Today, people are reading it.

But there were review editions sent out, advanced reader copies that book reviewers, booksellers, and critics were allowed to read early. These early readers wrote reviews about Railsea—and all of them have been stellar!

Don’t believe me that you should read China’s new book? Here are a handful of reviews praising Railsea:

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):

“Miéville (Un Lun Dun) returns to YA fiction with a superb, swashbuckling tale of adventure on the railsea, a vast prairie densely crisscrossed by train tracks… Working variations on such classics as Moby-Dick, Robinson Crusoe, and A Wizard of Earthsea, this massively imaginative and frequently playful novel features eccentric characters, amazing monsters, and, at its heart, an intense sense of wonder.”

From The AV Club:

“Miéville manages to weld a rich science-fiction concept to influences like Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson (yes, there are pirates; how could there not be?)…”

From Kirkus Reviews:

“What made Railsea a definite winner for me was the narrative. The narrator of the story is not only omniscient but also omnipresent. It is the true conductor of this train-it stops whenever it pleases and relates each character’s adventure at its own beck and call with as many or as little words as it wants. I found it extremely charming, even though I have the feeling that it might annoy some readers. I also truly appreciated the diversity of this world, in which some families are polyamorous and strong female characters abound.”

From NPR:

“[Railsea] feels like a great adventure, meant for girls and boys, as well as for the grown-up readers of science fiction and fantasy who admire the complicated worlds Miéville built for such adult novels as Perdido Street Station and Embassytown.

From some of the best and most critical readers on the planet, there you have it. Railsea by China Mieville is highly praised—not only by us but by readers just like yourself. If you love China’s work or haven’t tried it, here is your opportunity!

Railsea by China Mieville is in fine bookstores now!

Ride the rails like never before…

Have you seen the Conspiracy Keanu meme where dear Mr. Reeves has one of those “Whoa” expressions on his face because he just had a thought that nearly made his brain go ’splody? I kind of feel like that right now. In May of 2011 I was saying hello to you all for the first time with my debut, HOUNDED. Now it’s a year later and I’ve published four books in The Iron Druid Chronicles. If you haven’t read them yet, it’s kind of like this: 

Well, it’s a little bit more involved than that, but Conspiracy Keanu is correct, some of them are naked. The really dangerous ones, for example. Since urban fantasy as a genre is essentially a mash-up—put some fantasy critters in a contemporary urban setting and see what happens—I embraced that approach and decided to explore what would happen if all gods existed according to the beliefs of their worshippers. Since the series is told from a first person POV, you get to meet them as the hero, Atticus O’Sullivan, does. While the Irish pantheon is prominent, quite a bit of attention is paid to the Norse as well, and we also get visits from the Greco-Roman gods, in addition to cameos from the pantheons of India, Africa, Finland, China, Japan, and Russia, and some notable luminaries from the Christian tradition.

I didn’t write four books in a year—they just got released that way. That’s great for readers because they can dive deep into a new series without having to wait.

The latest book in the series, TRICKED, finds Atticus on the Navajo reservation and dealing with a magic system wildly different from his own. He also has to deal with the shenanigans of Coyote, the trickster, as well as fallout from his past adventures in Asgard, where he had a throwdown with Odin, Thor, and other members of the Norse.

The process of writing TRICKED was far more difficult than any of my previous books—and, since book five, TRAPPED, was recently finished with very few snags, it remains the toughest book I’ve completed to date. Luckily, I have one of the most brilliant editors in the business—Tricia Narwani—and she was able to nudge me in the right direction to make the changes I needed. We work really well together, in part because we both dig heavy metal and can admire, from afar, the verdant, untamed growth of the epic fantasy beard and the awesome effort it must take every morning not to attack the unruly tangle with a gas-powered hedge trimmer.* Because of this easy working relationship, we co-wrote a rather detailed post about the novel revision process that might prove illuminating to anyone interested in the craft of writing.

If you desire illumination on anything else—including my series—please visit my website. Feel free to say howdy to me on Twitter @kevinhearne, and I have an author page on Facebook as well.

Happy Reading!

Kevin Hearne

*This is patently untrue. We both secretly wish we could grow epic fantasy beards and we’re just jealous. Well, perhaps it’s solely my issue, if I’m honest. I suspect Tricia may be okay with walking the world beardless. But I’m also convinced that she empathizes and understands every fantasy fan’s desire to grow a luxurious face thicket.

I have to admit, I feel spoiled by China. He delivers a book every year—and sometimes two books a year. He is one of the best writers working in the fantasy genre, garnering award nominations, awards, and a legion of fans who embrace his “weird” fiction.

We are lucky to have such a writer. He makes the genre more interesting just by writing so often and turning in literary quality work.

