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Here is some great news about Terry Pratchett’s next (as yet unpublished novel), UNSEEN ACADEMICALS. It is the “soccer novel” with a “realistic” Romeo and Juliet story woven through. Pratchett on the Romeo and Juliet story:
You have to watch the video interview, the text interview is not about UNSEEN ACADEMICALS. Terry Pratchett from HarperCollins Publishers .  Now this is what I call actual news! From Lois McMaster Bujold, on her own mailing list:
And on the cutting room floor:
Challenge: are the missing books (that didn’t win Hugos and Nebulas) worth more than $116K?
Homo sapiens, the adaptable animal? I grew up reading a lot of science fiction that was written in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and for a variety of reasons (among them, a key editor named John A. Campbell) a very popular “meme” in that era was a rather triumphalist view of man as the most adaptable and successful of all animals (on this planet and any others!) To be sure, this was grossly exaggerated, and I don’t think the writers of that era fully appreciated the relatively short time window in which homo sap has flourished relative to, e.g., the croocodile (250mya). This concept of taking pride in adaptability seems to have disappeared into the cultural trashbin during the 60s and 70s, which is odd since the adaptive pressures on society in the late 60s were among the most intense in recorded histories. It’s also odd that the concept has not become more common again as we appreciate more and more that the human appropriation of net primary productivity is somewhere between 30 and 50% (Imhoff, Haberl). We are nothing if not successful at adapting the environment to our needs! Instead, our dominant reaction to climate change seems to be “change is bad.” Not that there isn’t a lot of bad news, but it’s odd that there isn’t a more balanced perception that it is, in fact, kind of good news that the Arctic Sea is becoming navigable. Generally, navigable seas are viewed as a good thing … My question for the group: is adaptability back? Should we be urging people once more to take pride in human adaptability? via LinkedIn: View Discussion: °AdaptAbility – The Climate Adaptation Network.
I am beginning a project of organizing my library and deciding what books to keep and what books I want to add. I am working my way through things methodically, beginning with the science fiction section and authors beginning with “A”. Here are my thoughts so far … Adams, Douglas — there is a single-volume omnibus (is that redundant?) with his collected works. that would be a nice readers’ copy to own. Adams certainly had a huge influence on the history of SF … but not one of my personal favorites. Does it need to be in my collection? I can always get it from the library. Anderson, Poul — I have a volume of collected stories. What I would like to have: a first of Tau Zero and (maybe) a complete run of the Flandry and van Rijn series. Anthony, Piers — I’ll deal with his fantasy in a separate section. In the meantime, there is an argument to be made for Macroscope. Asimov, Isaac — the first unqualified “must” in this section. I want the best possible editions of all the Foundation books. The Robot books are a lower priority. The End of Eternity might be higher than the Robot books. Who else am I missing? more tk … This is one of the better days in the history of Nimble Books. Today we have reached a final agreement with Hugo and Nebula-award winning science fiction author, futurist, and commentator David Brin, and we will be publishing his THROUGH STRANGER EYES, a collection of “Reviews, Introductions, Tributes & Iconoclastic Essays” in the U.S. and U.K. We will be working in partnership with Robert Stephenson of the fine SF publisher Altair Australia who be publishing a simultaneous edition for his markets. THROUGH STRANGER EYES will include essays on figures as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, John Brunner, George Orwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Charles Sheffield, Richard Feynman, and Ayn Rand.
More to come …
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wfzimmerman’s review: “The latest in a series of consistently outstanding SF novels from Alastair Reynolds. I enjoyed this one a lot.”
wfzimmerman’s review: “I’m a few chapters into this and it is terrific so far. Big Smart Objects, astroarchaeology, credible science — this is what SF is all about. I immediately rushed off to order his other book, [[Star Dragon]]].”
wfzimmerman’s review: “An impressive debut novel. The multiplexing clones who are the protagonists are creepy at first, but at the end of the book there is a convincing explanation for their existence. One minor nit is that practically every character has a self-descriptive name (is there a word for that? autonym?) Ultimately, a tough-minded meditation on what might lead us to a Singularity and what might happen after it.”
wfzimmerman’s review: “I’ve slogged about half-way through this book and I still can’t figure out why it is on the American Library Association list of Top 100 Banned Books.”
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