I'm in love with this book. Seriously.

Palimpsest is my personal favorite for the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel. There. I've said it.

I had read the short story version (an excerpt, in fact) in Ekaterina Sedia's Paper Cities a while ago and the force of the words had already amazed me.

Four complete strangers meet in a fortune-teller's shop, an amphibian called Orlande (echoes of Virginia Woolf?). Inside - I quote - are four red chairs with four lustral basins before them, filled with ink, swirling and black. These four strangers will sit in the chairs, strip off their socks and plunge their feet into the basins, holding hands - always under the eyes of the amphibian. She will draw a card for each of them, and - this is for me the most interesting part in the ritual - tie their hands together with red yarn.

This image reminded me, even though very slightly, of certain rituals in Afro-Brazilian religions like Candomblé, in which sometimes you must tie people with yarns in order to "amarrar o mal" ["have evil tied", in a loose translation], but in this case it was just the imagery that attracted my attention. And not only the imagery, but the consequence:

Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande's salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet - which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time - you cannot breathe but that they also breathe also.

This will be pleasure and pain for the four strangers, whose lives alternate between dream and the "real" world. For Palimpsest is all too real, but it can only be accessed through dreams, and through sex with someone who had already been there before. The ink, that in Orlande's room was only in the strangers' feet, suffers a weird migration to other parts of the visitors' bodies, where they can be easily mistaken for birthmarks or ink smudges. But these marks are their passports to enter this elusive dreamcity, and at the same time the only bona fide way of recognizing each other outside the dream.

So the plot begins to unravel in front of us, showing the sad lives of blue-haired Amaya Sei, who is so in love of trains that she virtually live in them in Japan, Californian beekeeper November, falls in love with Xiaohui, a woman who already bears the mark and transmits it to her during their lovemaking, Russian locksmith Oleg, who knows every single thing about keys and locks but very little about his own heart, for he has a strange relationship of love and hate with the ghost of his dead sister, Italian bookbinder Ludovico and his quest for his missing wife Lucia, who has already emigrated to Palimpsest and maybe is forever out of his reach, but only if he doesn't know the secret ways and marks by which one can pass through the worlds.

Catherynne M. Valente reminds me of Gene Wolfe in her utter care for the words without at any moment letting go of the story - and what a good story it is! Some of Wolfe's stories as There Are Doors came to my mind while I was reading it, but also short stories like A Cabin on the Coast - sad, moving stories about to have and have not. All is love and loss in Palimpsest; this is a novel that crosses over genres as easily as their characteres do between worlds.

Maybe Palimpsest won't be a winner - who knows? It's all in your hands, Hugo voters - but it surely deserves to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Even though all the finalists are great novels (this year will be one of the hardest for the voters in the recent past), Palimpsest promises, since page one, a wild ride through a city of horrors and wonders - and it delivers, both through imagery and also via elaborate words, words that are a pleasure to read and no doubt were as pleasurable for Catherynne M. Valente to write. She's a writer in love with the written word, and you don't have much of it these days. She's a writer to cherish and treasure.

If the world of science fiction literature were similar to the music industry, Robert J. Sawyer could fit in the label of "easy reading". This is a compliment: just another day I've noticed that Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward's project She & Him is sometimes labeled as "easy listening", even though they are really considered an indie folk band. Maybe the (sometimes) mellow sounds made by Ward and the (quirky but beautiful) voice of Deschanel are so easy to stick in the ear that people who run the lounges of air companies or whoever create these post-reasonable labels end up calling them "easy listening".

It's the same with Sawyer. Read Rollback (which I reviewed here). Read Flashforward. And that's just two examples: The Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy is a pretty good example of an easy reading series: a storyline with one major plot and simple, straightforward characters revolving around it, usually having to deal with the effects with technology gone awfully wrong - or, in some cases, awfully right, which can be the same thing (remember that saying, be careful of what you wish for?)

The Helen Keller epigraph that opens the novel pretty much sets the tone of the story: "What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self." That will be exactly what you will get: a story of a blind person who will find not a teacher, but another self. Then the science fiction enters the stage.

Caitlin is a young Canadian blind girl who gets offered a unique chance from, Kuroda Masayuki, a neuroscientist of the University of Tokyo: to get an implant that could restore her vision working the signal processing in her primary visual cortex. So far, not very impressive as far as science fiction goes, some of you may be thinking. But in her case, the experience goes right - far beyond right, you could say.

Because the experiment wakes up a sentient mind in the implant via the Web - the very first and true artificial intelligence. And that intelligence starts its learning process at the same time Caitlin starts her vision training. The intelligence - which does not have a name, in fact which does not understand the concept of name, but struggles to comprehend it along the novel and even manages to label Caitlin, referring to her as Prime.

It is a long, painstaking - and sometimes even painful - process, for both sides. And for us as readers as well, for we see their POVs alternating, but they never get in touch with each other. Caitlin doesn't even know that this entity exists - although she suspects there is something novel happening, for she can't controle her implant every time she wants. The intelligence is doing that in its way to emergence.

The story ends in a climax, when the intelligence finally manages to reveal itself to Caitlin, with a simple but impossible question for her to answer: "Who am I?" A question that probably will be answered in the next volume of the trilogy, WWW:Watch, but you will have to read it. I haven't.

Just finishing to read the last novels of the Hugo Nominees list - a process my e-readers made a bit speedier (more on that on another post). As you know, I already reviewed China Miéville's The City & The City here. That leaves five other novels to review, namely:

WWW:Wake - later tonight;
Palimpsest - July 27th;
The Windup Girl - July 28th;
Boneshaker - July 29th;
Julian Comstock - July 30th.

I'll be publishing them at that speed for the sake of Supporting and Attending members of Aussiecon 4 who still haven't decided in which novel to vote, because the ballots must be received by 31 July 2010 23:59 PDT.

