Christopher Barzak

Category: Recommendations

  • Discovering Anita O’Day

    I’m a fan of jazz and the blues. A big fan. But mostly of the old school stuff. And mostly the big names. But recently a friend of mine sent me these wonderful clips of Anita O’Day, who I hadn’t really listened to prior to my friend’s email. She’s written me a wonderful introduction to…

  • Walking on sunshine

    School is out. I’m writing again. It’s Friday and this week, my first week of freedom of time, I’ve managed to write 3600 words. Have completed a chapter and started a new one. This is what I’m talking about. Oh, summer, how I have missed you. Hopefully by the end of August, I’ll have a…

  • A step up

    According to Jeff VanderMeer on The Best of 2009: “Interfictions 2 edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak was a significant step up in quality from the first volume. Contributors included Lavie Tidhar, Brian Francis Slattery, Peter M. Ball, Alan DeNiro, M. Rickert, and Theodora Goss. Intended to showcase interstitial fiction, this volume also featured…

  • Next year: a reprise

    Following on the heels of the Beastly Bride anthology mentioned in my last post, fabulous editor Ellen Datlow announced on her blog today that one of her and Terri Windling’s new anthologies has been completed and turned in to their editor at HarperCollins: Teeth Table of Contents Introduction by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow Things…

  • Beastly indeed

    I mentioned last year that the newest volume of the mythic fiction series edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling would be released this coming spring, and here we are, a couple of days after its release date.  The Beastly Bride.  This is a great anthology of fiction for young adults and adults alike.  Here’s…

  • Gaslight Dogs

    Dear internet drifting jellyfish, Have you read any books by author Karin Lowachee?  Well, if not, now is your chance to start by picking up her newest novel, released just yesterday by Orbit Books.  It’s called Gaslight Dogs, and it sounds like a wonderful fantasy novel.  Here’s a description: At the edge of the known…

  • Reality Hunger

    I’m reading David Shields’ new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.  It’s a really engaging nonlinear, non narrative, at times lyrical essay, always structured by way of collage or mosaic, appropriating snippets of ideas from other writers, thinkers, poets, and philosophers and critics, arranging in a mash-up style, voices layered over one another without attribution (until…

  • I Needs Must Part

    Reviewer and critic Richard Larson has posted an extremely insightful review of Richard Bowes’ Nebula nominated novelette, “I Needs Must Part, The Policeman Said,” on his blog. A sample: The idea of the speculative memoir is something of perpetual fascination for me, perhaps because I’ve always treated speculative fiction as a sort of digging below…

  • SF Mind Meld

    Over at SF Signal, the Mind Meld feature today incorporates responses from various Nebula nominees on the subject of other worthy candidates that were not nominated for the Nebula.  I participated in the response panel with this: There are so many good books and stories out there. Awards showcase only a select few. Some of…

  • Another recommendation

    Over the winter break I had a chance to read more books of my own choosing than I’ve been able to do in a while.  One of them was Ali Shaw’s debut novel, The Girl With Glass Feet.  This novel is a modern fairy tale, set in a faraway land, St. Hauda’s, an icy island…