viernes, 30 de agosto de 2013

Vídeo de la charla de Christopher Priest en el Festival Celsius 232

Para finalizar con la publicación de los vídeos del Festival Celsius 232 que os estamos ofreciendo en colaboración con el blog Donde acaba el infinito, os traigo hoy uno de los platos fuertes: la charla de Christopher Priest con Javier Negrete, con Diego García Cruz como intérprete.

Espero que este vídeo (y todos los que os hemos ido trayendo) os guste mucho.


jueves, 29 de agosto de 2013

Ebook Deal: The Living by Anna Starobinets

As of now, you can download The Living by Anna Starobinets from Amazon (US, ES) for only €0.99 ($1.30). This is the synopsis of the book:

As part of The Living you cannot die. As part of The Living you have no free will. Yet one man is born who is different to the rest; one who could bring society crashing down. A stunning and sinister vision of a dystopian future by a critically acclaimed young Russian author.

In its Spanish translation, El vivo, the novel has been nominated for the Ignotus Awards.  

miércoles, 28 de agosto de 2013

Free Ebook: Aliena by Piers Anthony

As of now, you can download Aliena by Piers Anthony for free from Amazon (US, ES) courtesy of Premier Digital Publishing. This is the synopsis of the ebook:

Aliena is a nice person who turns out to be an alien in a human host. She just has things to learn about the human form and society. When her body starts immune-rejecting the alien brain, and the brain has to be replaced by another alien brain, maintaining the semblance of marriage and family becomes a challenge for both Aliena and the man who loves her.

Vídeo de la charla de Robert J. Sawyer en el Festival Celsius 232

Continuamos con la publicación de vídeos del Festival Celsius 232. En este caso, se trata de la charla de Robert J. Sawyer con Juan Miguel Aguilera, en la que realizan un repaso bastante exhaustivo por la obra del escritor canadiense. Como siempre, Diego García Cruz realiza una labor colosal como intérprete.

Espero que lo disfrutéis mucho.


martes, 27 de agosto de 2013

Siete ebooks de Strange Chemistry en oferta

Strange Chemistry, la colección de literatura juvenil de la editorial Angry Robot, cumple un año y para celebrarlo ha puesto en oferta sus siete primeros ebooks, que se podrán adquirir por 1,99$ (1,53€) durante un periodo limitado. Los títulos en promoción son los siguientes:

lunes, 26 de agosto de 2013

Winners of the SF&F Translation Awards

The winners of this year's Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards have been announced and are the following:

Long Form Winner

  • Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City by Kai-cheung Dung, translated from the Chinese by Anders Hansson, Bonnie S. McDougall, and the author (Columbia University Press)

Long Form Honorable Mentions

  • Belka, Why Don’t You Bark? by Hideo Furukawa, translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich (Haikasoru)
  • Kaytek the Wizard by Janusz Korczak, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Penlight)
  • Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, translated from the Russian by Olena Bormashenko (Chicago Review Press)

Short Form Winner

  • “Augusta Prima” by Karin Tidbeck translated from the Swedish by the author (Jagannath: Stories, Cheeky Frawg)

Short Form Honorable Mentions

  • “Every Time We Say Goodbye” by Zoran Vlahović, translated from the Croatian by Tatjana Jambrišak, Goran Konvićni, and the author (Kontakt: An Anthology of Croatian SF, Darko Macan and Tatjana Jambrišak, editors, SFera)
  • “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia, translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld #65)
  • “A Single Year” by Csilla Kleinheincz, translated from the Hungarian by the author (The Apex Book of World SF #2, Lavie Tidhar, editor, Apex Book Company)

Congratulations to them all!

Wendolin Kramer, de Laura Fernández

Banda sonora de la reseña: Sugiero leer esta reseña escuchando Superhéroes de barrio de Kiko Veneno (Spotify, Youtube).

A raíz de la reseña de Miquel Codony de La chica zombie y de las distintas presentaciones (1, 2 y 3) a las que tuve oportunidad de asistir y en las que participó Laura Fernández, me entró una enorme curiosidad por conocer más de la obra de esta autora, cuyo nombre está sonando con muchísima fuerza últimamente. Después del pequeño aperitivo de "¿Acaso soy una especie de monstruo, Señor Pallcker?", su relato incluido en la antología Presencia Humana y uno de mis favoritos del libro, me decidí a probar con una novela. Mi primera intención era leer La chica zombie, pero el precio en ebook me parece totalmente disparatado (¿más de 12€? Really????) así que tiré de biblioteca y el único libro de Laura Fernández que tenían era Wendolin Kramer que, por otra parte, también tenía una pinta excelente.

