Oh wow--Anne Harris is serializing ALL THE COLORS OF LOVE: http://tinyurl.com/y8z9wu8 Go read this fabulous book!

Book View Cafe is now posting chapter one of my novel NIGHTMARE. Each week a new chapter will follow. Go look. It's free!

They're available! My Silent Empire books are now up and running in nearly all existing electronic formats: PDF, EPUB, MOBI, .prc, .lit, and .lrf . No DRM. Each book is $1.79, a great price!

You can find them in all formats here, at Book View Cafe.

The books are Dreamer, Nightmare, Trickster, and Offspring, and were originally published by Penguin/Roc. My editor was suricattus (Wave, Laura Anne!) The back cover for Dreamer reads:

It is through first contact with an alien species that humanity learns of the Dream. It is a plane of mental existence where people are able to communicate by their thoughts alone--over distances of thousands of light-years. To ensure that future generations will have this ability, human genetic engineering produces newborns capable of finding and navigating the Dream.

They become known as the Silent.

Rust is just one planet among many in the Empire of Human Unity. It's nothing special, nothing unusual...except for the fact that it is home to an unknown boy who may be the most powerful Silent telepath ever born--a Silent with the ability to possess the bodies of others against their will. This mysterious child may be causing tremors within the Dream itself.

For now, only the Children of Irfan know about him. A monastic-like order of the Silent, the Children protect their members even as they barter their services with the governments and corporations that control known space. But power like that cannot be hidden, and soon every Silent in the universe will know about the boy--and every government will be willing to go to war to control him.

And if the Children of Irfan cannot find him first, the Dream itself may be shattered...

Go check them out!

Can science fiction ever be respected? My answer, along with those of Gene Wolf, Kris Rusch, and others at SFSignal: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/10/speculative-fiction-and-mainstream-acceptance-part-1/

AfterElton.com blogged about their favorite eight gay-inclusive SF/F writers.  Among their choices were Octavia Butler, Mercedes Lackey--and me!  In fact, I got top billing!

It happened a while ago, and I just found out about it.  That's so neat!  The link is here:

http://www.afterelton.com/blog/lylemasaki/forget-orson-scott-card-john-wright-eight-gay-inclusive-scifi-writers

I finally finished watching the TORCHWOOD mini-series.  I liked the first half.  The rest of it was pure junk.

It pains me to say it, too.  I like TORCHWOOD a great, or I used to.  I think writer/producer Russell Davies has gotten a little full of himself, however, and no one on the show has the courage to speak up when he's full of shit.
( Spoilers . . .  )

I'm happy to announce that the third Silent Empire novel TRICKSTER (originally published by Penguin/Putnam) is now available for the Kindle. Price: $1.79.  MobiPocket is coming soon--I'll announce it here when it does!  Click to find out more.



From the back cover:

The Dream has been shattered, and the majority of the Silent who telepathically communicated through it have been cast out by the event known as the Despair, unable to reenter. Now the remaining Silent still capable of linking to the Dream have become a valuable commodity to those in power seeking to keep the lines of galactic communication open…

In the midst of the Despair, Father Kendi Weaver and the crew of the Poltergeist have a limited window of opportunity to find the loved ones they have lost--including Kendi's parents and siblings, who were sold into slavery more than fifteen years ago.

But just as Kendi closes in on the whereabouts of his brother and sister, they are taken by a mysterious group intent on using them for their own secret agenda…

"Intelligent entertainment."  --Booklist

This is why the vast majority of time travel stories don't really work:

First part of the day was spent taking the boys to a laser tag session.  Got home in time to make the 3:00 Star Trek show.  Yes!

Let me say that THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT STAR TREK NEEDED.  Abrams and the scriptwriters did a little handwaving to ensure that everything they did in this and in future movies would be kosher with the ST universe no matter what to keep the canon fans happy, okay fine, but I would've been happy even without it.

See, Star Trek has had a problem lately.  I'm in my 40s, and I'm a YOUNG Trek fan.  Among my (teenage) students, Trek is something for parents and grandparents.  It's old and sedate and boring.  It's filled with old people doing old people things.  And the actors aren't particularly attractive.  (Sorry, but it's true.  Patrick Stewart and Nichelle Nichols ain't going to get the blood moving of anyone under 50.)

So Abrams did the right thing.  He got young, attractive actors to attract young viewers.  And he put in lots and lots of action.  The story never, ever stops moving.  I mean NEVER.  (This was a weakness in the other movies--the story would come to a screeching halt while the show pandered to True Fans who wanted to see something that only they would get.)

The actors took over their roles and improved them.  I was never a Shatner fan, and I loved Chris Pine as Kirk.  He brought a coolness factor to the role that Shatner lacked.

The universe was also a little more banged up.  Star Trek always had an unrealistically clean look to it, like a house in a magazine.  It didn't look lived in.  This Trek looked used.  Engineering has pipes and conduits.  An outpost has rust and half-built computers.  There's actual DIRT in places.

