Probably my favorite thing I’ve found on the internet this week is J.R.R. Tolkien reading aloud from The Hobbit, which I’d somehow never heard before.
I know I post a lot of stuff about Ursula K. LeGuin, but a week doesn’t go by but that there’s at least a couple of interviews, profiles, or blog posts by/about her. This week in LeGuin Watch:
Other interviews and profiles of note this week:
- Genre and Margaret Atwood
- Samuel Delaney and the Past and Future of Science Fiction
- Q&A Ken Liu on Science Fiction and Chinese History
- Writing for Video Games: A Conversation With E. Lily Yu, Yoon Ha Lee, Robert Reed, Seth Dickinson, and Karl Schroeder
Barnes & Noble’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog presents Dune at 50: A Newbie’s Guide, which reminds me that there really is no good reason why I’ve never gotten around to reading it. Meanwhile, someone has made a 3-hour long fan cut of the movie, which I have likewise never seen. I guess I know what I’m going to be doing sometime relatively soon.
The B&N blog also wrote about one of my favorite pieces of sci-fi history trivia this week: “How One Misunderstanding in the 1870s Created an Entire Sci-fi Subgenre”
The Atlantic asks “Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?”
S. Andrew Swann lists 7 Things in Every SF/F Story.
Target stores are phasing out their heavily gendered toy aisles in favor of something more neutral. . . literally announced the same week that my 12-year-old got rid of basically all of her non-Lego toys.
Jim C. Hines has 10 Hugo Predictions now that Hugo voting has come to a close. We’ll find out how accurate these are in a couple of weeks, but I’m guessing they’re pretty right on.
Clarkesworld published a story that I can’t tell if I love or hate but that I think is fascinating either way: “Security Check” by Han Song (trans. by Ken Liu)
And Lexus has made a hoverboard. What a time to be alive:
SF Bluestocking 