Wendolin Kramer está muy en la línea de "¿Acaso soy una especie de monstruo, Señor Pallcker?": Desarrollo ágil, diálogos chispeantes y aparentemente (sólo aparentemente) algo absurdos y personajes psicóticos, muy psicóticos que se ven metidos en las situaciones más disparatadas. Por lo que he podido apreciar y lo que he visto en las reseñas de La chica zombie, ésta es la marca de la casa de Laura Fernández, una autora con una voz propia muy definida y personal.

Los que hayáis llegado hasta aquí os estaréis preguntando, sin duda, si ésta es una novela de género. Bien es cierto que Wendolin Kramer está plagada de guiños a la cultura popular. En ella encontramos referencias continuas al cine (Regreso al futuro, Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johanson...), la televisión (con mención especial al dependiente de la tienda de tebeos de Los Simpson), la ciencia ficción (Dick, Sheckley, Vonnegut...) y, por supuesto, los cómics (aunque no puedo estar de acuerdo con la opinión de uno de los protagonistas sobre el Capitán América de Ed Brubaker). Pero pese a ello, el libro no puede clasificarse como ciencia ficción o historia de superhéroes. Como mucho, en caso de tener que encasillarla forzosamente en algún género, diría que Wendolin Kramer es una novela de humor. De hecho, en muchos momentos el estilo recuerda poderosamente a autores como Robert Sheckley y, sobre todo, a Tom Sharpe (y no sólo por esa muñeca hinchable de "expresión eternamente sorprendida").

Si algo destaca en la novela además de los diálogos (para los que Laura Fernández tiene, evidentemente, un talento extraordinario), son los personajes. Salvo quizá el padre de la propia Wendolin Kramer (que, por ello, se encuentra claramente fuera de lugar), todos los demás viven en un constante estado "delusional", que dirían los ingleses, que les hace percibir un mundo ligeramente diferente al real. Personajes obsesionados con estrellas de cine, cantantes y escritoras inexistentes, que cuentan sus penas a las fotografías que tienen sobre la tele y maldicen en lo que ellos creen que es alemán. Y que, precisamente arrastrados por esa percepción un tanto alterada de la realidad, se ven atrapados en una serie de aventuras que rozan lo surrealista y de las que sólo logran salir gracias a su propia psicosis.

Por todo ello, la trama, que es bastante menos sencilla de lo que podría parecer tras los primeros capítulos, es un poco lo de menos. Quizá ése es el punto más flojo del libro: hay un cierto conflicto, tejido alrededor de escritores ficticios y aprendices de detective (otra de las obsesiones de Laura Fernández, al parecer), pero lo realmente interesante son los protagonistas y sus extrañas reacciones ante las situaciones en las que se ven atrapados.

En definitiva, una novela fresca, de lectura ágil y con unas más que considerables dosis de humor, pero a la que le falta un queseyó para ser completamente redonda y no quedarse simplemente en una diversión pasajera y anecdótica. Aún así, el estilo de Laura Fernández me atrae especialmente y espero con ganas poder leer La chica zombie, que creo que por temática puede gustarme aún más.  

viernes, 23 de agosto de 2013

Vídeo de la presentación de Memoria de Tinieblas y Simetrías Rotas en el Festival Celsius 232

El vídeo de hoy, dentro de los dedicados a las charlas del Festival Celsius 232, corresponde a la segunda de las presentaciones de la Editorial Sportula. En este caso, se trata de los libros Simetrías rotas de Steve Redwood y Memoria de tinieblas de Eduardo Vaquerizo

Los participantes, de izquierda a derecha, son: Eduardo Vaquerizo, Rodolfo Martínez y Steve Redwood.

Espero que os guste mucho.


miércoles, 21 de agosto de 2013

Vídeo de la presentación de Fantascy en el Festival Celsius 232

Para continuar con los vídeos de las charlas del Festival Celsius 232 os traigo hoy el correspondiente a la presentación de la colección Fantascy.

Los participantes, de izquierda a derecha, son: Alix Leveugle, Ricard Ruiz Garzón, Juan Miguel Aguilera y Mariano Villarreal. La introducción inicial es de Jorge Iván Argiz

Espero que lo disfrutéis.


lunes, 19 de agosto de 2013

Vídeo de la presentación de Más allá de Némesis en el Festival Celsius 232

Durante el pasado Festival Celsius 232 me coordiné con Alexander Paéz del fantástico blog Donde acaba el infinito para grabar las charlas a las que íbamos asistiendo. Alexander ya ha comenzado a publicar algunos vídeos y yo lo iré haciendo a lo largo de los próximos días. 

