YA goes dark, Salman Rushdie goes TV, Haruki Murakami goes anti-nuclear, some thoughts on urban fantasy and a headline from a parallel universe

The long Pentecost/Whitsun weekend, though I still have one more day of school holidays. I also have links for you:

Yesterday, an airship, more precisely the Goodyear blimp, caught fire and crashed in Hessen. This would seem like a news headline that has made its way here from a parallel universe, if not for the sad fact that the Australian pilot died. His passengers, three journalists, managed to escape.

Agent Rachelle Gardner responds to the darkness in YA fiction debate sparked by that Wall Street Journal article last week. What makes this measured response particularly notable is that Ms. Gardner is an agent specializing in Christian literature.

Sherwood Smith has a great post about gender, reading and representation at the Book View Café.

I have the theory that urban fantasy as a subgenre is more open not just to women, both as protagonists and writers, but also to other traditionally marginalized groups such as people of colour, GLBT people, the poor, etc… We got into an interesting discussion of that point over at the Book View Café. So rather than repeat my points here, why don’t you just head over there?

Salman Rushdie is writing a TV series and explains why TV drama series are in the process of replacing novels in the Guardian.

I don’t believe that TV drama will replace novels anytime soon – they are different media with different storytelling modes. It’s also a bit sad that the shows Rushdie cites as inspiration don’t go beyond the usual suspects. Even if you genuinely like The Wire, West Wing, Mad Men and The Sopranos (as opposed to pretending to like them, because these shows are supposed to be the apex of contemporary television), they aren’t the only good TV shows out there, just the best known and most acceptable for an intellectual person to like. Nonetheless, I will be curious to see what Salman Rushdie comes up with for his “sort of, but not exactly science fiction” show.

Also at the Guardian, Haruki Murakami speaks out against Japan’s continued reliance on nuclear power.