Very briefly:
At the Washington Post Michael Dirda seems much more happy with Transition than Patrick Ness was. Goodness only knows how he finds it “wildly entertaining.”
In The Literary Review of Canada Robert Charles Wilson explains that Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood seems pretty amateurish in places to those who have made a career of writing speculative fiction. There’s some rather subtle snark in there.
The New York Times has a profile of Carolyn Porco, my pick for Ada Lovelace Day.
And finally my good friend THE…. Sodomite Hal Duncan!! has a new column up at BSC Review in which he talks about the founding of The Outer Alliance and why some of us think it is such a good thing.
Wilson’s review is interesting, so thanks for the link. I’m not sure I’d call his snark precisely subtle – or am I missing something?
Fascinating for me is always to compare different perspectives – that of genre and mainstream literary critics, for example. One of the reasons I read Matthew Cheney’s Mumpsimus blog so assiduously is that he’s one of the people who, it seems to me, manages to speak from both sides of the Great Divide.
Lee:
I was thinking about the way he talks about “speculative fiction”, in particular referring to himself as a writer of “speculative fiction”. He’s essential saying to Atwood, “you are writing the same sort of fiction as I am.” Anywhere else he would call himself a “science fiction” writer.
Yes, good point. I can’t imagine that he’s ashamed of calling himself a SF writer, but he’s surely aware of Atwood’s refusal to accept the label.
Whether they’re actually writing the same sort of fiction is, of course, open to discussion.