Para comenzar, os traigo hoy el vídeo de la presentación de la antología Más allá de Némesis publicada hace unos pocos meses por Sportula. Los participantes, de izquierda a derecha, son: Sofía Rhei, Javier Negrete, Juan Miguel Aguilera, Rodolfo Martínez, José Manuel Uría y Eduardo Vaquerizo. Espero que os guste mucho. 


viernes, 16 de agosto de 2013

Free Ebook: The Ice Owl by Carolyn Ives Gilman

Courtesy of Phoenix Pick you can donwload The Ice Owl, a Hugo and Nebula nominated novella by Carolyn Ives Gilman, for free. You have to subscribe to their newsletter and then you'll receive a coupon to download the ebook.

This is the synopsis of the book:
Set in the same universe as Arkfall (although a totally independent story), The Ice Owl tells a tale capturing that moment when we start to lose our childhood…when we start to realize that our parents and the “grown-ups” are just as flawed as we are…everyone struggling to deal with their own demons.  
It is also a story about past crimes and the haunting echo of ghosts long dead, of a life-long quest for redemption and, for some, the final revenge for crimes lost in the stellar dust...

miércoles, 14 de agosto de 2013

Finalistas de los Premios World Fantasy 2013

Se han anunciado los finalistas de los Premios World Fantasy 2013, que son los siguientes (vía SF Signal):

Novela
  • The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
  • Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday)
  • The Drowning Girl, Caitlí­n R. Kiernan (Roc)
  • Crandolin, Anna Tambour (Chomu)
  • Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus)
Novela corta
  • “Hand of Glory,” Laird Barron (The Book of Cthulhu II)
  • “Let Maps to Others,” K.J. Parker (Subterranean Summer ’12)
  • The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon)
  • “The Skull,” Lucius Shepard (The Dragon Griaule)
  • “Sky,” Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)
Relato
  • “The Telling,” Gregory Norman Bossert (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/29/12)
  • “A Natural History of Autumn,” Jeffrey Ford (F&SF 7-8/12)
  • “The Castle That Jack Built,” Emily Gilman (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/26/12)
  • “Breaking the Frame,” Kat Howard (Lightspeed 8/12)
  • Swift, Brutal Retaliation,” Meghan McCarron (Tor.com 1/4/12)
Antología
  • Epic: Legends of Fantasy, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Tachyon)
  • Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, Eduardo Jiménez Mayo & Chris N. Brown, eds. (Small Beer)
  • Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver, ed. (Solaris)
  • Postscripts #28/#29: Exotic Gothic 4, Danel Olson, ed. (PS Publishing)
  • Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Random House)
Colección de relatos
  • At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson (Small Beer)
  • Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
  • The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One: Where on Earth and Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
  • Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine)
  • Jagannath, Karin Tidbeck (Cheeky Frawg)
Ilustrador
  • Vincent Chong
  • Didier Graffet y Dave Senior
  • Kathleen Jennings
  • J.K. Potter
  • Chris Roberts
Premios especial (Profesional)
  • Peter Crowther & Nicky Crowther por PS Publishing
  • Lucia Graves por la traducción de The Prisoner of Heaven (Weidenfeld & Nicholson; Harper) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
  • Adam Mills, Ann VanderMeer, & Jeff VanderMeer por la web Weird Fiction Review 
  • Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi por ChiZine Publications
  • William K. Schafer por Subterranean Press
Premio especial (No profesional)
  • Scott H. Andrews por Beneath Ceaseless Skies
  • L. Timmel Duchamp por Aqueduct Press
  • S.T. Joshi por Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, Volumes 1 & 2 (PS Publishing)
  • Charles A. Tan por el blog Bibliophile Stalker
  • Jerad Walters por Centipede Press
  • Joseph Wrzos por Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration (Centipede Press)

Además, Susan Cooper y Tanith Lee recibirán premios por su carrera. 

Enhorabuena a todos los nominados.

lunes, 12 de agosto de 2013

Cowboy Angels, de Paul McAuley

Banda sonora de la reseña: Sugiero leer esta reseña escuchando Crazy Island de John Mellencamp (Spotify, Youtube).

Aunque no estaba inicialmente en mis planes dentro de la Operación Celsius, cuando se anunció la presencia de Paul McAuley en el festival me decidí a hacerle un hueco a alguna de sus novelas. Ya había leído algunos relatos de McAuley y todos ellos me habían parecido excelentes, así que la única duda era por qué novela decidirme de entre las que tenía en la pila: ¿Quizá El beso de Milena? ¿O una space opera como Gardens of the Sun? Finalmente elegí Cowboy Angels una novela que mezcla las ucronías con los universos paralelos y que tenía una pinta más que prometedora.

