m. c. de marco

Via Daring Fireball: Martin Anderson praises the sci-fi corridor at Den of Geek.

Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they’re so utilitarian by nature - really they’re just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another.

Via a mailing list: a somewhat vulgar Cracked story about 6 writers who accidentally produced masterpieces was funny but also educational. Who knew that the Year Without a Summer kept Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin indoors long enough to invent Frankenstein and by extension the entire genre?

The deadline for Jetse de Vries’ upcoming SHINE anthology (Solaris Books) has been extended to August 1st. See the website for ample advice in addition to the actual guidelines.

The twitter version, Outshine, seems to be tweeting strong. It has its own guidelines.

Tor.com has a review of Federations, the new anthology edited by John Joseph Adams marred only by issues with the Kindle edition.

[…] would you believe that Harry Turtledove wrote a humorous story about space-faring hamsters?

At Biology in Science Fiction, the definition of biopunk, a.k.a. ribofunk:

With the advent of the Human Genome Project and greater focus on biotechnology in the media in the 1990s, there was a natural evolution [from cyberpunk] to stories where it was DNA that was hacked, rather than computer networks. Such stories have been dubbed by some “biopunk” or the catchier “ribofunk”, a term invented by Paul Di Filippo.

According to io9, science fiction book sales are plunging, or perhaps slightly improving. We may never know the true numbers, but look on the bright side: at least we’re not in the newspaper business.

Via del.icio.us sf: Flashlight Worthy has some alternate history recommendations. Most are classics, but The Yiddish Policemen’s Union also made the list.