After that, I intend to post here some comments on other nominees (short stories, novelettes, novellas, non-fiction). In between, something about ebook reading and how Kindle may very well be starting to change my reading speed.

This is a true story.

When I was nineteen, I left the Catholic Church without looking back. I was almost an altar boy in my childhood, and during my teens I was an active member in church groups, volunteering for teaching Portuguese and Math to poor children in slums near my local church, among other activities.

But life can take unexpected turns. I won't bother you with long, boring details here; suffice it to say that I noticed - had been noticed for quite some time, in fact - that not all was good in my church, and I was not happy at all, neither with my priest, nor with my so-called friends, who were far more interested in chatting, gossiping, and leaving the church right after mass to have a drink (we were all from ages varying from 16 to 20 - in Brazil the prohibition to selling drinks apply only to those under 18, but many bars couldn't care less and sell drinks to minors all the same).

I wasn't a saint - very far from it - but I was pretty sure that was not all there was to it. I was searching for something else. I already had read the Bible at least once (and I read the NT regularly), looking for a moral, ethical guidance to my life. Aside from the Bible, I had also read about the life of Saint Francis, who became my spiritual guide at that time, so to speak. I didn't have many material things (even though I lived with my parents and they provided for me) and I only carried in my pockets enough money to pay the bus fare to and from school. Sometimes I didn't even eat during the day (yes, I was a bit radical, but I felt, much as almost every teenager does, that spirituality must also find a physical way to manifest itself, so I was used to short periods of fasting), having only supper when I got home from school, and a hearty breakfast in the next day, of course.

Anyway, at the same time I started studying Drama lessons in school. My teacher had studied the Method, real Stanislavski stuff, and she was great in imparting us discipline but also being generous and kind at the same time. Grace under pressure, you could say.

One of the things she teached us was meditation. To reach a balance inside, she told us.

Meditation did wonders for me. It opened - both literally and metaphorically - a whole new world, where I could, after many years of restlessness, find some peace of mind. After my first meditation session, I immediately asked her where I could learn more of that. She told me that she had learned it all at a Buddhist temple there in Rio. And so a new chapter in my life began.

But, before this post turns into a Bulwer-Lytton novel, let's cut it short and go straight to the point: after all, you must be asking what the hell all this has to do with the first time I read Jorge Luis Borges. It happened like this:

In my first spiritual retreat at the temple, I spent a weekend there, working and meditating. In fact, we meditated all the time, even walking or painting a wall (there are hundreds, even thousands of different meditation techniques so you can pretty much absolutely focus on what you are doing - that is the core of meditation, in a nutshell). We also alternated periods when we could talk with periods of utmost silence, when all we were allowed to do was point at objects if we wanted, say, to ask someone to fetch a broom for us.

It was in a Saturday afternoon, during the silence period of the retreat, just after lunch, that we had a two or three-hour break for ourselves. Some of us decided to explore the area around the temple, a beautiful, dazzling remaining piece of Atlantic Forest right in the middle of Rio de Janeiro. Others simply were too tired, having worked all the morning, and went inside their bunks to take a nap. And I found a library.

It wasn't much more than two small cabinets containing mostly Buddhist tomes in Sanskrit and Pali, with a few others in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, but, to my surprise, I found this book whose simple yet strange title attracted me immediately: Ficções (Fictions).

It was a Brazilian Portuguese translation of Ficciones, by an author called Jorge Luis Borges. Little did I know that that author was from Argentina - Jorge Luis Borges could very well be a Brazilian name. I picked up the slim volume and went outside to enjoy the cold autumn breeze. I sat under a tree near a small artificial pond full of lotus flowers (ok, I know this image is too much clichéd, but it really happened, so what can I do?) and started browsing the book.

I found that Ficções was a short story collection. I looked at the Contents page and saw a title that captured my attention at once: A Biblioteca de Babel (The Library of Babel). I found this title so enticing, so amazingly weird (or so weirdly amazing) that I started reading it at once.

The Library of Babel is a very short story, written almost in the manner of an encyclopedia entry - later in his life, Borges would say that the Encyclopaedia Britannica was one of his very first readings, and his major source of influence in literary style. In fact, he said that when he started writing he was so naive he didn't know it was possible (and even desirable) to write differently. Even so, Borges does not write in a boring, bureaucratical way: every word is carefully chosen, and the description of the strange library that comprises the whole universe is so good that you can feel as if you were lost inside its hexagonal spaces, its strange geometries (Borges was a Lovecraft fan, but he didn't share the fear and hysteria of the latter one in his characters and situations, on the contrary; for him, every situation was normal, or in the very least worthy of analysis and investigation. Borges was quiet in his description of horrors.)

When I finished that story, I was already in love with the blind Argentine writer. And a new chapter in my life began: I already loved sci-fi (I mean sci-fi, from TV and movies, not particularly SF) since childhood, but at that time I didn't care much for it really. I was trying my hand at poetry (badly) and I was also beginning to write for the stage (I was better at that - a few months in the future, I would receive my first award as a playwright), and I wasn't reading any science fiction then. But, when I read Ficções, I strongly felt that I was missing the fantastic in my life. Well, it turned out that I was already experiencing the fantastic in mind and body through Buddhist meditation; why not in art? Then I recalled some good science fiction stories I had read as a child and early teenager (Fredric Brown, Robert Silverberg, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke) and everyhing came back to me again. And never left me since.

UPDATE: This post was inspired by the excellent Borges month Larry Nolen is promoting in his blog. Larry is doing something very few people ever do, be it in the US or even in Brazil, where we love Jorge Luis Borges: to present, as deeply as possible in a blog, as much as he can of one of the greatest writers of all times. I applaud him for that.