Aunque Cowboy Angels es un libro más que correcto, debo confesar que me ha dejado un tanto insatisfecho. La premisa no puede ser más interesante: en un universo paralelo al nuestro se ha inventado una tecnología, las llamadas Turing Gates, que permiten el viaje entre distintos dimensiones en las que la historia ha divergido. Estas puertas son usadas por la versión de los Estados Unidos de ése universo paralelo para "liberar" a otras Américas de distintas amenazas, entre las que suele destacar el comunismo. Y para ello utilizan casi cualquier medio a su alcance.

El potencial de la novela para abordar los aspectos más espinosos la política imperialista y el complejo de policía planetaria de EEUU durante el siglo XX (y lo que llevamos de XXI) es enorme. Y, de hecho, los momentos en los que McAuley los explora son, sin duda, los más interesantes de todo el libro. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de la historia sigue unos derroteros mucho más convencionales. Cowboy Angels es más un thriller tecnológico con fuerte contenido policiaco (con persecuciones, secuestros, interrogatorios y todo el equipo) que una novela de ciencia ficción. De hecho, hasta las explicaciones (escasas) sobre cómo funcionan las Puertas de Tuing y sobre su origen están bastante descafeinadas y da la impresión de que McAuley no quiera asustar a cierto tipo de lectores. 

No se me entienda mal. Cowboy Angels no es una mala novela, ni mucho menos. Los personajes están muy bien construidos, la trama es consistente y francamente interesante en algunos momentos (aunque hacia el final se deshinche un tanto) y el estilo es muy correcto (quizá un pelín demasiado árido en ocasiones). Sin embargo, el conjunto global da la impresión de seguir demasiado la fórmula sin arriesgarse a explorar las consecuencias que este tipo de tecnología tendría para la identidad personal, la economía o el sentido de la historia tal como lo entendemos. Son temas que están de fondo y que en algunas ocasiones se vislumbran, pero McAuley prefiere centrar la atención en una historia bastante más trillada y que, salvo por ciertos detalles, podría funcionar casi sin necesidad de incluir elementos de ciencia ficción. 

En ese sentido, me es imposible evitar comparar Cowboy Angels con The Shining Girls de Lauren Beukes, otra novela que utiliza recursos de la ciencia ficción para construir una trama de thriller más o menos convencional pero que sí logra crear una historia que es a la vez emocionante y original (y cuya autora también estará en el Celsius, curiosamente). Donde McAuley prefiere recurrir a lugares comunes y situaciones vistas una y otra vez, Beukes opta por dotar de una marcada personalidad propia a su novela. Una pequeña decepción, sobre todo a la vista de que lo McAuley es capaz de lograr cuando no le preocupa romper moldes. 

En definitiva, Cowboy Angels es una novela sin defectos especialmente destacables, pero que por intentar jugar a asegurar acaba quedándose un tanto corta. Sinceramente, me espero mucho más de este autor y creo que intentaré catar El beso de Milena a no mucho tardar para ver si me quita el sabor agridulce que me ha dejado este libro.

sábado, 10 de agosto de 2013

Ebook en oferta: Diástole, de Emilio Bueso

El Kindle Flash del día de hoy en Amazon España es Diástole de Emilio Bueso, que puede ser adquirido por 1,81€. Ésta es la sinopsis de la novela:
Premio Celsius 2012 de la Semana Negra, a la mejor novela fantástica. 
Finalista del Premio Ignotus 2012 y del Nocte 2012 a la mejor novela de terror. 
Selección FNAC de Novela policiaca y de terror. 
Un extraño forajido escapa de su escondrijo en las ruinas de Chernobil y atraviesa Europa perseguido por un grupo organizado de asesinos a sueldo de Moscú. Busca a un pintor heroinómano para solicitarle un posado que, en realidad, forma parte de un ritual más antiguo que las civilizaciones.

viernes, 9 de agosto de 2013

Yolanda Espiñeira interviews Nina Allan

Nina Allan was one of the more interesting writers to attend this year's Celsius 232 Festival in Avilés (Spain). Thus, it is really an honor and a pleasure that El almohadón de plumas (a blog that you should not miss if you read Spanish) has allowed me to reproduce here their interview with the author, made by Yolanda Espiñeira (disclaimer: I transcribed the interview from the recorded audio myself, so there might be some mistakes here and there. I apologize in advance).

Yolanda EspiñeiraFirst of all, thank you, Nina, for this interview. You said in your talk that you have always written, since you were young. How did your start publishing professionally?

