Bit of a general round up post of some recent stuff I’ve been involved with. As part of the podcast we do a SFF book club and looking back we’ve been going now for two years. We’ve covered a whole bunch of different books, both classic works of fiction including The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, Slaughterhouse 5, Stranger in a Strange Land, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I Am Legend, The Caves of Steel and we’ve looked at some modern SFF including Empire in Black and Gold, The City and The City, Zoo City, American Gods, Masked, The Winter King, Horns, and The Dresden Files. We’ve been lucky enough to speak to some of the authors of these great books and have interviewed China Mieville, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lou Anders and Lauren Beukes.
Our most recent selection is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card which is under the popular spotlight at the moment because a movie adaptation seems to be moving ahead. Our discussion proved to be really interesting as Scott and I came down on different sides with the novel and the author attracts a fair amount of controversy because of his views. A quick internet search will tell you more about that. Our current book club selection is a debut novelist, Mazarkis Williams, and his first book The Emperor’s Knife is being published by Joe Fletcher books, someone who is very well known in the SFF publishing business. So, if you’ve got some time over the holidays or beyond that in the months ahead and want to listen to some discussion of SFF books, check out The Book Club blog where we post new episodes.
This week we’re also recording the last Comic Book Outsiders episode of 2011 and we will take a longer break over the holidays and be back in January. I’ll end up with about two weeks off work, but I’m going to be busy with family and then I’ve got to get my teeth into some writing projects that have been put to one side in recent weeks because work has kept me very busy, away from home, and made me very tired.
I’m not one for making new year’s resolutions but I am looking forward to next year with a renewed sense of hope. Some creative projects that have been slowly gestating are starting to bear some fruit and the increased momentum is getting me excited about writing in a way that I’ve not been for a while. I think next year is going to be an interesting and creatively rich and rewarding year. So while I’m not keen to wish away the rest of December, I am looking forward to seeing what happens next.
Stephen Aryan 