I'm an avid enthusiast of ebooks and ereaders (I finally bought a Kindle to myself, and I intend to but an iPad soon - will cover that on another post), but for me there's still nothing like the paper book. Yes, I'm a fetishist all right, an old-fashioned bookworm - after all, you can't really be a bookworm when books go digital, can you? (ok, you can meditate on this post-modern koan later, if that pleases you)

So, when I was last week on London, I naturally went right to Forbidden Planet, my favorite bookstore outside Brazil. There, I found quite a lot of the SF Masterworks collection that Larry and another famed book reviewers are reviewing in a new blog, so how could I resist? Some of these novels are even supposedly out of print, according to Amazon.com:

Lord of Light - I once had this Zelazny classic in a shabby, tattered-cover, dusty, musty pocket. Never read it. (The awful truth is that I'm getting allergic to dustmotes and everything dust-related with age.) But now, oh, joy!

The Rediscovery of Man - A few months ago, I bought When the People Fell, a volume which comprises all Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality stories. All I needed was his only Instrumentality novel - and now I have it. Expect a review for Tor.com as soon as possible.

Man Plus - Already had this one in the distant past. I had almost all the books that Mr. Fred Pohl had written, including some rare non-SF gems like Presidential Year, written with C. M. Kornbluth in 1956. Unfortunately, I lost most of those books in a storage cellar with humidity in excess. No use crying: I must at least buy whatever I can find and that's that.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus - I never read this one. I love all Gene Wolfe's stories - so far there hasn't been a single one I didn't like. Somehow I don't think this novel will be the exception to the rule.

The Centauri Device - My M. John Harrison bibliography is almost complete now. When I can get The Pastel City, I'll be satisfied.

Roadside Picnic - Have you seen Andrei Tarkovsky's great movie Stalker? If you have, then you must read this novel.

Stand on Zanzibar - THAT is the novel I've been searching for a while now. My friend Cheryl Morgan even did me the huge favor of looking for it for me in the Bristol's used bookstores, to no avail, alas. But I found what was apparently the very last copy of this 1995 edition at the London Forbidden Planet. So, what should I have done? I bought it, of course. And I WILL review this one - even if it takes a while, because it's a long, hard (but extremely good) narrative.

Speaking of dusty and musty old pockets, I couldn't resist buying those above at a Charing Cross used bookstore. But such is my lot; I had never even heard of these two Timothy Zahn's novels (his very first ones, as it happens), so, I thought, I must have them! Then, about the Joe Haldeman, I was aware that it was the last one of a trilogy, but, what the hell, I can buy the other two - or borrow from a friend of mine here in Rio who has a complete Haldemania; James White brought sweet memories to my mind - along with Fred Pohl and Frank Herbert, he was the first author outside the Asimov-Bradbury-Clarke triumviratum every Brazilian fan must read as a neophyte, not so much as a rite of passage, but because there aren't that many SF books translated in Brazil, alas (but that was in the 70s and in the 80s; today this changed a bit - now we also have Ursula K. LeGuin, LOTS of PKDick and William Gibson - and reprints of Asimov and Clarke. [Surprisingly enough, we will have Jeff VanderMeer and China Miéville translated until 2011, but that's, as far as I know, is an exception.]) Lois McMaster Bujold: never read her, but I've been hearing a lot of Miles Vorkosigan, so I decided to give it a try. What the hell, it should be fun, right? Right? And Bob Shaw - I love the writer who gave us the slow glass and novels as The Ragged Astronauts, so I figured I'd also not wasting my time on him. And, if all goes wrong due to my allergies (but I'll clean those books well enough before reading them, believe me), I'll give them to my nephew Gabriel, who's starting to read and enjoy SF.

The pile above shows a mix of books bought in Forbidden Planet, Charing Cross and Waterstone's.

War With the Newts - I have a Brazilian Portuguese translation of this Karel Capek's classic, but I had always wanted to read an English translation. Since this is an all-new job, I found it a great opportunity to buy a copy - and the new Penguin Modern Classics edition is gorgeous!

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders - Vítezslav Nesval - I never heard neither of this novel nor of its author, and that's a shame, since it seems to be a very interesting reading. More on that later.

Vast Alchemies - The Life and Work of Mervyn Peake - What a wonderful finding! I'm just preparing myself to start reading the Gormenghast trilogy after the WorldCon - and now I can do so with a biography of Mervyn Peake to go with it as well! I don't believe in coincidences - this book was waiting for me all the time, right there on that hidden spot under a few toppled books.

253 - This is also something I was looking for: the paper version of this hypertext created by Geoff Ryman years ago. Unfortunately Geoff had a last-minute appointment, so he couldn't be at my meeting with Cheryl and Juliet in Oxford, because I very much wanted to meet him in person and tell him how much I like his work - and also tell him I teach hypertext in the university using 253 as one of the guidelines to my students. It's an interactive narrative with content - something you don't see every day.

When It Changed - I must confess I had no idea that anthology existed. Edited by Geoff Ryman, it focus on genuine scientific thinking in science fiction stories, and it presents original stories by the likes of Justina Robson, Paul Cornell, Kit Reed, Adam Roberts, Simon Ings and many others, with afterwords by scientists explaining the science behind the concepts in the stories. It was really exciting to me.

I also had old pockets of some Iain M.Banks' Culture novels - but you can't go wrong with these marvelous covers of the new Orbit edition. I bought Use of Weapons (the first Culture novel - and the first Banks' novel I've ever read - love at first reading) and The Player of Games. Have most of the rest of the collection now, two of three lacking, something that will be corrected soon enough.

As for Mr. China Miéville's Kraken - I was looking for it sure enough! Even bought a second copy for my good friend Jacques Barcia, who will be here in São Paulo for a conference next week and will be able to let himself be wrapped in the tentacles of the beast. I, for one, already am.... but I'm also into Red Planets - Marxism and Science Fiction, edited by Miéville and Mark Bould. I was already interested in this essay for quite a while now, and it's not disappointing at all. More on that later.

