome tradepaperback.







But now he finds a new thing. E-books. He loves a Kindle.
Except he's a biting kind. Look at the corners. He left his marks.



He's my lovely dog.

Best of 2009 International

Locus Online features the best of 2009 international version which includes my take. Please note that I have to exclude HARMONY/ by Keikaku Ito because it was published at the end of 2008.

Rock Novels

Recently I've read a bunch of Japanese rock novels. Yes, we have now a good tradition of rock novels. I've just posted a review on some. See how we treat the music differently from US/British model. Check it here.