With today’s publication of Railsea though, China attempts something he hasn’t done before. He has taken a masterpiece masterwork in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville and crafted a post-apocalyptic tale set on the rails. It’s a bold move by a talented writer. If someone can construct an entirely new world populated by the strange and pull it off yet feature the familiar in that before mentioned fantastic work, it’s China.

And he’s done just that, in my opinion.

Here is a bit more about Railsea by China Mieville:

On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory.

But no matter how spectacular it is, Sham can’t shake the sense that there is more to life than traveling the endless rails of the railsea–even if his captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-coloured mole she’s been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. When they come across a wrecked train, at first it’s a welcome distraction. But what Sham finds in the derelict—a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible—leads to considerably more than he’d bargained for.

Soon he’s hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

From China Miéville comes a novel for readers of all ages, a gripping and brilliantly imagined take on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick that confirms his status as “the most original and talented voice to appear in several years.” (Science Fiction Chronicle)

Adam at Wertzone has already read and reviewed it. HERE is what he had to say. In short summary, he said, “Railsea (*****) is a well-written, compulsive page-turner and sees Mieville’s imagination on top form. It’s a book that works on multiple levels and is thoroughly rewarding. His finest work since The City and The City and maybe his finest since The Scar.”

To celebrate the new release, enjoy this excerpt of RAILSEA by China Mieville, on sale everywhere today!

RAILSEA by China Mieville, Excerpt

I can only imagine what that ‘what if’ was for The Games by Ted Kosmatka.

Did it start with the Olympics? Did it start with some people wanting to allow disabled athletes into the games with their prosthetics? Or did it come to be from science playing with genetic mutation and addition to our genome? What would happen to the species if science attempts to make it stronger at the DNA base of what makes us human? How would that affect the world?

And more importantly, what consequences would it have?

Ted Kosmatka has answered these questions and more in The Games.

Here is a bit more about it:

This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Ted Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.

Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas’s boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.

The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer’s cold logic.

Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and—most disquietingly—intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.

Sounds great, right?

It’s gotten great reviews everywhere and it has even captured the attention of a major New York Times bestselling author in Terry Brooks! Terry has read a number of fantasy and science fiction novels in the last few months but this is the one he loved from page one. Here is his review:

Terry Brooks Reviews The Games by Ted Kosmatka

The choice was easy this month. I just finished a new book called THE GAMES by a writer named Ted Kosmatka. No, it is not a riff on THE HUNGER GAMES. It isn’t even fantasy. It is a SciFi Thriller about a future in which the Olympic Games includes an event pitting genetically manufactured creatures against each other in blood sport reminiscent of ancient gladitorial contests. What happens when the perfect fighting machine becomes a threat to its creators? Nothing good, you can be sure. A page turner with a new take on the future of the Olympics should genetic manipulation suddenly become fashionable.

There you have it!

The Games by Ted Kosmatka is in fine bookstores now!

What was it like to be involved in a show with such a large production scale?

It was amazing, obviously! It’s so epic. I wasn’t aware of how big it was going to be, and then I started to read the books and I thought it was really interesting. Then I got on set and I realized how big it truly was. It was a really great experience to have so early in my career, I think, and I think I learned a lot from it.

Last season you filmed in Northern Ireland and Malta, and this year in Croatia… it must feel a lot like working on film rathe than a television series, with foreign locations.

I don’t have a lot of experience with TV shows. My first job was a film, and then I did a few bits for the BBC and then it was Game of Thrones. I’ve really only had cinematic experience, and it does seem more cinematic, but I don’t have a lot of TV to compare to!

One of the interesting things you got to do as Irri was you got to speak Dothraki. In fact, you and Elyes Gabel gave it what seemed a really natural sound. Was that difficult?

I didn’t think so. It’s obviously a bit of a challenge to the learn the lines as the language is made up, but the way it has been created it fits into your voice and body naturally. You know like with different languages — I’m sure you get this with Swedish — your voice changes, right? With the Dothraki, it becomes earthier and you find a place for it in your body. Everyone who spoke it found their own way of doing it, but I think everyone sounded really good doing it. It sounded as I expected to when I read the books — gravelly, earthy, but also musical.

Do you think the fact that you’re multilingual helped you with it?

Definitely! Just things like words that sounded similar to things in Ukrainian or Norwegian, so I could remember them that way, and also just because once you’ve learned a language from scratch, I think you’re faster at picking up new words.

I didn’t start learning Norwegian until I was thirteen, so yeah, it helped me learn how to memorize words and sounds more easily than it might have been for someone who hadn’t ever had to do that before.

Your first big scene this scene was the reaction to Rakharo’s death. That was heart-rending. Is it difficult to convey the emotion when you’re trying to do it with this foreign language that you don’t really understand?

