Interzone 254 has been out for a while and includes of course my review of The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano. Jim Steel’s blog has a BIG picture of the cover. It’s a special Nina Allan issue. See here and here for my thoughts on her longer works.

My latest review book is Irregularity, a collection of short stories based around the Age of Reason. Since that has arrived I suppose it won’t be long until Interzone 255 hits the doormat.

The Hugo is effectively the world’s Science Fiction award but it’s usually a North American fiefdom. The awards are presented at the World Science Fiction Convention, which, this year, is Lone Star Con 3 on whose website all the nominations can be found.

Unlike the BSFA Awards the Hugo splits non-novel SF into three categories as below.

Best Novel
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
Blackout by Mira Grant (Orbit)
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi (Tor)
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (DAW)

Best Novella

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)
The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Mira Grant (Orbit)
“The Stars Do Not Lie” by Jay Lake (Asimov’s, Oct-Nov 2012)

Best Novelette

“The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Postscripts: Unfit For Eden, PS Publications)
“Fade To White” by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
“The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris)
“In Sea-Salt Tears” by Seanan McGuire (Self-published)
“Rat-Catcher” by Seanan McGuire (A Fantasy Medley 2, Subterranean)

Best Short Story

“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld, June 2012)
“Mantis Wives” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
“Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

Remarkably I have read two of the novels, but that is thanks to Interzone and its reviews editor, Jim Steel.

It is notable that only one novel (2312) and one short story (Immersion) appear both on the BSFA short list and the Hugo.

This edition is out now (news via Jim Steel’s blog.)

This is the one where my review of John Scalzi’s Redshirts can be found.

I’ll be posting that here after a decent interval.

Jim Steel’s blog has reported that Interzone 243 is out imminently. This is the issue that contains my review of M John Harrison’s Empty Space.

I see from Jim Steel’s blog that Interzone 240 is out.

This is the issue that contains my review of Mez Packer’s The Game Is Altered.

Interzone 236 should be out now (see Jim Steel’s blog.) This is the one that contains my review of Maria Dahvana Headley’s Queen of Kings. Its cover is on the left here. I must say the book was remarkably free of typos or other annoyances of that sort. What I thought of it as a piece of fiction is in the review.

My review for Interzone 237 of Lauren DeStefano’s Wither, whose cover is on the right, was delivered earlier in the week. That should come out in November.

So it’s not just me!

I clicked through to this while looking at a comment Jim Steel left on facebook.

Ann Patty may be a kindred soul.

Her point about proof reading at publishing houses is a good one.

I would have had the same reaction as her to errors in a manuscript.

If an author doesn’t know the nuts and bolts of the language she/he is writing in it’s like an electrician not knowing how to wire a circuit (only a bit less dangerous.) I don’t feel inclined to trust her/him any more.

The thing is, misuses such as the lay/lie confusion are becoming so widespread that they are in danger of obscuring the valuable distinction between the two meanings and the chances are English will, in the future, be the poorer for it.

I see from Jim Steel’s blog that Interzone 234 will be published next week.

This is the one where my review of Dominic Green’s Smallworld will appear.

I see from Jim Steel’s blog that the latest Interzone is due out next week.

This issue contains my review of Engineering Infinity, the anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Mutation Press, 2010. 270 p.

This is a collection of “Strange Fiction” with music as the linking theme. The stories range through various different types of SF and fantasy with some diversions into Horror. The authors mostly have low profiles though they all seem to have previous publications. In at least some of their contributions the relationship of the tale to the theme was tangential and most did not depend on music for their resolution. That is how it should be, though; a story has to work as a story after all, not fit an arbitrary arrangement.

To my mind the most successful tales were Richard J Goldstein’s Dybbuk Blues, concerning a charmed cornet and the fates of its players, Susan Lanigan’s The Accompanist, where the spirits of Robert and Clara Schumann inhabit the bodies of a teacher and pupil in a Music College, L L Hannett’s Breathing Life Into The Dead, about err…. breathing life into the dead and Gavin Inglis’s Fugue, where a driver crashes on a lonely road and hears a choir singing. Special mentions too to Jim Steel’s The Shostakovich Ensemble, a discography of a rock group from a Stalinist Britain, and Neil Williamson’s Arrhythmia, a kind of 1984 with added songs.

Nothing to do with the quality of the collection or its execution but one thing which irritated me was the occasional tendency for the font size to alter and then soon revert. I found it very distracting trying to decipher what the reason for this might be before concluding there was none.

As in all anthologies, or indeed collections, the quality was variable, but the stories here were never less than readable.