I also was pretty keen on buying John Meaney's Absorption - but now that I bought it, I'm in doubt if I should read it now (apparently there's no problem in doing so), but it's a story set in the same universe of To Hold Infinity and The Nulapeiron Sequence, which, of course, I haven't get to read yet, and I always had a kind of a problem reading stories out of chronological order. Is that information even right? What do you, my readers, recommend me in this case?

I couldn't go to Oxford, of all places, and not buy The Cosmic Trilogy of C.S.Lewis. C'mon, who needs Narnia? You have science fiction and angels, for crying out loud!! Never read it, must do it immediately.

Also bought The Starry Rift - Tales of New Tomorrows, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Been wanting to buy this antho for a while now, grabbed it at Blackwell's in Oxford as soon as I saw it.

These last Japanese novels are a incognita to me. I bought them mostly because I want to see foreign SF in English translation, and to help Nick Mamatas's Haikasoru publishing venue to grow up and thrive. (Also, because Cheryl Morgan told me these are great novels indeed, so I ended up buying them without fear.) I already browsed through them and - guess what? - they seemed pretty good indeed. So I guess I'll be having a good read with them.

All in all, excellent acquisitions. Can't complain at all. And I didn't even mention the huge George Orwell book of Essays and Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun (one of my favorite plays ever) I bought at a Blackwell's in Oxford.

I've been recently to London and Oxford (expect one or more posts about it soon) and I had the huge pleasure to meet my friend Cheryl Morgan personally at last. We had dinner with fantasy author Juliet McKenna and after that a beer in a nice pub (where she got me green with envy upon showing her iPad, a great media for comics, by the way).

We talked a lot about publishing markets in America, Brazil, and Europe, and she told me of a secret project that she would disclose this Saturday at Finncon. Well, today is Saturday, and she already has spilled the beans in her own blog: she is creating a new publishing house AND a new magazine at the same time. As she said herself in her blog, that's a giant leap - but a leap that only a few people in the SF world can do succesfully. And Cheryl Morgan is one of them.

After years as a publisher of the hugely-successful, award-winning Emerald City, Cheryl stopped working directly in venues of her own, but was never outside the field, on the contrary: she's non-fiction editor for Clarkesworld Magazine and got the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer (much deserverdly, that goes without saying).

Now, however, she decided to go more proactive again and create a new enterprise. But this time we're not talking about Emerald City resurrected: this is much bigger. After all, a non-fiction magazine which will be a paying venue (Salon Futura) and a ebook publishing house (Wizard's Tower Press) are not to be dismissed or even taken lightly.

Want to know more - and submit your material? Go to Cheryl's blog and read it all.

Why can't I buy The Best of Gene Wolfe in the Kindle Edition? It's something that I did? Or is it just that I don't live in the US? And no, please don't give me that copyright/author's rights/whatever's rights crap. I am a costumer. I pay for the service. Country notwithstanding. You don't believe me? Here it is:

With a close-up on the really important part:

The same thing, by the way, had already happened to me a number of times when I tried to download other books, including Dan Simmons's Ilium and Olympus, that surprisingly enough are not even listed in Kindle anymore (well, at least from my side of the line). You should know better by now, Amazon.com.

Via Locus Online, here are the recipients of 2010 Locus Awards:

Best SF Novel:

Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)

Best Fantasy Novel:

The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

Best First Novel:

The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Best Young Adult Book:

Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Best Novella:

The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

Best Novelette:

''By Moonlight'', Peter S. Beagle (We Never Talk About My Brother)

Best Short Story:

''An Invocation of Incuriosity'', Neil Gaiman (Songs of the Dying Earth)

Best Anthology:

The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos; HarperCollins Australia)

Best Collection:

The Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe (Tor); as The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (PS)

Best Non-Fiction Book/Art Book:

Cheek by Jowl, Ursula K. Le Guin (Aqueduct)

Best Artist:

Michael Whelan

Best Editor:

Ellen Datlow

Best Magazine:

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Best Book Publisher:

Tor

Congratulations to all the winners!

Even though this blog is in the non-spatial consensual hallucination known as cyberspace, this blogger is geolocated in a country named Brazil, thank you very much, where we virtually worship a sport called FUTEBOL (football in Europe, soccer in the US). I can do no less and suffer a terrible shapechanging, turning myself into....

THE WILD, INSANE FUTEBOL FAN!!

(don't be fooled by my decadent, old Latin Lover facade - I'm meaner than I appear to be)

So, even though Brazil hasn't done much so far (we're kind of skeptical here about this team of yours, but we're loyal to them no less), this joint here will be operating a little bit under the radar for the next few weeks. Suffice it to say that I'm still reading a lot (and, hey, I've got the Hugo Voter Packet just last night!)

That means I'll be writing reviews, and a lot of them. In fact, some of them are almost done, and I'll be posting them soon. Among the books to be reviewed are:

. Galileo's Dream
. Yellow Blue Tibia
. Ark
. Palimpsest
. WWW: Wake
. Steal Across the Sky
. Cyberabad Days
. Solar
. SHINE
. The Apex Book of World SF, Vol. 1

and others. Jus a few more days, por favor. Thank you and have an excellent World Cup!

This is the title of my new story published in Everyday Weirdness today. Maybe nothing happened that year (I wouldn't bet my money on it - read the story), but there are so many things happening at the same time now that it's being hard to update the blog. I've been reading a lot, however, and you can expect several upcoming reviews in the next weeks.

I already knew that a few weeks ago, but now I can tell. Not only me, but also my dear Nebula-winner (way to go!) and former editor for The Fix, Eugie Foster, from whom I take the liberty to quote here:

I am delighted to announce that two of my reviewers from The Fix, Val Grimm and Elizabeth Allen, are starting up a new short fiction review venue: The Portal.