I thought it helped, actually. It’s an emotional, guttural language that makes it easy to go to certain places. But in terms of emotion, that’s part of my job, right? So, no, I didn’t find it too hard. When you’re out in the desert and it’s quiet, and this horse comes in without a rider and a head in a sack… you can get yourself there pretty quick. I think for Irri, as well, in my head she never got to tell him that she really liked him. They had a kind of… teenage relationship, didn’t they? “I’m going to be horrible to you because I like you.” So I felt sorry for her, she had a rough time.

Losing Rakharo seemed like a symbol of the dissolution of the khalasar — the “horde” that isn’t really a horde any more — I think.

Yeah, it’s quite symbolic I think. Dany’s losing all of her protectors and what we see is that she starts to pull it together again — she’s there for Irri, she doesn’t let it break her — and it’s a strong contrast to where she was in the first scenes in the first season.

All your filming was in Croatia this year, right?

Yes. Which I was happy about, because it was sunny!

I’ve seen you tweeting quite a bit with Laura Pradelska, who plays Quaithe. What’s that all about?

(Laughs) Laura was the one who forced me to go onto Twitter. I said, ‘What is this Twitter? I don’t do this twitting’ — and I still call it twitting, because I think we’re all a bit twitty when we’re tweeting — so I started and I was quite bad at it at first, but now I’ve gotten into it. Laura is great. She’s why I’m in LA right now, she’s been living there and told me I need to get myself out here.

Did you know her from before filming, or from other things in London?

Oh, no, we just met in Croatia and became good friends. She lives not far from me in London, too. It was great to meet someone you’re on the same wave-length with.

Now we’re at Qarth, and on the surface it seems luxurious and elegant, but it’s hiding something much darker… something that has a direct influence on Irri’s life.

Oh, yeah, she gets killed. She gets strangled. If I’m going to go, I’d better go good! So, that happens… poor Irri.

Were you a bit sad in a way?

Oh, it’s totally sad. It did so well the first season and everyone’s really settled in and getting along. But I’ve had a really good run of it, so I’m not going to complain!

How far have you read into the series? Every actor has a different answer — some haven’t read a single book in the series, some have read all of them.

I prefer to read kind of as I go along, so I’ve read the first book and then I’m still reading the second.

Are you a Dany loyalist?

Oh, it’s Dany all the way, definitely!

What’s it like to work with Emilia, actually?

She’s great. I really respect her as an actor and a person. It’s great that someone’s as great off screen as they are on screen.

I know that filming can be quite arduous, with long hours…

I’m not a morning person.

Someone told me — I think it was Mark Stanley — that actors aren’t paid to act, they’re paid to sit around and whatever acting happens in between is a bonus.

(Laughs) Yeah, that’s how it is sometimes! That’s just part of the job, of course, and you just have to suck it up.

So, anything on your plate next? You’re in LA so I’m sure you’re having meetings and the like…

Yeah, I’m definitely having meetings and getting on with life, auditioning for stuff. It’s interesting being in LA actually, because I’ve never been here before and I’ve never experienced the industry here before. It’s a learning experience.

Do you notice much of a difference between the industry … I guess, culture in LA — from your brief experience — and the industry in London?

Oh, totally. I think so. Everything is quite different here. Everything seems much faster here. Which is fine for me, I’m quite direct. And it was different in Norway, too, when I lived there. It’s a great experience as an actor to learn how to adapt to each area of the industry, and learn to become more accessible.

One last question, about the Dothraki. It was funny when I thought about it — the fact that Dothraki means “horse people”, more or less, but Irri never got to ride a horse. Was that disappointing?

I was even given riding lessons, and then I didn’t even get on a horse! Though that’s probably just as well, because I’m really clumsy. I always wanted to ride horses as a kid, but I ended up doing a million other things.

There did seem to be a sense that the horses were often difficult to work with…

Yeah, you know, in the end I didn’t envy anyone who had to work with them. It’s hard enough to do a scene not to also have to worry about the horse you’re sitting on.

Thank you very much for your time, Amrita, and good luck in your future endeavors!

Tusen takk!

There are some great sci-fi/fantasy bloggers out there, fans who are devoting a lot of time and energy into supporting authors and their readers. Variety is the spice of life, as they say, and with the menagerie of unique and very different individuals out there contributing, it produces a whole that is better than its parts.

Last week, Suvudu posted the First 50 Pages of To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Elio Garcia, Jr. reviewed Game of Thrones: The Old Gods & the New! Mac Beauvais posted Just What is Cosplay: Part 5. Matt Staggs interviewed Shawntelle Madison, author of Coveted. And I posted Creating The Annotated Sword of Shannara: Part IV!

In other areas of the professional internet(s), Tor.com Revealed Their Own Post-Credits Scene, Pyr Books featured The Locus Awards, and Orbit Books posted the Prologue for 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson!

