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Barnes & Noble up for sale

Barnes & Noble up for sale

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barnes-and-noble2When I moved to St. Charles, Illinois, in 1997, one of the things that drew me to the town was the abundance of used bookstores. There were roughly a half-dozen in easy driving distance, and two in walking distance. I spent a lot of happy hours picking through the vintage science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, until Alice finally pulled me away to go look at stoneware or baby clothes.

Those bookstores are now gone. Several factors conspired to destroy the viability of the small-town bookstore in the 1990s, but one of the chief culprits was the arrival of the suburban megabookstores erected by Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Scarcely a decade later, Borders USA narrowly avoided bankruptcy with a round of debt refinancing in 2009 (Borders in the UK was neither so swift nor so lucky, and went belly up last year). And now comes the news that America’s largest chain of high-end bookshops, Barnes & Noble, has put itself up for sale in the latest sign of the turbulent changes in US book retailing in the new age of the iPad and the Kindle.

B&N owns some 720 bookstores across the US.  The announcement comes after a 45% slump in share price over the last year, and a nearly 5% decline in year-over-year sales from its store operations, to $4.3 billion.

It’s hard to drum up too much sympathy for the corporation partly responsible for the death of all those local bookshops, and part of me sees a healthy dose of poetic justice here.  But at the same time, B&N built some of the finest, most attractive, and most well-stocked bookstores I’ve ever seen, and it put one right on my streetcorner. If they vanish, they’ll be dearly missed.

A Review of The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly

A Review of The Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly

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ladiesThe Ladies of Mandrigyn, by Barbara Hambly
Del Rey (311 pages, $2.95, March 1984)

The first note I made on The Ladies of Mandrigyn was, “too many adjectives!” I also took an immediate dislike to the main character, a mercenary captain who routinely buys and keeps teenage concubines.

The second problem resolved itself nicely during the course of the story, but the adjectives never did let up. If you like spare prose, this is probably not a book for you.

Before I talk about the story, I should mention that I’ve only read this book once. For all my previous reviews, I chose books that I’d read before. If these reviews have a theme, after all, it’s “good books you probably don’t know about,” so I started with some stories I remembered fondly. With this one, I checked to make sure it was the first of a series (the other two are The Witches of Wenshar and The Dark Hand of Magic) and bought it.

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Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

Jane Frank’s SF&F Artists of the 20th Century

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frank2Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, by Jane Frank
McFarland Publishing Co (534 pages, $148.00, February 2009)

My initial interest in amassing my collection of SF & Fantasy magazines began with the appeal of the cover art.

I jumped on Robert Weinberg’s Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists when it was published in 1988. This work has been virtually alone since then as a definitive coverage of the lives and work of most all of those whose art graced the genre pulps and digests. As with Mike Ashley’s work on the history and accounting of the magazines themselves, Weinberg’s book took front and center on my shelf of core reference books which explain so well to me what I have in my collection.

Reference books of this sort are few, and a work of passion, and as such become updated only with supreme will and dedication, as in the current case of Mike A’s updating of his original 4-volume history of the science fiction magazine. I really hadn’t expected a similar effort to come out of the Art segment of the field. Fortuitously it has now appeared.

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Norman Spinrad on The Publishing Death Spiral, Part One

Norman Spinrad on The Publishing Death Spiral, Part One

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void-captain2Science Fiction author Norman Spinrad, author of Bug Jack Barron, The Void Captain’s Tale, and the classic Star Trek episode that introduced the world to cigar-shaped starships of death, “The Doomsday Machine,” talks about the cruel math of “order to net:” 

Here’s how it works. Barnes and Noble and Borders, the major bookstore chains, control the lion’s share of retail book sales… Let’s say that some chain has ordered 10,000 copies of a novel, sold 8000 copies, and returned 2000, a really excellent sell-through of 80%. So they order to net on the author’s next novel, meaning 8000 copies. And let’s even say they still have an 80% sell-through of 6400 books, so they order 6400 copies of the next book, and sell 5120…. You see where this mathematical regression is going, don’t you? Sooner or later right down the willy-hole to an unpublishablity that has nothing at all to do with the literary quality of a writer’s work, or the loyalty of a reasonable body of would-be readers, or even the passionate support of an editor below the very top of the corporate pyramid. Voila, the Death Spiral. And I too am in it.

