Category Archives: Anthology

In Which I Refuse to Share

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 Some time ago it was announced that Eoin Colfer was going to continue the Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. I had an immediate, gut-level reaction that made me pause. I realized that it was the same reaction I have any time that I hear that another writer is going to continue a now-deceased or otherwise incapacitated writer’s series, or set a book in the same universe with the same characters that made the original writer famous, well-loved, or extremely profitable to his or her publisher. It doesn’t even have to be a series I know and love, like HHGTTG. Even if I’ve never read that writer before,  my reaction is always the same: 

“No, s/he isn’t.” Continue reading →

Review: Hyakunin Isshu – One Hundred People, One Poem Each

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Hyakunin Isshu edited by Fujiwara no Teika, Translation by Larry Hammer, Cholla Bear Press, 2011. Print edition through Lulu.com

In the 13th century CE, a nobleman named Teika of the Fujiwara clan compiled an anthology of 100 poems, each by a different poet, the Hyakunin Isshu. This volume wasn’t unique, but as Larry Hammer notes in his foreward, this particular collection has become so famous over the years that any time someone refers to the Hyakunin Isshu, they mean this one. Anyone who has watched much anime may have seen a memory card game called karuta being played on New Year’s Day. That card game is based on this compilation, which shows that the anthology has survived in Japan’s popular culture down to the modern age. Continue reading →

SF vs Fantasy, or “Do I Really Care How Many Angels Can Dance on a Bar?”

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 Every so often, you know it’s going to happen. Like a dormant virus, it waits until conditions are right and then there’s the sudden outbreak, often triggered by a particular novel or story—“Is Deadbeat Downbelow really sf? I mean, its tone is very sfnal, but where’s the speculation?” or “Magic Wind Fairies reads like sf, I mean, everything’s very logical and thought out.” I follow the conversations with interest (it’s nearly always interesting when intelligent people discuss matters near and dear to them) but I don’t really have much to contribute. Maybe there really is a line, maybe there isn’t. Yet even those who agree that you can draw a line and say, “This side fantasy, this side sf” are never going to agree on where that line is going to be drawn. Continue reading →

Rediscovering My Inner Fanboy

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I signed the contracts this morning, so I can go ahead and announce that “Skin Deep” from Eclipse 2 has sold to Witches: Wicked, Wild, and Wonderful, a (partly) reprint anthology from Prime Books due out next March. The editor is Paula Guran, and I’ll be sharing a ToC with Jane Yolen, Neil Gaiman, Ursula Le Guin, Tim Pratt, Margo Lanagan, Elizabeth Bear, Tanith Lee (see the link for the complete ToC) and that’s just for starters.

See, I’ll also be sharing a ToC with Andre Norton. Andre Norton was one of my very first influences; I actually discovered her before I read Bradbury or Heinlein, and my novel A Warrior of Dreams is dedicated to her, as well as Lord Dunsany and H.P. Lovecraft, for reasons that should be clear to anyone who reads it. Pardon the “squee!” but sharing a book with Andre Norton invokes my inner fanboy. We don’t see him that often, but nice to know he still lives here.