Here are some of the blogging highlights I found outside of Suvudu week ending 5/12/12:

• Review: The King’s Blood by Daniel Abraham, read by A Dribble of Ink
• Poll: Completed Series Follow-Up, posted by A Fantasy Reader
• Giveaway: Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, posted by Fantasy Book Critic
• Review: Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, read by Fantasy Literature
• Review: Railsea by China Mieville, posted by Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
• Interview: Susan E. Satterfield, posted by Grasping For the Wind
• Comment: New Procurements, posted by The Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf
• Giveaway: A Stark & Wormy Knight by Tad Williams, posted by Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist
• Review: Deadly Descendant by Jenna Black, read by Sci-Fi Chick
• Review: The King’s Blood by Daniel Abraham, read by Wertzone

I highly recommend all Suvudu readers to visit these fine examples of sci-fi / fantasy blog work! Get involved, post your thoughts, and enjoy what else is out there!

And feel free to talk about it or anything else on our Forum here!

Till next week…

This week, in celebration of her upcoming Grand Master Award at the Nebulas, we travel back to 1998, with sci-fi novelist Connie Willis. Willis, who is the author of several award-winning novels, most recently Blackout and All Clear, tells us below what inspired her to write To Say Nothing of The Dog, one of her earliest and most celebrated works.

“When I was thirteen I read Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel, a science-fiction novel about a kid named Kip Russell who has a spaceship land on him and carry him and a little-girl genius named Peewee off on a wild adventure to the Moon, Pluto, the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, and parts west. So what does that have to do with To Say Nothing of the Dog, my time-travel novel set in Victorian England and a future Oxford?

Everything. Have Space Suit, Will Travel was where I first encountered Jerome K. Jerome’s comedy classic, Three Men in a Boat, the full title of which is Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog. In the very first chapter of Have Space Suit, Kip is trying to talk his dad into letting him go to the Moon, and his father is paying no attention because he is reading the pineapple tin scene, so as soon as I’d finished reading Have Space Suit, I went to the library and checked out Three Men in a Boat. And fell absolutely in love with J, George, Harris, and of course, Montmorency the dog, who is in many ways the most intelligent and definitely the most sensible member of the group that sets off on a summer holiday rowing up the Thames.

I’d never encountered a book like it before, a story which had no plot, but you didn’t care because you were having such a good time getting lost in the Hampton Court Maze and battling swans and trying to open a pineapple tin without a can opener (with predictably disastrous results.) You didn’t care because you were too busy listening to J talk about the perils of packing and seasickness and taking a cheese home with you on a train. It, like Have Space Suit, instantly became one of my favorite books, and I’m still in love with it.

I was already in love with the Thames and Oxford through Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, and in love with England through everything else I’d read, from E.M. Forster to Agatha Christie and especially the Victorian writers–Dickens and Trollope and Charles Kingsley and Wilkie Collins.

I love the Victorian era, with its vicars and parasols and pussycats and potted palms and butlers and séances, and I adore the Victorians. They’re just so funny–so worried about appearances and so certain of all sorts of things that aren’t true, so clearly out of their depth and yet so deadly serious, like children playing at dress-up in their parents’ clothes.

They discovered evolution and wrote some of the greatest children’s literature ever and produced some of the most hideous art in the history of mankind–clawfooted furniture with rosettes and garlands and cherubs, and sculptures of Leda Fending off the Swan and stags at bay, and statuary incorporating scientists, knights in shining armor, eagles, beetles, lions, Biblical scenes, assorted foliage, Greek columns, castles, and elephants. (If you don’t believe me, go look at the chapel at Windsor Castle. Or the Albert Memorial. Legend has it that during World War II Londoners put up giant arrows directing the Luftwaffe to the Albert Memorial in the hope they’d bomb it to smithereens.)

The Victorians remind me a lot of us. And their time reminds me a lot of ours. People tend to think of the Victorian Age as calm and settled and boring–tea parties on the lawn, chambermaids, croquet–but in reality, their time was as unsettled and upsetting as ours. The Industrial Revolution was rampaging through their lives, and they had all sorts of strange new technologies-new trains and aniline dyes and telegraph lines–to contend with. Just like us.

No wonder I wanted to write about them. And about the three men in a boat (who I’d always hoped I would meet), and about a hapless hero a little like Kip and a girl a little like Peewee who’s more than a match for him. And about butlers and tea parties and boating on the Thames and croquet and jumble sales and swans and séances and appalling Victorian art. To say nothing of the dog.

I hope you have as much fun reading To Say Nothing of the Dog as I had writing it.”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our Twitter maven, Sarah Peed: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra. Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra

Please enjoy this excerpt of TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, available now wherever books are sold.

TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG by Connie Willis, Excerpt

Killing zombies. It has made a lot of people a lot of money.