As I've said time and again, I believe strongly that short fiction has intrinsic value as a storytelling form, that it isn't merely a stepping-stone to novel-length works. And it's regrettable that it gets such short shrift in the publishing world. So I was thrilled when I learned that Val and Elizabeth were undertaking this project.

They're currently seeking reviewers, and I encourage folks to step up. Being a reviewer is a great way to stay up-to-date on what short fiction is being published, to contribute to the industry, and to grow as a writer--and also to get your hands on review copies and ARCs of magazines, anthologies, and collections.

Here's contact information for and some information about The Portal and its mission statement from Editor-in-Chief Val Grimm:

Hi folks!

I (Val Grimm), René Walling (one of the chairs of the Montréal Worldcon), and my friend Elizabeth Allen are starting a new online short-form fiction review, The Portal (like The Fix, for which Elizabeth and I both used to write). Unlike other review publications which focus solely on Anglophone markets and activities, we intend to carry English coverage of work and reports on SF and fantasy literary activities among writers and fans in regions around the world and languages other than English as a regular and central part of the magazine, alongside reviews of the same British, Canadian, and American short fiction markets previously covered by The Fix.

We are seeking reviewers, as well as bureau heads in various regions (some posts are already filled).

Like The Fix, there's no money involved--this is a labor of love. At the most we'll maybe set up Google AdWords or something to just pay for the hosting, although that probably won't cover it. (:

If you're interested, please let us know at val dot grimm at gmail dot com.

All the best,
Val Grimm
Editor in Chief, The Portal

The Fix was my first venue in English language, and, even though I worked there only for a short period, I had a great time and learned a lot about writing reviews in another language, so I was very happy when Val approached me last month and invited me to head the bureau for Portuguese in Brazil. My task will be basically write or take charge of commissioning other critics or fans in their region to write criticism and reports covering that region or language. Which I'll be doing gladly.

If you too want to jump in the boat, drop a mail to Val! Let's go rock this ship!

Via SF Signal:

Nebula Awards weekend also saw another set of awards being given away: Analog Science Fiction and Fact's AnLab Awards and the Asimov's Readers' Awards: Here are the winners:

The winners of Analog's Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Awards are:

* Best Novella: "Where the Winds Are All Asleep" by Michael F. Flynn (10/09)
* Best Novelette: "Chain" by Stephen L. Burns (6/09)
* Best Short Story: "The Universe Beneath Our Feet" by Carl Frederick (12/09)
* Best Fact: "From Atlantis to Canoe-Eating Trees: Geomythology Comes of Age" by Richard A. Lovett (9/09)
* Best Cover (tie): January/February 2009 by John Allemand & October 2009 by Bob Eggleton.

The winners of Asimov's Readers' Awards are:

* Best Novella: "Broken Windchimes" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (9/09)
* Best Novelette: "Blood Dauber" by Ted Kosmatka & Michael Poore (12/06)
* Best Short Story: "Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh (10-11/09)
* Best Poem: "Edgar Allan Poe" by Bryan D. Dietrich (10-11/09)
* Best Cover Artist: John Picacio (9/09)

Congratulations to the winners!

I just watched the live broadcast of the Nebula Awards with John Ottinger, Tobias Buckell, Mary Robinette Kowal and many others on the USTREAM chat. It was great, and I was very happy to finally have been able to watch a ceremony. Here are the winners:

Solstice Award (for contributions to the SF&F field): Tom Doherty, Terri Windling, Donald A. Wollheim

SFWA Service Award: Keith Stokes

Author Emeritus: Neil Barrett Jr.

Grand Master: Joe Haldeman

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente

Ray Bradbury Award: District 9, Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell (Tri-Star, Aug09)

Nebula Award for Best Short Story: "Spar," Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, Oct09)

Nebula Award for Best Novelette: "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast," Eugie Foster (Interzone, Feb09)

Nebula Award for Best Novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean Press, Jun09)

Nebula Award for Best Novel: The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books, Sep09)

Congratulations to all the winners!

Via John Scalzi:

Here's the news from Asimov's editor Sheila Williams:

Asimov's Science Fiction magazine is now accepting electronic submissions. Authors should read our manuscript guidelines at http://www.asimovs.com/info/guidelines.shtml before submitting material online. Online submissions of stories and poetry can be sent to us via our new form at http://asimovs.magazinesubmissions.com/index.php. Authors with a print copy of their story currently under consideration should not resubmit the story electronically. I will respond to those stories via the traditional SASE.

It's a system similar to Clarkesworld Magazine, very easy to use. And, looking closely at the bottom of the submissions page, I found that the system is powered by CWSUBMISSIONS, so it seems that Mr. Neil Clarke is really behind that one (just confirmed it on Twitter) - a huge thanks to him!

Congratulations and thanks are also in order to Sheila Williams. This transition means a great deal to me and many other non-Anglo writers: it's hard and expensive to send mail abroad, and it goes without saying that an online system speeds up the process to all the parts involved. Now, I have just the right story to send here....

(UPDATE MAY 1st: I just saw at The World SF News Blog that Charles Tan interviewed Sheila Williams for SF Signal, where she talks just about the international submissions. Check it out.)

As Geosynchron (see my review), Gardens of the Sun was written to be read right after The Quiet War, so as the duology can be read as a single novel. Taking it that way, I should be honest and say I liked the second half best.

In The Quiet War, we are introduced to the main characters: Sri Hong-Owen, a young and thriving gene wizard who's commanding a secret project consisting of warrior-spy clones; Oscar Finnegan Ramos, a green saint; Macy Minnot, rebel/troublemaker extraordinaire; Cash Baker, maverick pilot; Avernus, the greatest gene wizard that ever existed (and an inspíration to Sri Hong-Owen); Loc Ifrahim - a sly diplomat; and the Family Peixoto, ruler of Greater Brazil, represented by the power-struggling brothers Euclides and Arvam.

