Thoughts about something I’ve recently read.
This late in the evening, Mrgurlargl was the only one still awake. The others were curled around the campfire, full of wine and food and sleeping soundly. He couldn’t sleep, though, he was too proud, too excited to sleep.
“Die murloc filth!” Loldude247’s assault was swift. His sword sang death even as his shouts roused the sleeping family.
Stumbled across this when checking out trackbacks. Of course, it reminds me of this.
Tor.com, the new website for Tor Books, has launched officially. And they’re offering up for free download the bunches of books that they were giving away to newsletter subscribers in their run-up to launch.
Among the books you can grab in DRM-free formats: Old Man’s War, Spin, Farthing, Crystal Rain, and much more. Plus a zillion gorgeous wallpapers from cover art.
Oh, and they cover games a bit too.
Just some figures that caught my eye while browsing a few different publications…
I got an email about this recently, but haven’t seen it myself. Apparently Game Informer picked the top ten books on gaming, and A Theory of Fun is on the list at #9. Perfect timing of course, given that it’s out of print and I get three inquiries a week on how to get ahold of a copy. Working on it…
David Kushner, author of the excellent Masters of Doom (which I have the galleys of somewhere around here, and which came in at #1) managed to type in the full list. I’ll have to see if I can find a copy of the article.
Edit: here’s the article.
In the wake of Little Brother coming out, John Scalzi has written a post about Why YA fiction. As regular blog readers know, I’ve been banging this drum for quite a while, citing folks like Scott Westerfeld and Tamora Pierce as authors that shouldn’t be neglected just because their books get shelved elsewhere in the store.
I have a friend with access to BookScan, which tracks book sales through stores and retail outlets, who at my request checked the aggregate bestseller list sales of adult fantasy and science fiction against the sale of YA fantasy and SF. Without mentioning specific numbers or titles, my friend says that last week, the top 50 YA SF/F bestsellers outsold the top 100 adult SF/F bestsellers (adult SF and F are separate lists) by two to one. So 50 YA titles are selling twice as much as 100 adult SF/F titles. The bestselling YA fantasy book last week (not a Harry Potter book) outsold the bestselling adult fantasy book by nearly four to one; the bestselling YA science fiction title sold three copies for every two copies of the chart-topping adult SF title.
So, as a reminder: one of the World Fantasy Awards finalists was what I’d call a YA title, Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword. One of the blockbuster movies this year was Jumper, which I haven’t seen, but which was based on a phenomenal series by Steven Gould. One of the grittiest police procedurals of recent times was Pierce’s Terrier (sequel is out now, I believe). Beautifully written literate fantasy is represented well by stuff like The New Policeman, all of Jeanne duPrau’s books (such as City of Ember, also recently optioned for a movie), or the astonishing Fly by Night.
And of course, in a year that has taken people like Lloyd Alexander and Madeleine L’Engle from us, don’t forget the favorite writers who are still with us. Charles de Lint is writing good juvies lately: Dingo most recently, and The Blue Girl before that. Susan Cooper, whose stunning The Dark Is Rising sequence was recently filmed to mixed results, is still writing, and I just read Victory which was quite good, and King of Shadows which was fantastic.