From authors to movie studios to television series to comic books.

Zombies have been around for decades but the recent downturn in the economy drove them back to the fore again, placed at the front of our collective fears. Hollywood has produced movies like Zombieland and the forthcoming World War Z. The Walking Dead on AMC is one of the most watched television series—and its comic book series is approaching #100 issues. Authors like Max Brooks, Joe Schreiber, Stephen King, Robert Kirkman, H.P. Lovecraft, and Colson Whitehead have written novels on the subject, keeping people awake at night.

But I saw something odd a few days ago on Facebook. I try to keep an eye on what many professionals are doing in their respective spheres of influence, and that includes editors. The post in question was by an editor—who, yes, shall remain nameless. In it, he said in paraphrase:

“I am sitting here, late at night, making my way through the slush pile. And if I come across another zombie novel, I am going to lose it.”

This surprised me but I understand. All things are cyclical in the book industry and the recent boom in zombie fiction and entertainment will subside and give way to something else. I am surprised because I didn’t think an editor would say such things so soon. The zombie phenomenon appears to be going strong. It’s only been going a few years now, leaving what I perceive to be a great deal more undead fans wanting more.

Are there some forms of entertainment that excel at zombie stories? Is writing a unique zombie story difficult? Do readers have an attention span deficiency when it comes to books but not visual media? Is it hard to creatively separate oneself from others who are attempting to write novels in the same genre? Or is there a deeper reason for the editor’s distress?

I don’t have the answer. I’ve never been particularly fond of zombies in the first place. While I enjoyed the first season of The Walking Dead on AMC—enjoyed, but didn’t love like everyone else—the rest of the genre is just boring to me.

Maybe this editor doesn’t like zombies either?

What do you think about the editor’s comments? Are you tired of zombies? Are they truly in their brain-shot death knell? Or do you believe the more the merrier? Let them shamble and eat flesh forever?

Why am I doing it? I had uninsured cancer last year and after $200,000 + worth of medical expenses—and no desire to claim medical bankruptcy—I decided to put together something BIG.

Thankfully, a lot of my writing friends donated their time and creativity. Without them, I’d be financially hurting for decades to come. Grim Oak Press is publishing the anthology in a small print run, with a number of other publishers interested in mass trade publication. You can read more about it and the authors who are involved HERE!

What you haven’t heard yet is how much patience an anthology editor needs.

The work is not hard. In fact, it takes very little time although one must be an able communicator. I see fantasy fans griping about George R. R. Martin editing anthologies with Gardner Dozois, spending his time working on other projects besides The Winds of Winter. I can tell you that the time it takes to work on an anthology is negligible when compared to the time it takes for writers to contribute their stories. It mostly consists of waiting for the short stories to be delivered by their due date—then reading them at night when the work for the day is done and editing where appropriate.

But it is interesting. Writers and webmasters alike become used to working alone. They are solitary endeavors. Sometimes you work with a client or editor, but most of the time is being glued to the keyboard. Anthology work is not like that. I am solely and wholly dependent on other people delivering their part—hopefully on time. It is a change to go from being my own boss with no employees to managing 20 of them. A different skill set.

Then the actual editing, which I’m thankful so far that the stories I’ve received need barely any of it.

But I have more on my plate than the average anthologist. I am publishing Unfettered myself, which means far more work than normal editors deal with:

• Commissioning artwork from Todd Lockwood
• Developing the concept we’ll use for the art
• Laying out the book and designing it in Adobe In Design
• Getting the autograph pages prepared and mailed out to authors
• Ramping-up the publicity that is necessary for an anthology of his caliber
• Accepting orders for Unfettered
• Answering a ton of questions and interviews
• Shipping out thousands of books later this year

All of it is a part of my job now. And all of it is with the intention to kill my medical debt.

And I’m excited to tackle it.

John Joseph Adams, who recently was nominated for a Hugo Award for his anthology work, knows exactly what I am talking about—and he knows the hardships of being an editor all too well. Here he answers some questions that I was curious to know more about:

INTERVIEW: JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS

Shawn Speakman: What is the role of a short story anthology editor?

John Joseph Adams: For a reprint anthology, an anthology editor’s job is to survey the field and select the best of the best available stories for inclusion in the anthology that fit the theme. This can often mean one has to read hundreds and hundreds of stories and engage in an extensive amount of research if one can hope to do any given theme justice. Once you determine which stories you want to include, then you have to go about securing permissions from the authors and/or agents; sometimes it’s quite easy, but sometimes it can be quite complicated or even impossible. (The ones that turn out to be impossible are always super frustrating!) And finally, an anthology editor also usually writes an introduction to the anthology, orders the stories in the table of contents, and sometimes provides header notes leading into each story. But basically, a reprint anthology editor curates the selection of stories, and that’s his or her primary job.

