Strange Horizons, the erstwhile speculative fiction magazine, is currently running its annual fund drive.  I've had a close relationship with Strange Horizons that has spanned most of my writing career.  They were the first magazine to publish my reviews, thus bringing my work to a wider audience.  I served as the magazine's reviews editor between 2011 and 2014 (which means that my name appeared

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Strange Horizons has now posted my review of John Clute's latest collection of materials, Stay. A taste:

Even a mere glance through Stay, John Clute’s latest collection of book reviews, short stories, and lexicon entries, (or through any of Clute's books, really) will convince you that you are in the presence of genius.

But a genius of what type? The type that can turn a million candy wrappers into a surprisingly convincing small-scale replica of a rocket ship, or the type that zips to the heart of a zeitgeist faster than the rest of us? Is this genius a fox, a hedgehog, an anorak? Does it sing in seemingly effortless perfect pitch, or is its singing, like that of a dog, remarkable simply for being at all?

The desire to taxonomize is inevitable after reading even a few pages of Clute. He is a wild literary Linnaeus: obsessively compulsed to categorize. As someone generally uninterested in taxonomy, I have struggled to learn to read Clute appreciatively. I used to want to shoot his clay pigeonholes, to mock his neologistic frenzies, to clothe the emperor. But then I realized I was enjoying his work too much to do so. Clute’s imperative to categorize is contagious. I’d passed through the portal and made my way into Cluteland.

This review marks ten years of my writing for Strange Horizons — I began as a columnist in February 2005 with a rather odd piece titled "Walls". I stopped as a columnist after writing fifty, since I felt like I'd done what I could do with the form for that audience, but I've continued occasionally to write reviews.

I don't do a lot with genre speculative fiction these days, since other things have taken me elsewhere, but it's nice to be back now and again at a publication that feels so much like home. I owe thanks to lots of people there, especially former editor-in-chief Susan Groppi, who first asked me to write for the magazine, current editor-in-chief (and the first, if I remember correctly, reviews editor) Niall Harrison, recent past reviews editor Abigail Nussbaum, new reviews senior editor Maureen Kincaid Speller, and book reviews editor Aishwarya Subramanian, who not only let me keep some of my bad puns and jokes, but even liked some of them! Strange Horizons remains a unique, wonderful place out there in the wide world of the web, and it has always been an honor to be associated with it.

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Vandana Singh

Read her entire article Alternate Visions: Some Musings on Diversity in SF.

Another worthwhile read is Inclusive Reviewing: A Discussion by Samuel R. Delany, et al. Strange Horizons, a magazine of and about speculative fiction and related nonfiction, published the transcript of a round-table discussion of issues raised by Nisi Shawl in her essay, Reviewing the Other.

Jim C. Hines edits E-book on sci-fi diversity
Learning to write about "us," the Other
Last week, K. T. Bradford posted: "I had the honor to teach at a week-long Writing the Other workshop and retreat. Writing about people and places outside of the cultural 'norm' or one's direct understanding is hard to do. It's called Writing the Other, and it's a skill that must be learned and often worked at diligently by people who want to be great writers." The workshop and writing retreat was held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and included authors Mary Robinette Kowal, Nisi Shawl, Cynthia Ward and David Anthony Durham.

Also check her listing of articles called Writingtheother's Public Library.

white guy from the film

Ursula K. Le Guin, Americanauthor of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasyand science fiction, wrote about her Earthsea series in her article, How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books. Here's some excerpts:

Le Guin is an Americanauthor of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasyand science fiction.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt anthology of "non-Western writers"

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

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The second installment of Short Fiction Snapshot (see here) is live at Strange Horizons.  This time my topic was Tori Truslow's "Boat in Shadows, Crossing" from Beneath Ceaseless Skies.  As before, you're invited to read the story and join in a discussion in the comments.

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This week on Strange Horizons, we're launching a new reviews department feature: Short Fiction Snapshot, where every other month we'll be dedicating a full-length review to a piece of short fiction.  Here is my editorial explaining my goals and hopes for this project, and here is the first installment, discussing Charlie Jane Anders's "Intestate," from Tor.com.  One of my hopes for this project

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New Year's Eve fireworks, 2012; photo by Matthew Cheney

I have a small contribution in the grand collage that is the Strange Horizons reviewers' "2012 in Review". Well worth taking a look at for the huge, wonderful variety of writers' interests and enthusiasms.

Happy new year!

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My latest Strange Horizons column is about John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's book The Lifespan of a Fact, which has been provoking a lot of discussion.

