Sunday, February 18, 2007

A writer

I've read some of China Mieville's short stories and they are excellent and just weird enough that he might appeal to some of you. He is coming out with a fantasy novel for younger readers and he discusses it here. If anyone picks up the novel, reads it and loves it I hope you give me due credit.

I really like his reason for writing a book for youngsters: "I've always wanted to write a children's book. No book that I read as an adult, no matter how much I love it, has an impact on me the way books did when I was a child, and I think there's something very inspiring about that absolute fervour and abandon with which children read. It's also because the kind of fairy-tale logic I can use in a YA book I could never get away with in an adult book, so there's a real narrative freedom."

Writing Contest

Just in case one of you has a near future science fiction story concerning successful space travel in our solar system stored either in your brain or on paper or on your hard drive there is contest posted here.

2 comments:

Grace said...

Oooh, that's a big fancy contest. Funnily enough, I have had a little sf story floating around in my head for a while, but it only focuses on space travel at the end.

That China Mieville guy looks interesting. His thing with monsters is pretty intriguing. I think I'll take a look at that new book...

Clare said...

I kinda sorta started reading a Mieville book once. I don't remember why I never finished it. Or really started it for that matter since I can barely remember it. I do remember the title. Perdido Street Station.