For an original anthology, an anthologist’s role is quite different, naturally. In that case, you typically begin with a concept and develop that into a proposal (basically a sales pitch for the anthology), which you or your agent will then circulate to publishers. In developing the proposal, you’ll approach anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen authors to recruit them to participate in the anthology; once you have a number of established writers on board, that’s when you can start showing your proposal to book publishers, because whether or not a publisher decides to publish an original anthology will be largely dependent on the writers involved.

Once you actually sell the anthology, then the editor’s role shifts to that of shepherd; it’s now your job to corral all of the authors who promised to write stories for you and ensure they actually do deliver as promised–and, if anyone fails to come through, to bring someone else on board who can step in and replace them. After the stories are in hand, assuming the stories are up to snuff, the editor then must work with the author to revise their stories so that they’re the best they can be, and ensure that they sufficiently fit within the theme of the anthology. In the case where the stories are not up to snuff, the editor must decide whether or not the stories are salvageable, and if not, then he or she must make the decision to reject a story for inclusion.

SS: How did you get involved in editing?

John Joseph Adams: It all sort of started with D&D. I got my first creative urges in my late teens, when I was playing a lot of D&D, and my first attempt at anything creative was to run a D&D campaign. I found that I didn’t like the interactive part of it as a DM, so I turned my hand toward writing fiction. My interest in writing fiction eventually lead me to go to college and major in English/creative writing, and in college I took a number of writing workshop classes that lead me to become interested in editing as a career path. After college, I moved to New Jersey, where I had some family, so I could pursue an editing gig. At the time, I was still thinking that I’d be writing on the side and doing editing as my day job, but once I landed my first editorial job — at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction — I fell in love with it, and sort of let writing fall by the wayside in order to focus on editing. I pretty much knew right away once I started working there that editing was something I’d love to do as a career, and I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been able to make that happen.

SS: You’ve been nominated for a Hugo Award. How does that feel and what does it mean to you?

John Joseph Adams: It’s such an honor. I mean, everyone always says that, but it really, really is. I mean, to grow up reading SF and fantasy, and to see some of the great classics that have won the award… it’s humbling to be in that company. It’s funny–one of the first major writers I latched onto in SF was Ben Bova, and his books often proclaimed him to be a six-time Hugo Award-winner (or however many it was). It was actually a little deceptive, because although it was true he was a six-time Hugo Award-winner, they were all for his work editing Analog, rather than for his own fiction (which, to be fair, has won plenty of awards otherwise). But it’s just kind of funny in retrospect, that the author I latched onto, and the reason I became aware of the Hugo Awards at all, had won a number of them for editing rather than his own fiction. So for me to now be nominated for that same award as Ben Bova, and in basically the same category, it’s…well, like I said: SUCH an honor.

SS: What is your favorite fantasy/science fiction anthology that you didn’t work on?

John Joseph Adams: It’s hard to choose a favorite anthology amongst so many great ones, but the one that probably had the most impact on me was James Gunn’s The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 3: From Heinlein to Here. It served as a primary text in a science fiction literature course I took in college, and it exposed me to a bunch of classic short science fiction that I hadn’t previously encountered. It has a bunch of my favorite science fiction stories in it–ones that hold up even after all these years, not only since they were first published, but since I first read them. I’ve gone on to reprint some of them in various projects; that’s always a joy, to be able to bring these stories that so influenced me to new readers, exposing them to them for the first time.

SS: What advice can you give me with UNFETTERED?

John Joseph Adams: I think it’s too late to give you any editorial advice since the book is done, isn’t it? If that’s the case, I’d say make sure you plan to do a big publicity push when the book comes out, which should include building a website devoted to the anthology (i.e., an “official website” for the book), and on that site include as much bonus content as you can in order to help generate buzz for the book. This can include making a few of the stories in the anthology available online for free, interviews with the authors, excerpts, and the like. And be prepared to get yourself out there as a spokesman for the book and plan to do a number of interviews to support the release.

If you are interested in Unfettered, click HERE! If you want to learn more about John Joseph Adams, click HERE!

Happy editing!

[Note: We're dispensing with the recaps, because ... well, there's a million of them! That said, there are spoilers for the series below, and occasionally there'll be hints about things yet to come in the novels, so beware]

To say that this episode is uneven in its quality is, apparently, something that engenders a great deal of angst in some corners of the internet, up to and including disavowal of these reviews as anything worth looking at. That may be as it may be — one reads what one wants and not what one doesn’t — but I think it’d be worthwhile to pause a moment and consider the criteria by which these Suvudu reviews (and my commentary elsewhere) are written. It provides important context.