My favorite of the responses to the book is Ander Monson's "The Skeptical Gaze", because not only has Monson read Lifespan with some care (which cannot be said for many of the people punditing about it), but he's also done some wonderful work himself to explore the possibilities and boundaries of fact and fiction (I wrote about his excellent book Vanishing Point a couple years ago for Strange Horizons). (Pardon another parenthetical, but I also want to add that comparisons between Mike Daisy and John D'Agata are superficial and fundamentally wrongheaded, as Josh Voorhees pointed out at Slate. Daisy hid his lying and worked hard to do so, D'Agata has put his fictionalizing front and center and let the world respond. I wrote the column before the Daisy scandal broke, however.)

Anyway, my own take on The Lifespan of a Fact was written about a month ago, but for scheduling reasons couldn't be published till now, so it feels a little bit superfluous to the conversation. I'm glad it's out there nonetheless, because I don't think mine is quite the same perspective as many of the others.

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William Mingin kicks off this week's reviews with a look at two collections of Robert E. Howard's non-Conan stories, Conan's Brethren and Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures, concluding that they illustrate the breadth of Howard's interests and his still-potent appeal.  Marina Berlin reviews the art-house SF film Another Earth, and though she finds much to praise she is also disappointed

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The week's first review is by Matt Hilliard, who looks at Rob Ziegler's debut novel Seed, a post environmental collapse novel.  Though he questions Ziegler's environmental model, Matt finds much to admire about Seed's depiction of a slowly collapsing world.  Lila Garrott is disappointed with Lisa Goldstein's The Uncertain Places, arguing that it does little that is new or original with its fairy

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This week's first review is by T.S. Miller, who takes a look at Future Media, a collection of stories and essays by Rick Wilber examining the ways that media has and is changing.  Tim finds much to enjoy but wonders if Wilber and his contributors might have more to say about the past than the future and the shape that future media might take.  Sarah Frost reviews Infidel, the sequel to God's War

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Strange Horizons's Halloween review is Farah Mendlesohn's long, detailed look at the essay collection 21st Century Gothic, edited by Danel Olson.  Farah finds the collection extremely variable, containing excellent pieces alongside terrible ones, but her review also acts as an introduction to several titles that one wouldn't necessarily associate with the Gothic descriptor, some of which sound

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Google has done gone and broke Google Reader, removing the sharing function to encourage people to use Google Plus instead. This means the "Fresh Links" section over on the sidebar is no longer able to be refreshed, and I'll probably go back to occasionally doing linkdump posts. Here, for instance, are some links:

• My latest Strange Horizons column, "Reading Systems", has been posted, as has my latest Sandman Meditations piece. (The Sandman pieces are going to be biweekly for the rest of the year rather than the regular weekly schedule because I'm just too busy to keep up with a weekly schedule right now, and I was getting really frazzled.)
• Team VanderMeer has launched The Weird Fiction Review, an online journal about kumquats. Famed kumquat collected Neil Gaiman is interviewed, and there's an interesting selection of nonfiction, art, and fiction about kumquats. Don't believe me? Well, go over there and see for yourself!
• In publishing news, it turns out that libraries are actually good for the publishing industry.
• Fandor has a great set of tributes to the great Derek Jarman. I'm working on something about Jarman's Caravaggio (25 years old this year!) and also a piece about Jarman for Rain Taxi, but I'm finding Jarman much harder to write about than I expected, and both pieces are vastly late. But I shall persevere!
• And here are 92 open-access film e-books. Never again will you complain about lacking something to read!

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The first of this week's reviews is Richard Larson's take on Jesse Bullington's The Enterprise of Death.  Richard is impressed with Enterprise, both as a fantasy and as a piece of historical fiction.  Liz Bourke is similarly impressed with Erin Hoffman's debut fantasy Sword of Fire and Sea, though she notes some problems with the book's characters and plot.  Sofia Samatar is intrigued by Nina

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In the first of this week's reviews, Indrapramit Das dives into Neal Stephenson's latest doorstop, Reamde, and finds novel with definite airport thriller qualities that nevertheless is not only entertaining, but suggests that the present setting of these sorts of novels has become SFnal.  Katherine Farmar reviews the putative next big thing in the YA fantasy circle, Rae Carson's Fire and Thorns (

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Victoria Hoyle kicks off this week's reviews with a review of recent World Fantasy Award winner Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord.  Though charmed by novel, Victoria is also a little hesitant about it, wondering if it isn't a little too charming, and its resolution a little too neat.  Paul Kincaid follows with a similarly ambivalent review of Chris Adrian's The Great Night, a retelling of A

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It's the final week of the Strange Horizons Fund Drive, and there are lots of fun prizes that have been donated by the various folks who support SH. But you shouldn't donate just to get a prize. You should donate because that's what keeps SH going, and has kept it going for 10 years now, long enough to make it venerable. Their staff is all volunteer, but they pay their writers good rates (think of it as the opposite of the Huffington Post that way).

Here's some useful info:

Where does my money go?