Nina Allan: It’s as you say, in the talk yesterday I was saying about how I have always written. I started writing stories for myself when I was a young child and I carried on doing that until my teen ages. I wrote a lot of diaries and journals. I saw writing as something I’ve always found necessary to do. But towards the end of my teen ages and when I went to university I began to get involved in more academic work. I was good at school and I was encouraged to study Literature rather than producing my own.

And it took a long time, really, almost ten years. The whole of my twenties passed by without me doing any creative writing of my own because I had been almost entirely preoccupied with writing about other people’s work. And it was only in my early thirties that I really begun to realize what had happened and missed the idea of creating my own stories. And it was a very nerve wrecking thing to actually write creatively again after such a long gap. I would genuinely not know whether I could do it because the last time I had attempted anything like that I was fifteen, sixteen years old - I did it completely naturally, unselfconsciously. And I suddenly sit down and said “well, now my knowledge of Literature is much greater”, I’d written a thesis, a post-graduate thesis on Nabokov by then and I spent a lot of time - many years - studying other people’s work so there was this fear. Could I actually do it? Did I have anything to say? But I was determined that I wanted to try. I felt real in a need to try. I felt that something was badly missing from my life and that I had taken a bad turning in abandoning my own creative writing. So I wrote a story set in the town where my grandmother lived by the sea - it’s very personal landscape to me. It was only a short story - less than five thousand words - but I wrote it, and I wrote it to the end, I completed it.

And it felt like a really momentous event. It felt as I had recaptured what I’d lost. And from that moment - which I think was 1999 - I was determined from that point that I was going to do it seriously. And from that moment all I’ve done is work and work, improve my writing to gain a greater mastery over what I do. And I began quite soon after completing that first story; I started sending my work out to little magazines that published science fiction and fantasy. First of all just to very small magazines. And as I became accepted by them, I’d try the more important magazines like Interzone. And it’s just gradually grown. It’s just work, and reading, and concentration. And it’s really taken me those sort of ten years to get to a stage where I’m beginning to feel happy with what I’m doing.   

YEYour first adult published works are clearly science fiction. Did you mean them to be science fiction?

NA: Absolutely, I don’t even think I question that. I’ve always loved the fantastic in Literature - science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy; these ways of exploring reality through heightened emotion, heightened states - what you’d call hyper-reality almost, a state of heightened awareness of things. And science fiction and fantasy seemed like the most natural way of exploring these kinds of psychologies. And it’s something I’ve always loved. I’ve never questioned my commitment to that form of Literature.

YEWe like to label things: slipstream, speculative fiction, and hyper-reality. How would you classify your work and why?

NA: My work has often been described as slipstream, which is sort of a new genre, it’s sort of work at the edges of science fiction and the mainstream. I personally prefer the term speculative fiction – it fits with the letters SF, so people sort of know what you’re talking about – and I think it’s a truer description of what I do. My works speculates: speculates about what psychology is, speculates about alternate realities, speculates about the future. It’s speculative fiction. 

YEI have the impression that science fiction being is charged with technology, science and you don’t really do that. 

NA: Yeah, I don’t really do that. I sometimes use ideas that edge onto that, for example I’ve recently written a story that will come out in a magazine later this year about the idea of travel to Mars. Typically for one of my stories, no one actually gets to Mars. There’s a lot of talking about going to Mars and what it might mean psychologically the idea of travelling to Mars and never returning to Earth. There are many very adept and expert science fiction writers that love the sciences and the working of the sciences - people like Alastair Reynolds or Paul McAuley - which had been scientists, they know this stuff back to front. I don’t feel that I could ever adequately compete on that basis but I do know other things, I have my own areas of expertise and things that particularly interest me: psychology, memory, feelings about place and time. So I prefer these softer, these sorts of slightly more human angles of science. This is what I use in my work more. 

YECould we say that the theme of The Silver Wind is that science and technology fail to dominate time, that humanity cannot dominate time? 

NA: That’s right. There’s a passage in the longest story in the collection, which is actually called “The Silver Wind” - you have the watchmaker trying to explain to Martin precisely: “you think you can turn back time”. In the story a technology has been developed that soldiers think they can use to change the course of events. And the watchmaker is explaining: “No, you can’t. You can never do these things, will never repeat themselves exactly, things will never be contained or controlled by human beings”. We’re at the mercy, in a sense, of Nature and of Fate and of the passage itself of time. No matter what scientific inventions we create, we’re never going to be in control in a way that perhaps some people would like to be.

YEI think that old science fiction was quite kin of that idea that technology would make us travel to Mars and masters of the universe.