Of course I'm exaggerating - but just a bit. The characters and situations (the whole shenanigans of Macy Minnot as she escape from Earth and is forced to hop from planet to planet (or from moon to moon, since most of the action takes place at Jupiter and Saturn's satellites) and face innumerable risks and make enemies, as well as the scientific coldness of Sri Hong-Owen and the surreptitious behavior of Loc Ifrahim, to name just a few of the characters, are clichés typical of space opera, and that's what The Quiet War clearly is. Even so, this novel seems more attuned to the sensibility of Ray Cummings of E.E."Doc" Smith than to the New Space Opera of Alastair Reynolds, for instance.

I wonder if this old-fashioned sensibility was meant to translate also to the pace of the novel. It bothered me that one of the main characters, as the fundamental Dave #8, the most apt pupil of the genetic program of Sri Hong-Owen, appears at the very beginning of the novel then disappears for almost half of the book. I felt this very out of pace with the rest of the characters, as if McAuley had in his hands so many interesting characters that he didn't know what to do with them - which, of course, can't be true since McAuley is not a beginner in the trade. Even so, I didn't feel The Quiet War was a novel in its own right, due to this perceived lack of rhythm.

In Gardens of the Sun, however, it's as if everything had fallen into shape. The characters are already familiar to us, and the Quiet War has already happened - and, hey! - it wasn't even that important at all, or, let me correct my thought, it was important as a turning point in the duology. It served to establish a balance in the narrative, and to be a landmark upon which further events will be measured.

What events, do you ask? The real battle for dominance of the solar system between Earthers and Outers - a battle that is very far from simple because of the several factions inside the Outers and the dispute between Greater Brazil and the other nations of Earth, like the European Union and the Pacific Community. Earth (especially Greater Brazil) wishes to subdue the Outers and bring them under the control of Earth.

(By the way, most of the action in both novels takes place outside Earth, and that is good, because the future Earth is less well developed [I mean in worldbuilding, though I suspect thas was done purposefully] than the former colonies and even the Moon.)

Other thing that I couldn't believe is the way McAuley constructed the idea of a Greater Brazil. The family Peixoto, who commands it with an iron fist, is clearly (for a Brazilian, that is; maybe not so for an Anglo-American) based in the generals of the military regime that ruled Brazil during more than twenty years (1964-1985). Seeing this whole scenario brought it all back to me - it was as if I was reading an SF novel written DURING that period (like Ignacio de Loyola Brandão's Still the Earth).

Of course, I could dismiss entirely this sort of commentary and say that is a science fiction story, and that in 200 years everything can change, etcetera etcetera. But, if you know Brazil well, you'll understand my reasoning - it would be far more easier to Venezuela or Bolivia to have this military singlemindness than Brazil. No prejudice here, please, just an extrapolation based on the present moment. It would be interesting to see a Greater Brazil as a major political player in the future, but 1) we are already in our way to become one, and 2) I failed to relate to the culture McAuley presents all the time. Aside from his very good description or our capital, Brasilia, he doesn't really convey the influence of a Brazilian culture. Except maybe for the food - at some points we can see the pilots drinking cachaça (our "national" drink, but that is only drank by the very poor - it's only fashionable when prepared with lemon (or lime) and sugar, becoming our very popular caipirinha and eating pão-de-queijo (a wonderful delicacy made with cheese), but that didn't really warm me up to the supposed influence of Brazilian culture in this universe.

Other thing that bothered my was that there seem to be no true reason for the war between Earth and the Outers. Why they would want the Outers's colonies back? For mining purposes? This is not made clear in the story. The Outers just want to live alone and to change theirselves (their bodies, their minds) for the ultimate purpose of colonize the rest of the solar system and beyond.

These, let's be fair, are the greatest moments of the novel - the life of the Outers. Macy Minnot and her paramour, Newt Jones, from the Jones-Truex-Bakaleinikoff clan, give the reader a good, complete tour of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The variety of the biomes, and the variety of political systems striving in those communities, are believable, and more than compensate the apparent lack of vividity in the Earth scenes.

Other big moments of Gardens of the Sun are the ones featuring the exploits of Dave #8, using now the identity of Felice Gottschalk, first goes after Zi Lei, the only woman he ever loved and who helped him in the first book, and, after that, his life in the colonies and his desire to be on Earth before he dies. His was the most intriguing and well-built character of the two novels.

And, to wrap it up: one of the things I really enjoyed was seeing Cash Baker having a cold Antarctica beer - it's my favorite Brazilian brand of beer. Good to know it will still be around in the future!

This is definitely an excellent year for science fiction and fantasy. One of the first novels I read in 2010 was David Louis Edelman's Geosynchron, and it was a hell of a jumpstart to me.

Having read the excellent Infoquake and Multireal (read my mega-review featuring both novels here), I could expect no less of the third and last book of the Jump 225 Trilogy. And I wasn't disappointed.

Geosynchron hits the ground running, showing us a Natch who is still alive but far from well. Captured by the Patel Brothers, he will be shown the true extent of MultiReal by means of a (sort of) near-death experience. This will shake him more then he could possibly know, and will also prepare the terrain for the trilogy ending.

But this novel also focuses heavily on the Islander Quell and his fight against High Executive Len Borda, a fight that will take the whole contingent of members of former Surina/Natch fiefcorp to the Free Republic of the Pacific Islands, where they will finally meet the unconnectibles - and have a big surprise, but a surprise that can help them and at same time tip the balance of the fight for domination of the world between Borda and Magan Kai Lee, his ex-Lieutenant Executive.

When I finished reading MultiReal, I started thinking that maybe Natch was a descendant of the Surina family, so all the obsession of Margaret Surina with him could be explained - but that would have been too easy, wouldn't be? This would have tasted too much like space opera (or soap opera, what the hell). But that's not so, because the Jump 225 Trilogy is definitely not space opera, and therefore not everything you expect is bound to happen. (The scenarios and the dialogues are much too elaborated to that - elaborated in a good way, not fancy, epic, or heroic. The characters behave like real people, and their discussions are credible.)