There’s many approaches to criticism, and literary theory (my native terrain) is rife with duelling methods to analyze works. For many, a work should be seen in isolation of anything else around it, especially the nebulous urges and meanings of the author (or authors). That’s not my own preferred approach. At the same time, it doesn’t make sense to try and judge the adaptation as if George R.R. Martin had created it — he didn’t — and to not take into account the change from one medium to another, the realities of TV production timetables and budgets, the fallibility of actors and directors and producers. A one to one translation of a text to screen is not only impossible, it’s undesirable.

How, then, to review? You could merely judge it on whether you liked it or not, but that’s hardly a basis on which to offer criticism since it’s so purely subjective. So you go further, marshaling reasons for why you did or did not like it, trying to ground it not in objectivity (there’s very little of that in criticism) but in a kind of communal subjectivity that others can assimilate (more or less). The end result? Hopefully you’ve said some things worth thinking about and talking about.

My own marshaled reasons? I have a very particular approach to reviewing this series, and it goes like this: since the executive producers have discussed, at length, why they chose this series to adapt (it moved them as a great story written by a masterful storyteller), and — more importantly — have articulated on numerous occasions that their chief aims are to make great television and be faithful to the spirit and character of the novels, that those two ambitions can serve as axes by which to judge any scene. Is a scene actually good television? Good. Is a good scene also faithful to the spirit of the novels? Excellent — they have succeeded at their own goals, and not only should they be congratulated, but viewers should be very happy indeed.

Note that the above axes do not mean that every trivial detail and line need make it to the show, that every incident and character must correspond to what’s seen on screen. What matters is the character and voice of the novels being accurately translated, not the picayune details. In fact, some of the finest moments of the series — including in this very episode — are the results of streamlining and greatly compressing elements of the story into unique configurations — the details are all shuffled about and changed, perhaps, but the core spirit is there, and fans of the novels can surely applaud that. When I point out a change without any particular comment, that’s simply to point it out — it’s not a complaint. And if I point out a change and comment, well, in the back of my mind I’m concerned that it didn’t work well or that it isn’t true to the spirit of the story, and I’ll explain why.

With that preamble done, lets move into the actual review of “The Old Gods and the New”, an episode that features one of the finest ten minute stretches the series has ever had… and which also features scenes built on some of the laziest writing the show has yet subjected fans to (you can see why I’ve got the long preamble, right?)

The first ten minutes or so of the episode is a sublime example of what happens when everything is firing on all cylinders. Vanessa Taylor builds the episode around the material in a Bran chapter in A Clash of Kings… but then weaves in material from three other chapters, bringing a character death much earlier into the story and giving Theon a direct hand in it rather than a direct hand. These are “substantial” changes, when looked at purely in the details… but it so perfectly captures the spirit of those Theon chapters, and the importance of what he does, that the fact that it’s excellent television merely helps things along. The echoing of his kicking around Gared’s head in his introduction in Bran’s first chapter in A Clash of Kings is particularly clever, given the newer context.

The riot in King’s Landing also plays out very well, although one can see the rough edges of what amounts to a program with a limited (if large) budget and an even more limited shooting schedule. The riot would doubtless have been tremendous and terrifying in a blockbuster film, but as it is, it’s still pretty good for a TV series. More importantly than the production values of the budget, however, was the acting… and Peter Dinklage delivered, yet again, with his furious denunciation of Joffrey, and Jack Gleeson matched him with Joffrey’s petulant protests and screeching.

Moreover, the peril Sansa is placed into — more harrowing than anything in the novel, with its explicit threat of rape (though, it should be noted, the use of “almost rape” as a story point might be argued as being overused in general in film and television) and with the Hound’s swift, brutal assault on those who’d hurt the “little bird”. Rory McCann brings an implacable ferocity to the role of the Hound, very much in keeping with Martin’s character, although it’s true that he doesn’t laugh in the face of those who run from him, a detail that makes his pent-up rage and his apparent joy in killing plainer.

Other segments of the episode were near as good. Jon up to the point where he swings his sword wide of Ygritte is beautifully handled, bringing in in the earlier scenes with Qhorin bits of information and themes that point to the end of Jon’s story this season. Arya’s scenes with Tywin are always a pleasure, as well — Maisie Williams rises to the occasion every time — although that well may be running dry; too many clever conversations with Tywin starts to feel rather safe and ordinary, and it’d make sense to shift her to interacting more with Gendry and Hot Pie rather than pressingg yet another Tywin-Arya scene onto viewers. But those scenes in Harrenhal bring the spectre of a much bigger problem….

