link salad
coffeeandink on feminist SF & manga. Interesting to me in particular because I also grew up thinking feminism was one of the central elements of the SF genre. I don't generally like anime or manga, though. (And yes, I have seen/viewed/read rather a lot of it, including some of the classics. You don't need to proselytize me.)
wen_spencer on morphing books
APOD: Gliese 876 System Includes Large Terrestrial Planet 15 light years, unfortunately not suitable for human-type life. Or perhaps fortunately, if it has inhabitants of a type that might not mind a surface temperature at twice the boiling point of water.
The estimable Tobias Buckell links Raechel Henderson Moon on why it's bullshit that commercial publishers won't buy first novels. Which is true. I understand that the real hump is the third or fourth novel. Because then, see, you've got a track record to live up to--or down.benpeek and
larbalestier have lots of thoughtfully ranty things to say about the
darkcabal thing. One thing I've learned about this genre is that, no matter what you try to do, for whatever reasons, somebody will be agin it, and somebody else will be fer it for reasons that make absolutely no sense to you.
Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror is like a gigantic sprawling extended family having a year-long Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody has an opinion about everything. I still think it's an interesting experiment. I don't, you know, expect it to revolutionize the awards process in the genre... but then, I'm too much of a Yankee to mail anybody a copy of my book with a "please vote for this if you think it's worthy" sticker on the front.
In other words, I'm agin it.