NA: Yes, especially in American science fiction you get a lot of this sort of soldiers filling up spaceships and going out to conquer the universe and, you know, all we need to do is make the right scientific discovery and we will have the key to becoming masters. I just don’t think - certainly not at the moment - we understand so little really of how we are here, where we are going, we’re making very small… Each person makes their own journey of discovery and we’re not masters of that journey, we can only observe and record what we discover along the way, maybe to pass onto the people that come after us. So we learn, we gradually expand the borders of the known universe but we are no closer really to understand even how our own brains - we only use I think it is one sixth of our brain area - we still don’t know our bodies precisely. So how we’re going to dominate the universe at this stage of evolution, I don’t know.       

YEIt seems that you feel more comfortable writing short stories, short stories and open ends, because I think in The Silver Wind each story denies each other, you cannot conclude who is the real Martin (I’d bet it is the one in the story “The Silver Wind”, though)

NA: Yeah, in a sense they’re all the real Martin but all the aspects of Martin, the core personality of Martin actually retains common features, so although different things happen to each Martin you can state that for me he still is the core person. It’s quite cohesive really, but I definitely love open-ended stories. I said in an interview recently that what I really love most about a story is that idea that when your turn the last page of the story you get the idea that somewhere the story is continuing, so what you’ve been allowed is a glimpse, into a particular set of characters and events and you may know this one part of what the story is but somewhere Martin he’s still, you know, we could pick up his story again maybe, it’s not over. And I do love that kind of narrative, I like to read it as well as to write it, I don’t like all the ends being tied up neatly, I don’t like that kind of story. I like ambiguity.     

YEI think we could relate it to not doing a novel. I think it is a more closed universe with a beginning to an end, it’s a travel in which a character goes from a beginning to an end. But your stories, though they are not circles, open a lot of possibilities. I thought you maybe write short stories because you didn’t like to make a strong statement about the themes you’re exploring more than making a thesis about time, love or loss.

NA: I definitely had problems with… I want to write novels because the thing that attracts me about novels is that you have a much bigger canvas and you can spend a lot of time with characters and I really like that. But you’re very right in that I have a problem with the idea of a linear narrative where, as you say, one character starts at point A and journeys through to point Z. I naturally resist that kind of narrative so I’ve been working towards creating my own version of a novel which is satisfactory to me. I have just finished writing one, but again it is a complete story but it comes in four parts and part of it is set in an alternate future, part of it is set in the recent present day, the recent real world past, and there are two different sets of characters and it’s only by the end of the book that you see how they relate and even then it’s ambiguous, you can’t be absolutely certain who are the real characters and who are the imagined characters - they relate to each other. And that novel will be published in England next year. And I am currently starting work on a new novel which is a bit of a mystery; it’s a murder mystery but again is not a straightforward crime novel. I don’t like straightforward thrillers where everything is about who’s the murderer or what’s the murderer, end of the story. It’s very much exploring the characters and how they arrived at that point in their lives so I think I do want to write novels but I wanted to do it my way.   

YEYou’re a woman writing science fiction. But what books do you like to read?

NA: I read very widely. Mostly contemporary and 20th century fiction. I read a lot when I was at the university. I read vast amounts of especially Russian Literature, all the 19th century Russians classics, - Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and Chekhov – they made a massive impression on me because of the way they explored the psychology of the character. It seemed to me that the Russian writers did that much more intensely than English authors of the same period. I didn’t read much Dickens; I didn’t read much George Elliot. They were sort of more social novels to me and I really liked this idea of struggling good and evil and whether or not God existed, things that Russian writers explored and that’s what I read when I was in my sort of formative years. 

Now I love reading 20th and 21st century fiction. I love slipstream fiction. I love M. John Harrison; I like Christopher Priest, my partner. I loved his works since many years before we met - I read him. I love interesting peculiar stories by writers like Kelly Link - I don’t know if you know her - she’s an absolutely marvelous writer and again slipstream work. I suppose I like the psychological crime fiction of writers like Barbara Vine and Patricia Highsmith who explore again far more character that crime. I suppose some writers really shy away from reading the fiction of other writers, they don’t like that, they don’t like to be distracted with… Chris is a typical example. He likes to read a lot of non-fiction and historical writing because it doesn’t interfere with his thought processes. I really enjoy reading other writers and their own fictional accounts of the world. I get a lot of inspiration from that and even when you disagree with how another writer is portraying a world, that can be inspirational as well in its own way of showing you what you don’t want to do. There are many writers I love. I’ve always loved Iris Murdoch. She was a great sort of post-mod.. She sort of wrote all way through the 70’s and 80’s, very strange novels about very odd characters. It would seem very ordinary on the surface - a sort of conventional London novel - but very odd things, people entering strange houses where odd things where going on, philosophical discussions, good and evil. I like to seek out work that speaks to me of the same subjects. I seek out writers like myself, I think. I really like that.  
  