• Your $5 donation will cover our administrative overhead costs for one week
• Your $20 donation pays for one poem or one review
• Your $50 donation pays for one article
• Your $100 donation allows us to sponsor a convention event
• Your $250 donation is the average amount we pay for a new story
• Your $400 donation pays for an entire week's worth of material at Strange Horizons

And now, so I can follow the progress you help SH make, here's their progress rocket:


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The reviews department rounds out the month with three reviews of odd, slipstream-y books.  First out the gate is Niall Alexander who reviews Christopher Priest's The Islanders, his first novel in nearly a decade and, an almost indescribable work that is, at its most basic level, a travel guide to an archipelago that doesn't exist.  Sofia Samatar follows up with a review of Yellowcake, Margo

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As well as my own review of Torchwood: Miracle Day, this week sees the publication of Duncan Lawie's review of Dancing With Bears: The Postutopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus by Michael Swanwick.  Duncan's project is to discover whether the novel, in which Swanwick expands on his short stories featuring the titular pair of con-men and rogues, has more to it than the sense of whimsy that

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Hannah Strom-Martin reviews Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands, the latest installment in the shared-world anthology series, this time edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner.  She's pleased by what she finds, but wonders if the anthology's tone is less edgy and confrontational than the Bordertown setting pretends to be.  Michael Levy is impressed with Lavie Tidhar's

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Niall Harrison and Nic Clarke kick off this week's reviews with two views on the recently-concluded first season of Game of Thrones, Niall from the perspective of someone who hasn't read the books, and Nic as a fan of the series.  Both end up with a mixture of praise and reservations.  This is followed by two reviewer debuts: Nandini Ramachandran looks at M.D. Lachlan's Fenrir, the sequel to

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My latest column is up at Strange Horizons, and this time it's about Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic science fiction film World on a Wire (Welt am Draht).

If you want to see World on a Wire (and you should!), it's available on home video in the U.K. and Europe, and in the U.S. can be seen via Hulu if you subscribe to Hulu Plus (you can get a free trial subscription for a week, or if you have .edu email address, for a month). Rumor has it that Criterion will be releasing the film on DVD and Blu-ray in the U.S. at the end of this year or the beginning of next. It's also still touring various U.S. cities -- at the end of this week, it will be at the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, MA.

I'm a Fassbinder nut, so will passionately defend even his films that only lunatics defend, but you don't have to be as obsessed with Fassbinder as I to see get pleasure from World on a Wire. (Although if "efficient" plotting, suspenseful storytelling, and "round" characterizations are your primary requirements for pleasure, you should probably stay away.) While World on a Wire isn't of the power and depth of, say, Berlin Alexanderplatz or a handful of Fassbinder's other absolute masterpieces, it's still a powerful, unsettling, beautiful movie, and the restoration that the Fassbinder Foundation did is remarkable -- to take an old 16mm master made for TV and turn it into something that can be admired on a giant cinema screen is no easy feat.

I could go on and on. I won't. Instead, if you want a taste of the film, check out the trailer, which I'll embed after the jump here:

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I've got a couple of pieces of writing floating around out in the internets this week—

A new Sandman Meditations piece has been posted at Gestalt Mash. This week, the penultimate chapter of Brief Lives. If my counting is correct, this is the 50th Sandman Meditation. (The 50th issue of Sandman was "Ramadan", but because I'm reading the stories in the order of the trade collections rather than the original publication, I wrote about that issue back in June when I read it in Fables and Reflections.)

Over at Strange Horizons, it's Pat Cadigan week, and I've contributed an essay about some of the 1980s short stories that helped make Cadigan famous. It's a somewhat odd essay. I expect the nice young men in their clean white coats to show up at my door any moment...

Also, it's Strange Horizons Fund Drive time! The site exists through contributions. The staff are not paid, but the writers are (the reverse of many publisher's policies). Except for a brief hiatus during the end-of-the-year holidays, SH brings you new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry every week at no cost to the, uh, consumer. Donating is easy. Try it, kids, it's fun!

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Chris Kammerud kicks off this week's reviews with a look at Kristin Livdahl's A Brood of Foxes, the story of a young woman stolen by fairies, whose charms Chris admires while wondering whether its conception of fairy tales is too moralistic for his taste.  Phoebe North has the opposite reaction when she reviews A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness's follow-up to the Chaos Walking trilogy, from an idea

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Sofia Samatar makes her Strange Horizons debut this week with a fascinating review of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud's collection A Life on Paper, a volume that seeks to introduce this much-lauded French author to the English-reading public.  Niall Harrison looks at another literary zombie novel, Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, which he argues is unique for combining the horror of post-apocalyptic

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This week on Strange Horizons: Matthew Cheney takes a look at Tor's reprint of Melissa Scott's cyberpunk novel Trouble and Her Friends and is underwhelemed, particularly by the way the novel's future has been overtaken.  Marina Berlin has mixed feelings about Paul Kearney's Corvus, which impresses her with its alternate history Roman military setting and battle scenes but disappoints in its

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