Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fiction

You may -or may not- be aware that my article F&SF June 2008 Reviewed has been selected as the Editor's Choice for this week.

Although my novel Lightning Days was a finalist for the USA News Best Book Award for SF in 2006, and my short story 'The Bloodhound' won 3rd place in Ralan's Grabber Prize that same year, I've never actually won anything outright, so I'm absolutely delighted.

One of the things to learn when writing is to learn when to stop; that sometimes Less Is More. And that different readers react differently to their personal experiences. I could have written more about Rand B. Lee's 'Litany' in that review, but it would have been a reaction based on my own prejudices rather than any absolute qualities in the story, and it was already the longest paragraph by far -- adding to it would have unbalanaced the whole article.

That the story struck me as Zelzany-esque may have to do with its New Mexico setting, where Roger Zelazny settled in the 1980s, or the Greek references to kourabiedes, which evoked Kallikanzeros from his Hugo Award-winning novel '--And Call Me Conrad,' or it may be that the Archetypes reminded me of Zelazny's Trumps. Certainly while there was nothing obvious in Lee's use of language --controlled to Zelazny's free-flowing-- there was something there.

But to most people, Roger Zelazny is dead and gone, so such comparisons would have been pointless.

None of this may be obvious to most readers. And it was unnecessary. I won the vote on what was in the review, rather than a paean to a dead writer, no matter how good he was.