YETo conclude, you write science fiction as a woman: do you find it difficult to publish? I have heard that in England if you’re a woman publishers don’t want to publish your work in a Science Fiction imprint. 

NA: Yeah, there’s been a massive amount of discussion about this recently - sort of the last 12 months - huge amount of discussion. I don’t know. I personally have had a lot of really good press from both men and women. A lot of my fans are men, people who’ve written about my work are men and they don’t seem to find any problem in talking about me as a writer at all. I’ve been published in a lot of anthologies edited by men. I think any problems that I’ve had placing my longer work - it’s taken me eight or nine months to find a publisher for my novel – I think in a way it’s been far more to do with the kind of work it is – it’s not straightforward science fiction, it’s not straightforward mainstream fiction, it’s (at the) edge of  genre – I think that’s been more the problem than the fact that I’m a woman. I have never personally encountered any prejudice but I know women who have. I know women in the industry who have been encouraged, for example, to make their name ambiguous, to let themselves just be known by their initials so the readers won’t know whether they’re a man or a woman. I feel very strongly that women shouldn’t do this. I should be… you know, they should appear as they are. It’s only by doing that the barriers will be broken down. We shouldn’t be hiding – I feel very, very strongly about that. I’ve always been proud to be a woman, proud to be a writer, proud to be a science fiction writer. I think there are still barriers to be overcome, but I think that talking about this the way that it’s been talked about in the last six months to a year… this is the way forward to actually bring the problems out in the open and get rid of them. 

YESo, these were all my questions. I would only like to ask you about the translations of your work – I think you have been translated into French. 

NA: Yes, The Silver Wind has been translated into French as “Complications” and that book will be published in France by the end of August. The book already exists. I’ve been to Paris and I’ve done some interviews about it and the book actually comes out I think it’s August the 22nd. I have had three short stories published in German magazines. And I have recently had an enquiry from a Greek publisher. They also asked about The Silver Wind so that may be happening. I’m delighted, being here in Spain, to see people holding copies of my books in English and they’re going to be reading them so I’m really hoping that some Spanish readers might be up to read my work in translation before too long. 

jueves, 8 de agosto de 2013

Free Ebook: Engraved on the Eye, by Saladin Ahmed

As of now, you can download Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed for free from Amazon (USES). This is the synopsis of the book:
Stories to Captivate the Imagination: Welcome to the worlds of Saladin Ahmed 
A medieval physician asked to do the impossible. A gun slinging Muslim wizard in the old West. A disgruntled super villain pining for prison reform. A cybernetic soldier who might or might not be receiving messages from God. Prepare yourself to be transported to new and fantastical worlds. 
The short stories in this collection have been nominated for the Nebula and Campbell awards. They’ve been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and other anthologies, recorded for numerous podcasts, and translated into several foreign languages. Now they are collected in one place for the first time. Experience for yourself the original voice of one of fantasy’s rising stars!

miércoles, 7 de agosto de 2013

Ebook deal: Reamde by Neal Stephenson

As of now, you can download Reamde by Neal Stephenson from Amazon (US, ES) for only $2.99. I reviewed this title in Spanish a few months ago.

This is the synopsis of the novel:
From the extraordinary Neal Stephenson comes an epic adventure that spans entire worlds, both real and virtual. 
The black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, former draft dodger and successful marijuana smuggler Richard Forthrast amassed a small fortune over the years—and then increased it a thousandfold when he created T'Rain. A massive, multibillion-dollar, multiplayer online role-playing game, T'Rain now has millions of obsessed fans from the U.S. to China. But a small group of ingenious Asian hackers has just unleashed Reamde—a virus that encrypts all of a player's electronic files and holds them for ransom—which has unwittingly triggered a war that's creating chaos not only in the virtual universe but in the real one as well. Its repercussions will be felt all around the globe—setting in motion a devastating series of events involving Russian mobsters, computer geeks, secret agents, and Islamic terrorists—with Forthrast standing at ground zero and his loved ones caught in the crossfire. 

