Thursday Links–Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Locus

Well, if you have noticed me being quite its because I got an emergency call in yesterday( relief teaching).  As to whether or not I will make it to Continuum 8, well that’s still up in the air and at this stage I am just hitting the “paying the bills” stage of work.

None the less here are some links for you to peruse:

First is the Outer Alliance podcast who interviewed Tansy Rayner Roberts: it covers fandom feminism and Tansy’s works.  It’s a monster at close to 2 hours…enjoy

Podcast Powered By Podbean

you can download it here as an mp3.

Then there is interview by Neil Gaiman, of Stephen King. Its nice, it makes me want to sit on the porch and just “shoot the shit” with Mr King.

My first encounter with Stephen King, long before I met him in the flesh, was on East Croydon station in about 1975. I was fourteen. I picked up a book with an all-black cover. It was called Salem's Lot. It was King's second novel; I'd missed the first, a short book called Carrie, about a teenage girl with psychic powers. I stayed up late finishing Salem's Lot, loving the Dickensian portrait of a small American town destroyed by the arrival of a vampire. Not a nice vampire, a proper vampire. Dracula meets Peyton Place. After that I bought everything King wrote as it came out. Some books were great, and some weren't. It was okay. I trusted him. [read more]

And to follow up that, more King in a non specfic but ultimately cheer worthy article where Stephen King takes on the rich, including himself.

Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!

…My question was, “How come I’m not paying 50?” The governor of New Jersey did not respond to this radical idea, possibly being too busy at the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet at Applebee’s in Jersey City, but plenty of other people of the Christie persuasion did.

Cut a check and shut up, they said.

If you want to pay more, pay more, they said.

Tired of hearing about it, they said.

Tough shit for you guys, because I’m not tired of talking about it. I’ve known rich people, and why not, since I’m one of them? The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing “Disco Inferno” than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar. It’s true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts.Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.

[read more]

and to round it out the 2012 Locus Awards Shortlist is out.

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top five finalists in each category of the 2012 Locus Awards.

Science Fiction Novel

• Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• 11/22/63, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton as 11.22.63)
• Embassytown, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
• Rule 34, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
• The Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

[read on]

Many thanks to @kimode and @fearofemeralds on twitter for some of these links.

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Neil Gaiman appearing in Melbourne Tonight

You lucky sods in Melbourne have a chance to have the pleasure of Neil Gaiman and Tom Stoppard’s company.

 

Tom Stoppard and Neil Gaiman at The Wheeler Centre

Friday, 7:00-10:00pm
Location: Victoria, Australia
Two big events on one big night! In back-to-back events, The Wheeler Centre celebrates two great and very different talents: Tom Stoppard and Neil Gaiman.

WHERE:

Athenaeum Theatre
188 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000
http://wheelercentre.com/calendar/venue/athenaeum-theatre/

MORE INFORMATION:
http://wheelercentre.com/calendar/event/tom-stoppard-neil-gaiman-package/

[source]

Neil Gaiman speaking on The Book Show

Neil Gaiman appeared on Radio National’s book show.  He talks about some of the fiction he likes to read.

British-born screenwriter, novelist, lyricist and comic book writer Neil Gaiman is known for his delight in working in different genres and with different people. For Off the Shelf Neil Gaiman tells us about some of his favourite books:

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones
Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis

Go here to Download.

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Book Review–American Gods 10th Anniversary Ed.

I have only ever read two books by Neil Gaiman(please don’t lynch me) and they have both been religiously themed, i.e., Good Omens and American Gods.  I can’t for the life of me think why it’s taken so long to getting around to this one.

In my defence, while this 10th Anniversary Edition is a review copy, I do actually own another battered copy of its first iteration, unread, along with its spin-off sibling Anansi Boys- both languish on the TBR shelf.

The story, for the uninitiated…
After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the time until his release ticks away, he can feel a storm brewing. Two days before he gets out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, in adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow travels home, only to encounter the bizarre Mr Wednesday claiming to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.
Together they embark on a very strange journey across the States, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small American town. But the storm is about to break... Disturbing, gripping and profoundly strange, Gaiman's epic new novel sees him on the road to the heart of America. [Headline Books]

So how can one give a review of a book that is beloved of so many, which has been read and reviewed over the last decade and still be fresh.

I’ll try.

Gaiman weaves a number of threads together in this work.  It’s a story about gods, travel murder, change,  gah! the more I pick at it the more things it seems to be.  So to begin I’ll break it down.

Neil Gaiman meets Route 66
American Gods felt very much like a road trip, despite the fact that a significant portion of the travel in the book was by plane.  Perhaps it’s mention of certain American landmarks and iconic places .  Maybe the stereotypes that the gods inhabit, hark back to an older America.  I feel the weight of nostalgia, for things lost in a vast open landscape.

That Gaiman can generate this feeling in me I think speaks for the strength of his prose, as in retrospect, there’s not actually that much travel.

Everyone comes to America, even the gods.
Aiding this perception is the fact that it’s an immigrant tale as well. A tale of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses and the gods they carried with them. Many of the gods bear the accents and the mannerisms of the culture they spring from and in Shadow traveling to meet them, the reader is given a sense of the cultural diversity that is the melting pot of America, the gods journey there and their slow strung out demise.

Yggdrasil versus the Matrix
Entwined with these themes is that of change, old gods versus new - the gods of internet, credit cards and fibre optics. Is this is a comment on what America has become, a land of the almighty dollar, the land of the instant gratification? I am not sure.

The Missing God
One thing that did strike me as odd was the omission of Jesus.  If any god would be in America you’d think it would be Jesus, but he’s conspicuous in his absence, apparently he’s in Afghanistan.  Did Gaiman do this deliberately?  He mentions Jesus in the twitter interview printed in the back of this version, but it doesn’t answer the question of Jesus’ absence or apparent aloofness. Was he playing it safe?

Murder Mystery & Confidence Tricks
There’s a murder mystery entwined in the story as well, but the less said about that the better as it’s a nice little twist.

There’s coin tricks and confidence tricks through out the novel, magic and misdirection. Gaiman uses it both as plot device and on a meta level(this should hit you at the end, or before, if you are sharper than me). There’s something about old time confidence tricks that harks back to a bygone America, face to face cons that required an understanding of human psychology.

Summing up
This is the authors preferred text, it’s a little longer and obviously varies from the first itteration. It includes a twitter interview, as well as a novella featuring Shadow called Monarch of the Glen.  I doubt that I would go back and read the first edition, it’s not a tale that I think, given my present reading load, that would be of any benefit and this is after all  Gaiman’s preferred story.
For Gaiman fans that haven’t read this version, it would be worth it if you haven’t read the tale in awhile.  American Gods is not one of those pacey pot boilers you read in an afternoon.  It’s a book to be savoured and enjoyed, it’s a book that requires attention.

For some one who is new to Gaiman I’d recommend this version.  It’s not as I have said a pacey read, but an unfolding journey of discovery with a couple of twists that I and perhaps you won’t see coming.

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This was a review copy provided by Headline.

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