Read the complete article at his blog, Norman Spinrad At Large.

Rogue Blades Entertainment conjures Demons

Rogue Blades Entertainment conjures Demons

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demons-cover2Our review copy of Demons, the new heroic fantasy anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment and publisher/editor Jason M. Waltz, finally arrived last week.

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while.  It’s the first Clash of Steel anthology to appear under the RBE banner, although more are planned — including Sea Dogs, Reluctant Heroes, and Assassins.

Demons includes stories from Black Gate Contributing Editor Bill Ward and contributors Brian Dolton and Steve Goble, as well as Elaine Isaak, C.L. Werner, Carl Walmsley, Christopher Heath, Ty Johnston, Laura J. Underwood, TW Williams, and many others.

Twelve of the twenty-eight stories originally appeared in a small press title from now-defunct Carnifex Press in 2006: Clash of Steel: Demon, edited by Armand Rosamilia. As Jason relates in his lengthy Acknowledgements:

It was a sorry day indeed when Carnifex Press was forced to close its doors, prematurely bringing to an end the Clash of Steel series. Or so I thought. In a flash of inspiration, I contacted Armand Rosamilia and made a proposal: Allow Rogue Blades Entertainment to adopt the series, and RBE would swear to carry on its fine tradition of hard-hitting steel-centric sword and sorcery tales. He accepted. Here now is the result of that agreement.

Demons is an anthology

…devoted to the devilish fiends who seek to wreak havoc among mankind upon the mortal plane – and of the paladins and warriors who return the vanquished denizens of all the hells to whence they’ve come!

Looking forward to digging in to this one.  You can find the complete TOC here.

A Review of The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

A Review of The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

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hero-and-the-crownThe Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
Ace Books (240 pages, $6.99, 1987)

Almost two decades before The Hero and the Crown begins, we are told, a witch seduced the king of Damar.

She married him, bore a child, and then died of disappointment when the child turned out to be a girl, unlikely to take the throne and fulfill her ambitions. Or, at least, that’s the version of the story that everyone knows.

The protagonist of the story is that daughter, a young woman named Aerin. I have to admit to some positive prejudice here: the maladjusted princess is a favorite archetype of mine, and Aerin fits it perfectly. Awkward, prickly, shy, taller than all the other women around her, an outsider in her own family and to her own court — it’s even mentioned that her embroidery is lousy, which has gotten to be a little bit of a cliché.

But she’s also determined, kind, brave, and — interestingly — thinks very scientifically for a quasi-medieval person, so even if you don’t like princesses with problems, I believe she’s a relatable hero.

Shortly after the story begins, we get an extended flashback explaining how she came to her current place in life. At fifteen, Aerin hadn’t yet manifested the magical gifts that mark Damarian royalty. To prove to her cousin Galanna that she truly had royal blood, she ate some leaves from a plant that was supposed to be deadly poison to all those outside the royal family — and nearly killed herself.

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Climbing Aboard the Dragon: 10 Tips to Better Productivity

Climbing Aboard the Dragon: 10 Tips to Better Productivity

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“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
— Joseph Heller

Previously in this series about writing, we’ve talked about ways to get story ideas as well as different approaches you can take to writing your story, novel, comic script, screenplay, or other related screed, tome, or pamphlet.

Pen image by Michael ConnorsBut what about the single most important aspect of the writing process? Yes, I’m talking about butt-in-chair time. How do you get yourself into a good schedule and motivated to write?

Very good question.

My answer? Below I’ve listed my top-ten list of tricks and techniques I’ve used that help me get more productive (and less annoyed with myself for not having gotten and writing done):

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A review of The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane

A review of The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane

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door-into-fire2aThe Door Into Fire, by Diane Duane
Dell Fantasy (304 pages, $1.95, 1979)

Prince Herewiss of the Brightwood has two major problems.

