Search Results for: lafferty

New Treasures: The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

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Mur Lafferty is something of a renaissance woman. She was the host and co-editor of the horror podcast Pseudopod until July 2007; in 2010 she became the editor and host of the weekly SF podcast magazine Escape Pod. She’s also the host of I Should be Writing (when does she find time to actually write?), and a winner of the Podcast Peer Award and the Parsec Award. Apparently, she must make time somehow. She’s the author of two previous novels…

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The Enjoyment of Fantasy: Open Letters to Adam Gopnik, Mur Lafferty, and John C. Wright

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I’ve been a bit under the weather the past couple of weeks, which has been annoying for a number of reasons. For one thing, I was unable to get my thoughts in enough order to respond adequately to three pieces of writing I came across several days ago. Each piece on its own seemed to pose interesting questions, and collectively they raised what seemed to me to be related issues about how one reads, and why; and how and why…

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Mur Lafferty on Reading the Classics

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Mur Lafferty, author of The Afterlife Series and Playing For Keeps, has kicked off an interesting discussion on reading classic SF and Fantasy on her blog: I’m not quite sure how to read classic SF. You know the stuff that was groundbreaking with its expanse of ideas that hadn’t even been considered yet? But it was also the stuff that was very likely sexist, had cardboard characters, was completely lacking women or POC, used what we consider now to be…

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R.A. Lafferty: An Attempt at an Appreciation

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A little while ago, John O’Neill posted a news item on this blog about the literary estate of R.A. Lafferty (1914-2002) being put up for auction, with the current bid being $70,000 for the copyright to all his works. It’s an odd development, but then Lafferty was an odd writer. I want to try to say something about his work here, not because I’ve read everything he’s written — I’ve read only a fraction of his output, which runs to…

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R.A. Lafferty Literary Estate For Sale

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Steven Silver at SF Site is reporting that the estate of R.A. Lafferty, including rights to his 29 novels and 225 short stories, is currently being auctioned off. The source for the news appears to be an online classified ad at Locus Online, which claims that the “Current bid is $70,000+.” R.A. Lafferty is the author of the novels Past Master, The Reefs of Earth, Fourth Mansions, and Sindbad: The Thirteenth Voyage, as well as the classic short story collections Nine Hundred Grandmothers,…

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Vintage Treasures: Neutron Star by Larry Niven

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Neutron Star (Ballantine Bools, April 1968). Cover artist unknown As I was preparing last week’s Vintage Treasures article (on Poul Anderson’s Fire Time), I realized that the next book on deck was Neutron Star, by Larry Niven, one of the most important science fiction collections of the 20th Century. And I simultaneously realized we’ve never done a Vintage Treasures feature on Niven before, a pretty serious oversight. (For comparison purposes, as I was assembling reference links at the bottom of…

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Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois

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The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection (Bluejay Books, April 1986). Cover by Tom Kidd I saw a copy of the third volume in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series on eBay for $11.45 last week, and decided to take a chance. Turned out to be the Book Club edition, a reprint that’s a smaller size than my other volumes, which was a disappointment. But at least I finally had a copy. On the back of the…

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New Treasures: Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

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Dead Silence (Tor Nightfire, January 24, 2023). Cover by Timo Noack Nightfire is Tor’s new horror imprint. Launched in 2019, it’s published books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Catriona Ward, Cassandra Khaw, Ellen Datlow, T. Kingfisher, and lots more. That’s all well and good, but has it given us a haunted house story in space that’s a successful cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien? No. No it has not. Well, at least it hadn’t until the arrival of…

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Future Treasures: Meru by S.B. Divya

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Meru by S.B. Divya (47North, February 1, 2023) S.B. Divya has made a heckuva splash in just a few years. She was the co-editor (with Mur Lafferty) of the Hugo-nominated Escape Pod, and her debut novella Runtime (Tor.com, 2016) was nominated for a Nebula. Her first novel Machinehood (Saga Press, 2021) was also nominated for a Nebula last year. Needless to say, her upcoming novel Meru is highly anticipated. A far-future thriller of a woman who attempts the impossible to…

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Vintage Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year 11 edited by Terry Carr

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year 11 (Timescape, July 1982) I’ve realized I enjoy these old Terry Carr anthologies much more now than when they first appeared 40 years ago. I wasn’t a sophisticated reader in those days (not that I’m particularly sophisticated today, but at least I’m more patient). I was still discovering science fiction, and purely on the hunt for tales of wonder and adventure. I’d read Carr’s Best Science Fiction volumes with a skeptical eye, not…

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