Essays & stuff I don't want to forget

In the day job I make use of a site called Xing – it’s like facebook except there’s no fun & games, it’s all serious work networking. A new message came through. It was from someone called Anna Janas. She had contributed a story to a sci-fi collection, and the publishers wanted to translate all the stories into English so that David Bowie could read them.

That’s right. The 20 stories were all inspired by Bowie’s music. Each writer chose a song and used it as an inspiration. What better music than Bowie’s for probing the bizarre Hinterland of the subconscious?

I was delighted to be asked part of the project. I’m an old fan of sci-fi – used to read tons of the stuff. So then editor of the project, Karla Schmidt, sent me a few stories to choose from. I chose one by Wulf Dorn. The plain, tense style of his prose immediately attracted me.

The project took wings and you should see their bilingual site Hinterland. The authors include some of Germany’s best known sci-fi and fantasy writers, and some newer writers on the scene. The story I had chosen is by Wulf Dorn, who I discovered later is causing waves with his psychological thrillers. His second novel is being translated into Italian, Turkish, Danish, Greek, and Brazilian Portuguese. The English-speaking world is missing out.

The Hinterland anthology is going to give me great leads on where to go among new German writers. Time to take a break from the English-speaking world.

Book reviews from the Asylum

The Asylum review blog is a one-man-show from John Self in Belfast. He reviews about ten novels a month with great perception and always from a base of sound good taste. I’ve been following it now for several months, picking up tips on what to read. He’s not trying to show off by lashing out reviews bang on launch date: the novels will often be a couple of years old or classics he has missed out on.

I see his most recent post has 48 responses. It’s good to see he’s getting the attention he deserves.
Forget the Sunday paper reviews. They are generally written by fellow writers, and no-one in a small country like Ireland is going to be harsh on friends of friends.
Pay a visit to Asylum.

Here he reflects on the dangers of trying to have an instant definitive opinion on new works:

The danger with books which really give us something unfamiliar is that we will mistake the lack of familiarity for fundamental flaws in the structure or writing. The converse of this, however, is to give too much credit where a book does break the banks of traditional literary fiction, and miss the flaws altogether.