First, he’s the first man in generations to have the Flame, a form of energy that’s much more potent than ordinary sorcery — but he can’t use it at all if he can’t make a physical focus with which to channel it.

His other problem is his lover Freelorn, exiled Prince of Arlen and trouble magnet. The summary on the back of The Door Into Fire refers to Freelorn as Herewiss’s “dearest friend” — which, in my opinion, does the book a disservice.

The Door Into Fire is about magic power, overcoming old tragedies, and the beginning of an epic kingdom-changing quest. It’s about a very hands-on Goddess and how she deals with her creation.

But it’s also about sex. Sex and love, sex and jealousy, sex in a culture where bisexuality and polyamory seem to be the default — sex that starts from a different set of assumptions than the average American reader carries around.

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Robert Silverberg on “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

Robert Silverberg on “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

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silverbergIn a post on his blog last week, Canadian science fiction author Robert Sawyer asked “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

When I broke into the business 55 years ago you could count the number of full-time science fiction writers who could pay the rent and eat regular meals on the fingers of one oddly proportioned hand. Poul Anderson, Gordy Dickson, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Robert Sheckley, maybe Jack Vance, and….well, who else? Jack Williamson? Perhaps he had begun teaching by then. Asimov was still a college professor who wrote s-f on the side. Ted Cogswell was a professor also. So was James Gunn. Phil Dick was a full-timer, but lived at the poverty level. Sturgeon didn’t do much better. Del Rey dabbled in editing and occasional agenting. Harry Harrison did editing work, wrote comics, whatnot. Leiber was an editor for Science Digest. Jim Blish wrote p-r stuff for the tobacco institute. Cyril Kornbluth worked for a wire service. Fred Pohl edited and agented. Alfred Bester wrote for the slicks and TV. I’m not sure what Phil Klass did for a living — he wasn’t teaching yet — but he couldn’t have lived on the proceeds of what he wrote. Kuttner and Moore — I don’t know; they did venture somewhat into television and mystery novels.Leigh Brackett was a part-time Hollywood writer and her husband Edmond Hamilton earned most of his living writing comic books. Mack Reynolds and Fred Brown had fled to Mexico, where a dime went as far as a dollar did here.

It just wasn’t a field for full-timers. I didn’t really know that, so I plunged right in and made a good living, but I did it by dint of writing and selling a couple of short stories a week, and even then the field vanished from under me by 1958 and I had to turn to all sorts of non-sf writing until things began to revive in the mid-1960s. The same happened to Harlan, and then he got drafted, and when he came out he went to Chicago to edit and on from there to Hollywood.

Now we are back to the same situation that obtained in the golden era of the Fifties — s-f is mainly a field for hobbyist writers, with just a few able to earn a living writing just the real stuff and nothing but. (It is different, of course, for those who write pseudo-Tolkien trilogies, vampire novels, zombie books, and other sorts of highly commercial fantasy.) For a while, in the late 70s and early 80s, the money flowed freely and all sorts of people set up in business as s-f writers full time. I remember Greg Bear, president of SFWA somewhere back in the mid-80s, warning the writers at the SFWA business session not to quit their day jobs, because the good times were just about over; and was he ever right!

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Ten – “The Spores of Death”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Ten – “The Spores of Death”

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mystryfu1“The Spores of Death” was the penultimate installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu.

First published in The Story-Teller in June 1913, it later comprised Chapters 24-26 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U. S. publication).

The story starts off appropriately with our narrator, Dr. Petrie, acknowledging the storyline is drawing to a close and apologizing (very nearly breaking the literary equivalent of the Fourth Wall in so doing) for his haste in not better detailing characters and incidents as he was forced to maintain the breakneck pace of the events as they transpired.

Dr. Petrie then spends some much welcome time discussing the mysterious origins of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Petrie suggests the name (ridiculous to modern, informed readers) is an assumed one and disassociates him with the Young China movement (the Republicans who came to power after the fall of the Manchu Dynasty) as he had speculated early on.

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