I caught the waterboarding reference.  It was . . . nasty.

And aliens everywhere.  Lots of aliens.  And even a couple of monsters that didn't quite make sense in retrospect but were cool while I was watching.

I want to see it again.  I want to own the DVD.  I want them to do another one with the same cast.

A friend of mine is a Hollywood/entertainment reporter, which means he gets previews of a lot of stuff for free.  This includes the DVD of CAPRICA, the prequel to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.  He came over last night and we watched it.

Meh.

( Slightly Spoilery Review Behind the Cut ... )

The writing is decent.  It would have been better served on an entirely different concept and show.

When you see this, post a Douglas Adams quote in your blog.

"But what are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?"

"You think you've got problems?  What are supposed to do if you =are= a manically depressed robot?  No, don't bother to answer.  My brain is fifty thousand times more intelligent than yours and even I don't know the answer.  I have difficulty even thinking down to your level."

The first act of DR. HORRIBLE'S MUSICAL SINGALONG BLOG is up now.  It's extremely funny and watchable.  Go see it:

http://www.drhorrible.com/

Act II is up in a couple days, followed by Act III.

Dearie, dearie me.

Well, this is kinda cool!

Torquere Press is an on-line publisher of erotica.  However, they also do non-erotic romance stuff, too.  In celebration of California's decision to legalize same-sex marriage, they've decided to put out a bunch of short stories with same-sex marriage and romance as the central focus.  Half the royalties will be donated to the Human Rights Campaign Fund's fight to keep same-sex marriage legal in California.

At any rate, I've been invited to submit a Silent Empire story.  Cool!  I've never actually explored in print the machinations that finally brought Kendi and Ben together, or of the early stages in their stormy on-again, off-again relationship.  I have reams of notes and a lot of mental information, but most of it never got into print.  Now I have the chance to explore a little of it.

And it's nice to write about Kendi again, however briefly.

Watch this space for details!

It's a wrap.

The final ballot for the Phillip K. Dick Award has been created and released.  For the record, it is (in alphabetical order by author):

GREY by Jon Armstrong (Night Shade Books)
UNDERTOW by Elizabeth Bear (Bantam Spectra)
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF DR. BRAIN by Minister Faust (Del Rey)
NOVA SWING by M. John Harrison (Bantam Spectra)
GRADISIL by Adam Roberts (Pyr)
ALLY by Karen Traviss (Eos)
SATURN RETURNS by Sean Williams (Ace Books)

Gentlejudge's behavior (and Gordon van Gelder's hidden snipers) forbids me from saying anything about judging the finalists or hinting anything about the ultimate winner, of course.  Once the winner is announced, I might post little reviews about the finalists, but until then I remain mum.  I do have some observations about the judging process itself:

--My mail carrier must hate me.  I think I averaged over two books a week all year.

--Some people don't pay attention to the rules.  The PKD award is for original paperback science fiction, which could include single-author collections of SF short stories.  Nevertheless, I got fantasy, horror, and hardcovers.  The crown winner for rule-breaking was a hardcover anthology of horror stories.  Sheesh!

--I never want to read science fiction again!  Well, not for a while, anyway.  This year, the only books I read were PKD award material and whatever I was reading for my own research.  I read nothing for pure pleasure (unless you count the PKD books that turned out to be pleasure).  I have a pile of fantasy, mystery, and thriller novels that I'm dying to get to now.  Once the PKD books were done, I dove straight into Terry Pratchett's MAKING MONEY, for example.  Ohhhh, it was nice to read something different!

--I did get to read a lot of stuff I never would have picked up on my own, including all the books that appear on the finalist ballot.  It was an extremely interesting trip through this year's SF field.

--It continues to amaze me what can get published.  We judges received many, many books that we unanimously agreed were horrible, in an "embarrassingly badly written" sort of way.  Clunky, awful stuff, and not all of it from small presses, either.  (Actually, I think GREY and GRADISIL are from small or medium presses, which goes to show that the little guys shouldn't be ignored.)  Some really dreadful stuff came from The Big Guys.  Not, I suppose, that this is news, but it was interesting to see it reaffirmed in such a big way.

--We also received many books that deserved to be on the final ballot but couldn't be there because only so many are allowed.  It was painful to make those cuts.

--Some books started out so very promising and then turned on us, like A students who abruptly failed in the second semester.  Extremely disappointing when that happened.  In the PKD newsgroup, we'd get comments like, "Hey, everyone, I'm reading TEQUILA SUNRISE ON BETELGEUSE, WITH MERMAIDS* and it's really, really good.  Take a look."  And then, a few days later: "Aw man!  Halfway through, it just dies.  Awful!"  This happened more often than you might think.

--So when do I get my honorarium . . . ?  Gordon?  Hello?

*Not a real title, though now that I think about it, it's a pretty good one.