CONTENTS Editors' Introduction ; References and AbbreviationsPart I: The Major Intertexts - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre - Georgette Heyer, A Civil Contract - Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night - William Shakespeare Part II: 'A comedy of biology and manners' Part III: Annotations, by chapter Afterword: …

Andrew Hickey not hugely impressed by Blackout / All Clear.

Would you believe it? A Watership Down fanfic that sends a chill down the spine!

"Pratchett was very much aware of some of the dreadful sexism in his source material, and the female characters he wrote were often in direct response to what he saw in the fantasy genre. His intentions to point out the silliness of the portrayal of women in fantasy, sadly, backfired somewhat."

Hooray! "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction to be published online, with text available free - The third edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the definitive reference work in the field, will be released online later this year by the newly-formed ESF, Ltd, in association with Victor Gollancz, the SF & Fantasy imprint of the Orion P…

Big Finish Productions is thrilled to announce that it has signed a licence deal with B7 Enterprises to produce original audiobooks and novels based on Terry Nation’s popular science fiction series Blake’s 7. Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles will be launching in Spring 2012 on CD and download, and will be performed by the original stars of the …

"I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay’s *Voyage to Arcturus* and Well’s *First Men in the Moon.* It is better than any of Stapleton’s. It hasn’t got Ray Bradbury’s delicacy, but then it has ten times his emotional …

Speaks for itself really!

Abigail Nussbaum likes the TV version a lot more than the book.

'Barry Humphries, meanwhile, is known primarily to the world as Dame Edna Everage, and he's set to play the Goblin King in The Hobbit. Jackson says, "We're looking forward to seeing him invest the Goblin King with the delicate sensitivity and emotional depth this character deserves."' In other news, Benedict Cumberbat…

Extra-special segments from around the Seven Kingdoms include… Nymeria’s Incredible Journey: Arya Stark’s lost direwolf (guest voice: Fran Drescher) befriends and eventually eats three other abandoned pets on a desperate journey back to her home at Winterfell in this animated odyssey that will warm your heart until it inevitably ends in tragedy. A…

Too tired to read this so bookmarking it for tomorrow.

Too tired to read this so bookmarking it for tomorrow.

Too tired to read this so bookmarking it for tomorrow.

David Moles shares my astonishment, and the astonishment of all right-thinking people, at the award of a Nebula for Best Novelette to Eric James Stone's 'That Leviathan, Which Thou Hast Made', a story which "contained no science worth speaking of. There was very little fiction in it either, if fiction is the narrative of imagin…

Chad Orzel weighs in: "I could rant at some length about all the things that are awful about this story about Mormons proselytizing to aliens who live in the Sun, but life is just too short, you know?"

Locus pulls together comments on the story from elsewhere, and attracts some additional comments from Martin Lewis (whose hilarious dissection of the story is so far only available on Twitter).

Abigail puts her finger on it: "What's wrong with "Leviathan" isn't just that it's badly written and that all its characters seem to have been created either to spout talking points [...] or act as straw men [...].  Worse than these is the fact that it's not a story so much as a thought experiment that posits a s…

My own very modest contribution to the debate: "Written from the heart, just not very well."

Like me, Abigail picks "The Things", though with much less enthusiasm.

Adam Roberts disagrees with me on

"Life begins on the other side of despair", says R2D2 trundling away over the dunes.

Kate Nepveu has finished re-reading The Lord of the Rings.

Chad Orzel reacts to my Hugos post with a confession of his own.

Conrad Halling reacts to my Hugo post (and has some complaints about Livejournal).