Ebook deal: Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams

As of now, Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams can be downloaded from Amazon (US, ES) for only $0.99. This is the synopsis of the novel:
ORPHANS OF DEEP SPACE . . .  
They’re outlaws now. Created to serve a function grown obsolete, haunted by the holographic ghost of their father, Ubu and Maria have lived their entire lives skating along the edge of extinction. Now they and their ship Runaway are in flight both from the law and from a predatory clan of competitors. They’re going to come back rich, or not at all. 
But what they find in the depths of space isn’t wealth, but a secret so startling that Ubu and Maria will need every last reserve of guile, cunning, and intelligence just to survive . . . 

lunes, 5 de agosto de 2013

Contenidos y portada de Terra Nova 2

Aunque ya se ha adelantado la noticia en otros lados, Sense of Wonder no podía, por motivos obvios, dejar de destacar el anuncio de la publicación del segundo volumen de la antología Terra Nova, que saldrá en noviembre de este mismo año en la colección Fantascy. Junto a estas líneas podéis ver la ilustración de portada, obra de Ángel Benito Gastañaga. Los relatos seleccionados en esta ocasión por Mariano Villarreal y Luis Pestarini son los siguientes:

  • La textura de las palabrasFelicidad Martínez
  • Separados por las aguas del río celeste (Scattered Along the River of Heaven), Aliette de Bodard 
  • Las manos de su marido (Her Husband's Hands), Adam-Troy Castro 
  • ¿Pueden llorar ojos no humanos?Germán Amatto 
  • Juicio FinalCarlos Gardini 
  • Araña, la artista (Spider, the Artist), Nnedi Okorafor
  • La djin, Pedro Andreu 
  • Noches de cristal (Crystal Nights), Greg Egan 
  • En el filoRamón Muñoz 
  • El último Osama (The Last Osama), Lavie Tidhar 
  • El hombre que puso fin a la Historia: documental, (The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary), Ken Liu

Pronto espero poder ofreceros también el vídeo íntegro de la presentación del Festival Celsius 232 en la que se anunció Terra Nova 2.

domingo, 4 de agosto de 2013

Ebook deal: CyberStorm by Matthew Mather

To celebrate the first anniversary of the publication of CyberStorm, Matthew Mather is offering the ebook on Amazon (US, ES) for only 1,99$. This is the synopsis of the novel:


Mike Mitchell, an average New Yorker already struggling to keep his family together, suddenly finds himself fighting just to keep them alive when an increasingly bizarre string of disasters start appearing on the world’s news networks. As the world and cyberworlds come crashing down, bending perception and reality, a monster snowstorm cuts New York off from the world, becoming a wintry tomb where no one can be trusted, and nothing is what it seems...

sábado, 3 de agosto de 2013

Hablando sobre la CF canadiense con Robert J. Sawyer

Una de las mejores cosas del Festival Celsius 232 (que, por cierto, este año está siendo simplemente espectacular) es la posibilidad de charlar cara a cara con autores del más alto nivel. Puede ser en el turno de preguntas de una de las charlas o, más habitualmente, de un modo más informal, durante la sesión de firmas (como es el caso que os presento) o tomando una cerveza en el bar. 

Gracias a Sergio del fantástico blog El rincón de Koreander os puedo traer un pequeño vídeo en el que converso brevemente sobre la ciencia ficción canadiense con Robert J. Sawyer mientras me firma algunos libros. Si sois capaces de perdonar mi lamentable inglés, creo que encontraréis este documento bastante interesante o, cuando menos, muy curioso. Y esto es sólo un pequeñísimo avance de lo que esperamos poder ofreceros en las próximas semanas con respecto al Celsius 232

Muchísimas gracias a Sergio por grabar este vídeo y ponerlo a disposición de Sense of Wonder. ¡Espero que os guste mucho!


viernes, 2 de agosto de 2013

Table of Contents of Old Venus, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

A few days ago, George R.R. Martin announced the table of contents of Old Venus, an anthology of science fiction short stories that he is editing with Gardner Dozois.

These are the stories that will be included in Old Venus:

INTRODUCTION, by Gardner Dozois
FROGHEADS, by Allen M. Steele
THE DROWNED CELESTRIAL, by Lavie Tidhar
PLANET OF FEAR, by Paul McAuley
GREEVES AND THE EVENING STAR, by Matthew Hughes
A PLANET CALLED DESIRE, by Gwyneth Jones
LIVING HELL, by Joe Haldeman
BONES OF AIR, BONES OF STONE, by Stephen Leigh
RUINS, by Eleanor Arnason
THE TUMBLEDOWNS OF CLEOPATRA ABYSEE, by David Brin
BY FROGSLED AND LIZARDBACK TO OUTCAST VENUSIAN LEPERS, by Garth Nix
THE SUNSET OF TIME, by Michael Cassutt
PALE BLUE MEMORIES, by Tobias S. Buckell
THE HEART'S FILTHY LESSON, by Elizabeth Bear
THE WIZARD OF THE TREES, by Joe R. Lansdale
THE GODSTONE OF VENUS, by Mike Resnick
BOTANICA VENERIS: THIRTEEN PAPERCUTS BY IDA COUNTESS RATHANGAN, by Ian McDonald