Unfortunately, one of the things that make the trilogy great is also a hindrance, as a footnote still in the first chapter reminds us: *For a more detailed synopsis of the events of Infoquake and MultiReal, books 1 and 2 of the Jump 225 trilogy, see appendix A. If you didnt' read MultiReal right before picking up Geosynchron, you might want to read it again to understand better what's going on and to distinguish properly among characters - Edelman concocted a saga to be read as one book, and Geosynchron must be reviewed in that light.

Having said that, Geosynchron is a good closing to the Jump 225 Trilogy. It wasn't great, however - maybe because I thought of so many possibilities (as do the characters using MultiReal) that I came out a little bit disappointed with how the characters ended. But the whole matter of everyone being able to choose literally a nww path in existence is great - maybe nobody should be given this Multiple Sophie's Choice, but that's exactly what happens at the end (again, no spoilers, but if you already read the first two novels, you know what I'm talking about). Some of the situations in the final tableau of the main characters are heartwrenching, but, having read Infoquake and Multireal with deep attention and interest and getting acquainted with the main characters and their behavior, I honestly couldn't say I didn't saw it coming. I wish it could have been different, but I found it fair enough.

The truth is that I wanted to see more of this universe. I would really want to read more about the Autonomous Revolt, for instance. And, even though the main story really ends where it should, I could read more about Natch, Jara, Horvil, and Serr Vigal - maybe in a prequel?

Via Locus Online:

The top five finalists in each category of the 2010 Locus Awards have been announced. Winners will be presented during the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 25-27, 2010.

Science Fiction Novel

* The Empress of Mars, Kage Baker (Subterranean; Tor)
* Steal Across the Sky, Nancy Kress (Tor)
* Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
* Galileo's Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperVoyager; Ballantine Spectra)
* Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

Fantasy Novel

* The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
* Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)
* Drood, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
* Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
* Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland)

First Novel

* The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
* The Manual of Detection, Jedediah Berry (Penguin)
* Soulless, Gail Carriger (Orbit US)
* Lamentation, Ken Scholes (Tor)
* Norse Code, Greg van Eekhout (Ballantine Spectra)

Young-Adult Novel

* The Hotel Under the Sand, Kage Baker (Tachyon)
* Going Bovine, Libba Bray (Delacorte)
* Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic; Scholastic UK)
* Liar, Justine Larbalestier (Bloomsbury; Allen & Unwin Australia)
* Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)

Novella

* The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)
* "Act One", Nancy Kress (Asimov's 3/09)
* "Vishnu at the Cat Circus", Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days)
* Shambling Towards Hiroshima, James Morrow (Tachyon)
* "Palimpsest", Charles Stross (Wireless)

Novelette

* "By Moonlight", Peter S. Beagle (We Never Talk About My Brother)
* "It Takes Two", Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three)
* "First Flight", Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor.com 8/25/09)
* "Eros, Philia, Agape", Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/3/09)
* "The Island", Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)

Short Story

* "The Pelican Bar", Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse Three)
* "An Invocation of Incuriosity", Neil Gaiman (Songs of the Dying Earth)
* "Spar", Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)
* "Going Deep", James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's 6/09)
* "Useless Things", Maureen F. McHugh (Eclipse Three)

Magazine

* Analog
* Asimov's
* Clarkesworld
* F&SF
* Tor.com

Publisher

* Baen
* Night Shade
* Pyr
* Subterranean
* Tor

Anthology

* Lovecraft Unbound, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Dark Horse)
* The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos; HarperCollins Australia)
* The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin's)
* Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Subterranean)
* Eclipse Three, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Night Shade)

Collection

* We Never Talk About My Brother, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)
* Cyberabad Days, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
* Wireless, Charles Stross (Ace, Orbit UK)
* The Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe (Tor); as The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (PS)
* The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volumes 1-6, Roger Zelazny (NESFA)

Editor

* Ellen Datlow
* Gardner Dozois
* David G. Hartwell
* Jonathan Strahan
* Gordon Van Gelder

Artist

* Stephan Martinière
* John Picacio
* Shaun Tan
* Charles Vess
* Michael Whelan

Non-fiction/Art Book

* Powers: Secret Histories, John Berlyne (PS)
* Spectrum 16: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, Cathy & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood)
* Cheek by Jowl, Ursula K. Le Guin (Aqueduct)
* This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is "I"), Jack Vance (Subterranean)
* Drawing Down the Moon: The Art of Charles Vess, Charles Vess (Dark Horse)

This review was a bit of an adventure in itself.

I first heard of Ash by the author herself, via The Outer Alliance discussion list. Malinda Lo told the members about her upcoming novel, a retelling of Cinderella story through a gender-mixing point-of-view. I got very interested, and emailed Malinda to ask her if I could get an ARC. She answered me and gave me her publicist's email, but right after that, I had the problem with the kidney stones and got under the radar for a while, so I couldn't even think of writing to the publishing house.

Recently I rummaged through my emails and couldn't find the publicist's address. I must have accidentally deleted it, I thought. No problem: I can ask Malinda again (I hate pestering authors, but I would apologize and ask if she could just forward me that email again - nothing more).

As it happens, I had recently downloaded a Kindle for iPhone. I haven't bought Kinde yet, but I decided to try the app and, hey, it worked wonderfully! So I bought some books and started experimenting with it.

Then I found that Malinda's novel had a Kindle version already. What the hell?, I thought. I can have it right now. Sure, I'll have to pay for it, but at least half the books I review are paid for (still not satisfied with that arrangement, but that's another story). I went for it.

And got a #majorfail.

It seems that, for copyright reasons (don't ask me what those reasons are), Amazon is just not selling Ash to Latin America and the Caribbean. This is enough material for another post entirely, so I won't bother you whining. This story ends well, after all.

