The Dragon Page "Cover to Cover"
Conversations with Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy
I’m always on the lookout for good reading and new authors to follow. Alien Contact is something of a veritable who’s who of the current genre greats, with some names I’m not as familiar with in the mix as well.
With twenty-six short stories telling tales of man meeting with other intelligences, Marty Halpern has pulled together an anthology filled with hours of enjoyable reading.
I do enjoy a good short story anthology and Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories really fits the bill. It offers 14 terrific stories all in the steampunk genre (although some of them are pretty loosely connected — I’m looking at you Garth Nix!). And the quality of the stories are uniformly good.
Happily Ever After is an anthology edited by John Klima, in which each story was in some way inspired by a fairy tale. I am an absolute sucker for any kind of fairy tale retelling, but good ones are few and can be difficult to find. So this particular anthology was right up my alley. Plus any editor who was inspired to make an anthology by Neil Gaiman’s “The Troll Bridge” is guaranteed to have fantastic taste in stories.
Interview Transcript: This week, Justin Gustainis joins Mike and Mike to discuss his new projects, including the recently released Those Who Fight Monsters, an occult detectives anthology he edited for EDGE SF. Justin talks about why he put together this anthology, who he had contacted to contribute, what he expected and what he didn’t expect during the creation of this book.
Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books are the reader’s equivalent of coming home after a long day; putting on your pj’s and eating cereal for dinner. It’s simple and sometimes intensely comforting. As a reader, the structure of a Valdemar book is highly predictable and that is part of their appeal.
So, this book of short stories is a great way to shake things up.
Interview: Mike and Mike talk with John Joseph Adams about his newest collections: The Way of the Wizard from Prime Books, and The Living Dead 2 from Night Shade Books.
John talks about why working on anthologies appeal to him, his love of working on magazines, searching for the stories that fit the theme while still trying to achieve a diverse enough selection for the volume, and more.
Interview: Mike and Mike talk with Nancy Kilpatrick, editor of the recent Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead anthology from EDGE SF.
Nancy talks about her long-running fascination with vampires, how they may evolve in future tales, and how the stories and this anthology came about.
Interview: This week, Mike and Mike chat with Larry Niven; his newest collection is Stars and Gods, but the conversation covers many topics, from portraying technological advances in fiction, space travel and exploration, Niven’s Laws, merging tech and fashion, and more!
Stars and Gods is the latest in a series of collections, containing editorials, articles, short stories and excerpts from novels, and random writing that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else.
Interview: Mike and Mike chat with author Michelle M. Welch about her current audio project, Theme and Variations. Currently in the middle of Volume 2, the audio short story anthology consists of speculative fiction with a musical theme.
Michelle talks about how Theme and Variations came about, and the feedback from authors and fans alike, and the likelyhood of breaking this type of anthology out into other genres.
I don’t think I can recommend Ray Bradbury’s writings any more highly than Neil Gaiman does in his introduction to the latest printing of The Machineries of Joy, but I’ll try anyway. I’ve enjoyed Bradbury since I first clutched a used copy of The Illustrated Man at age 13, but I think I just fell in love with his prose all over again.
Interview: This week, Mike and Mike talk with GRRM about the anthology Warriors, about how much fun he has with fiction anthologies, and his hopes for more core genre anthologies.
George also talks about the latest updates on his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, including the progress on A Dance with Dragons, how his working pace contrasts with the impatience of his more ravenous fans, the development of the series on HBO and his gratitude about the show being done by HBO, and more.
Interview: This week, Lou Anders, Editorial Director at Pyr, joins Mike and Mike to talk about some of his many projects coming up: With Great Power… is an anthology of superhero stories; Swords and Dark Magic which is a major swords & sorcery anthology co-edited with Jonathan Strahan
Interview: Lee Modesitt, Jr joins Michael and Michael to discuss Viewpoints Critical, his long overdue collection of short stories, about his prolific writing output over the years, and everything in between.
Interview: Mike, Mike and Summer talk with editor John Joseph Adams about Wastelands, the newest collection of post-apocalyptic fiction from Night Shade Books. John tells us about acquiring the stories (including one by Stephen King), putting the collection together, and what appeals to and attracts him to post-apocalyptic fiction.
Discussion ranges from the inspirations and influences of post-apocalyptic stories, to the extensive website that accompanies the book, and the joy of acquiring a Stephen King story.
Interview: Michael, Summer, and Michael chat with John Klima, editor of the short story collection Logorrhea, a bold play on storycrafting where he sent a list of Scripps Spelling Bee winning words to a select list of authors and asked them to write a story based on and inspired by the word they picked in addition to incorporating the word into the story.
