Vernor Vinge excerpt and 'If You Lived Here'...

So... As I was writing a review yesterday afternoon, Word decided that it was a little peckish and wanted to eat the document I'd spent all that time working on... To say I was mightily hacked off would be an understatement; I'm sure Word and I will get on fine again (after all, you can't blame it for being hungry) but we're not really talking much right now :o(

Where does that leave the blog then? Things are the same as ever really, it's just that today's review is now tomorrow's review instead. Luckily for today, a couple of emails turned up in my inbox that I reckon you might find interesting...

Tor.com is a great place to visit if you want to read loads of excerpts and get a feel for a book before forking out cash for it. If you're a fan of Vernor Vinge then the latest excerpt could be just the thing for you, it's a piece from Vinge's 'The Children of the Sky', direct sequel to 'A Fire on the Deep'. Here's the link for the excerpt,

http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/06/children-of-the-sky-excerpt

Here's the blurb as well,



Ten years have passed on Tines World, where Ravna Bergnsdot and a number of human children ended up after a disaster that nearly obliterated humankind throughout the galaxy. Ravna and the pack animals for which the planet is named have survived a war, and Ravna has saved more than one hundred children who were in cold-sleep aboard the vessel that brought them.

While there is peace among the Tines, there are those among them—and among the humans—who seek power…and no matter the cost, these malcontents are determined to overturn the fledgling civilization that has taken root since the humans landed.

The next email came from Underland Press and is about a project that I think will be very cool indeed when it comes off. Even betterand we all get to make it happen :o) Read on...

The project, authored and edited by Jeff VanderMeer, is called If You Lived Here: The Top 30 All Time Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Worlds. It's a compendium, of sorts, but also a travel guide to places like Dune, Ring World, Middle Earth, Lankhmar . . . and beyond . . . We've all lived in these places--in imagination if not in fact--and we're all united by our common experiences of them. We wanted to collect the worlds together in one place as both a walk down memory lane and a place to start new dreams.


We're reaching out to readers, writers, and booksellers to ask for nominations of worlds to include. We've set up a web form at http://www.ifyoulivedherebook.com/, which takes the nominations and asks respondents to describe what they love about the world. (If things go according to plan, we'll include some of the responses in the book itself.) We're looking for as much community involvement as possible in this project, and we'd love it if you could help.

I'm going to be hitting that link, when I get a spare moment, and I'd encourage you all to give it a click as well.
 
Right, back to it. I've got a little something lined up for this afternoon (not the review, I'm trying to rescue its remains from the jaws of Word...) so I'll see you then ;o)