Namely, lazy writing. What did Amory Lorch do to the writers, that he features in two of the most ill-considered scenes ever put on camera for the series? We are reintroduced to Harrenhal to hear Tywin Lannister berate Lorch about sending a letter to the wrong lord… but this is Westeros, and there are no envelopes and postage that are done by hand. Lorch might have been tasked with seeing the letter delivered… but if he took it to a maester, the maester would immediately know the recipient wasn’t right, and if he took it to a courier, surely the courier would have noted there must be a mix-up and that he’s not intending to ride into the North? This is a very minor nit to pick, but I’m noting it because it seems part of a pattern with the scenes in Harrenhal surrounding the Tyrion and Arya moments.

Much more egregious is the sequence leading up to Amory Lorch’s darkly comic death. In truth, he dies later and under very different circumstances in the novel, but that’s just a detail and doesn’t really matter. However, the staging of the scene — specifically the chase — was a real problem. Why fill the courtyard with extras in Lannister kit? Why then Arya careen among them, and not a one of them cares or grabs at her, and Lorch — Ser Amory Lorch, I should add, a knight known as one of the fiercest reavers Tywin Lannister has — doesn’t simply yell for them to grab them? One can suspend disbelief only so far, and it beggars the imagination to wonder how the production let this one slide. The scene may be loosely inspired by the moment where Arya steals a horn from a knight and runs away from him… but that’s the man’s personal property, while Lorch — already the victim of Tywin’s wrath — believes Arya’s up to something treasonous, which would surely give him more cause to speak up.

Not only does the comedic approach to the death not fit the tone of the novels or the stone of Arya’s story in Harrenhal as Martin envisioned, but the fact that it was so poorly handled — whether in the writing or direction, I’m not sure — means it couldn’t be good television, either. Had it been staged differently, it might have been something that would befit the tone of the show and the intelligence of its viewers. But this sort of false drama was a hallmark of this episode, tension being concocted out of thin air for no great purpose.

The sophomoric qualities of the Robb and Talisa scenes bear mentioning as well, as the show continues with a rather juvenile and uninspired interaction between them, something that doesn’t really befit the tone that the show itself has tried to establish. There’s a … cuteness, perhaps, that sits ill at ease with everything that surrounds it. And then to have a few exchanged words and a lingering look lead Catelyn Stark into immediately sussing out her son’s infatuation and warning him against it? It felt contrived and sloppy, information being doled out at the writer’s say so rather than because it comes organically from the story. The actors are working as best they can with what they’ve been presented, but so far what they have presents a shallow and unengaging picture that their charm and talent hasn’t been able to imbue with life.

And last, but not least, the Qartheen storyline. It’s interesting that the producers talked of changing it, to give it more “action” and to give Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys more scope. Just as with Robb Stark, they seem unable or unwilling to let any of the ensemble go a season with little or nothing to do, something which feels like a failure of nerve or ambition. This show already treats its cast differently than most other shows — HBO puts the ensemble nature of it forward so much that when it submitted its various Emmy entries, the best actor and best actress categories were blank as far as Game of Thrones went, with only the supporting categories seeing actors and actresses put forward.

Why, then, is the story being made to serve the actors, to keep their faces on the screen, rather than the other way around? Stranger still is the fact that up to the final scene of episode 6… the show was in a very broad sense following Dany’s storyline in the novel. It lost the tone and voice of these sections, the “place of splendors”, the way that Qarth was a world unto itself, the strangeness of the inhabitants such as Xaro Xhoan Daxos… but the basics of a time in the desert, an arrival at Qarth, Xaro’s marriage proposal and her being turned down by various potentates, that all remained.

So this final scene is, after six episodes, the first truly major departure in the plot for Daenerys… and it’s one that we think rather opens all sorts of troublesome issues down the road. Now that someone’s stolen the dragons, what prevents others from stealing them? In the novels, stealing them is never a question for the Qartheen or some of the others Dany encounters — whether it’s because their refined culture demands some means of establishing legal claim, or because they know that a dragon stolen will never obey, it just doesn’t happen… well, not for a long while. But now the trigger is pulled, and you can just imagine some viewers each year wondering why Dany and her khalasar — which is even more greatly diminished — aren’t just filled full of arrows so that the dragons can be taken.

This added action underscores that the writers are at times thinking purely in the short term when it comes to fleshing out Daenerys’s story, replacing what was something of a monomythic trial with something more mundane, more obvious, more a matter of flesh and blood than spirit. It’s strange that, in a show with so much ambition on display, they shied away from the fairy tale structure of Daenerys’s story in A Clash of Kings (more on which later) when dark fairy tales can convert to the screen very well indeed (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Company of Wolves to name two) and would have given Daenerys’s story a distinctness that it does not presently have.

All in all, this is an episode that opened with amazing strength, because of clever adaptation… but it disappointed in the nuts and bolts of it, as we careened from one excellent scene to something that felt sub-par and back to something excellent. At this stage, the show really needs to steady itself and remain consistent, and hopefully the final four episodes to come will achieve that.