For, while I was still fuming because of this other #AmazonFail (that made me write another email to Malinda and ask her again for a copy of her novel), a good thing happened. Just before the Easter holidays, I suddenly found a copy of Ash in a bookstore in my neighborhood (a note for Brazilian readers or visitors who by any chance are in São Paulo: Livraria Cultura is one of our finest bookstores, and it has a huge English-language book section - and no, I'm not getting a penny for this piece of advertising). So I bought the book immediately and took it home with me.

And feasted on it in a single day.

First, the hardcover edition is beautiful (yes, I judge a book by its cover - you all do it, don't tell me you don't). The delicate jacket design by Alison Impey and the photo by Amina Bech are exquisitely done, and catch the reader's eye at once, even in a massive bookshelf - the fuchsia-colored spine jumps to our attention wonderfully.

And then you open the book.

The story is divided in two parts: The Fairy and The Huntress. These are the characters around whom the interest of the protagonist, Aisling, will hover, always with a mix of fear and desire.

Aisling is the daughter of a merchant and a housewife who once studied to be a greenwitch. Not exactly sorceresses but not simple superstitious healers either (as the Philosophers, a kind of brotherhood of scientists/priests, try to demonstrate all the time to discredit them), the Greenwitches offer words of wisdom and solace to all who want to listen - but each generation there's less and less people listening, because of the prejudiced Philosophers.

The story begins with the death of Aisling's mother. She is consoled by Maire Solanya, the village greenwitch, who tells her she must remember her mother, but she must let her go. What she doesn't tell her (but Aisling, an intelligent and curious girl, finds out all the same) is that she can be kidnapped by fairies if she grieves too much by her mother's tomb.

Aisling, a girl who loves books and knowledge, tries to learn more from what little she could get from her dead mother's belongings. But her father, even being loving and caring, feels the need for another wife, and soon finds himself a widow with two daughters.

You all know the rest of the story - or you think you do. Aisling lives in a world where some roles are gender-changed in relation to our own, and, for instance, every kingdom has its Royal Huntress instead of a Hunter. When Aisling (whose nickname is Ash) starts living her ordeals, one of the role models she takes up is that of the Huntress, a focused, rather serene woman and also fond of stories and knowledge. Their casual meeting in a Yule party when Ash is still a child leave a deep impression in her - that she will carry until years later, when she's eighteen and another casual encounter, this time in the Wood, but with a different Huntress, will change her profoundly.

The Wood is also a key element in the story, almost a character per se. It is in this place where Ash will find refuge from her stepmother and her stepsisters's mistreats, and it is also there that she will meet a Fairy, an extremely beautiful and attractive being who will make her want to choose a different life, a life that can mean eternal servitude in Faerie if only she can get away from the harsh reality of the household to which she is bonded.

Both beings, the supernatural Fairy and the all-too-human Huntress, will entrance and fascinate Ash and make her get in touch with her innermost desires - until a point where she must make definitive choices, and learn to live with its consequences.

In a nutshell, Ash is a Lesbian Cinderella story. But saying that would only reduce the importance of the tale Malinda has deftly woven and pigeonhole it too fast and awkwardly. Ash IS (and that's really important) a story about a Cinderella who discovers love with a person of the same sex.

Ash is a bildungsroman of sorts - the book is too short for it to be a true lifestory, and that, IMHO, is its only weakness - I would really love if it was longer and if it could encompass more of Aisling's life... But that's the nature of the fable, isn't that so? A short, sharp tale which teaches us something. Not necessarily in a didatic way, but using wisdom.

Ash is an eye-opener, and not only for young people who are discovering their way in the world. Malinda Lo's retelling of Cinderella's story is a lesson in finding out who we are, and where our home really is. It doesn't matter where that home is located. the important thing is: do we belong?

Ash should belong to every family's library. It now belongs to mine, proudly.

Through Science Fiction Awards Watch, I was aware of yet another set of awards given in the Easter holiday. The winners of this year's Australian Shadows Awards are:

Long Fiction: Slights, Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot)
Edited Publication: Grants Pass, Jennifer Brozek & Amanda Pillar, eds. (Morrigan Books)
Short Fiction: "Six Suicides", Deborah Biancotti (A Book of Endings)

From Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews, the list of nominees of the second edition of The David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy:

THE DAVID GEMMELL AWARD FOR FANTASY

"Warbreaker" by Brandon Sanderson (Tor US)
"The Cardinal's Blades" by Pierre Pevel (Gollancz)
"Empire, The Legend of Sigmar" by Graham McNeill (The Black Library)
"Best Served Cold" by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz & Orbit)
"The Gathering Storm" by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (Tor US)

THE MORNINGSTAR AWARD FOR BEST NEWCOMER

Stephen Deas - "The Adamantine Palace" (Gollancz)
Jesse Bulington - "The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart" (Orbit)
Amanda Downum - "The Drowning City" (Orbit)
Pierre Pevel - "The Cardinal's Blades" (Gollancz)
Ken Scholes - "Lamentation" (Tor US)

THE RAVENHEART AWARD FOR BEST FANTASY COVER ART

Jon Sullivan (illustration), Sue Michniewicz (Art Direction) for the cover of "The Cardinal's Blades" by Pierre Pevel
Jackie Morris (illustration), Dominic Forbes (Art Direction) for the cover of "The Dragon Keeper" by Robin Hobb
Didier Graffet and Dave Senior (illustration), Laura Brett (Art Direction) for the cover of "Best Served Cold" by Joe Abercrombie
Larry Rostant (illustration), Loulou Clarke (Art Direction) for the cover of "Fire" by Kristin Cashore
Jon Sullivan (illustration) for the cover of "Empire" by Graham McNeill

Even though Fantasy is not my strong suit, I got copies some of the nominees from the publishers, and got curious enough to buy some of the others. So, expect reviews here soon as well.