By now, you’ve probably all heard about Orson Scott Card’s stunningly homophobic Hamlet retelling. In case you didn’t, here is the review at Rain Taxi that kicked off the controversy.
Because arguing with or yelling at Orson Scott Card doesn’t achieve anything (this is just the latest in a long string of incidents involving Orson Scott Card and homophobia), people have been recommending GLBT books certain to drive Mr Card up the nearest wall on Twitter under the hashtag #buyabiggaynovelforscottcardday. Alison Flood also sums up the controversy at the Guardian.
Now megwrites has compiled an alphabetic list of all the recommendations. Plenty of books worth checking out.
Rain Taxi is also well worth checking out. In addition to the damning review of Hamlet’s Father, the latest issue also includes this great article on the pulp hero Operator 5.
Elsewhere on the net, Green Knight responds to Aliette de Bodard’s post about the dominance of US storytelling tropes. It seems that post struck a nerve with a lot of people.
At The Millions, Kim Wright wonders why so many literary writers are moving into genre fiction these days. For a genre versus literary article, this one manages to be largely free of condescension. The comments are interesting as well with contributions from several well-known SFF folks.
Finally, I have a post on the author blogging over at Pegasus Pulp inspired by the current wave of advice that authors should only blog about subjects of interest to a narrowly defined focus group and that they should absolutely not blog about writing ever (let alone about German politics or Romanhefte or the deaths of obscure celebrities), because blogging about writing doesn’t sell books. I obviously don’t much care for that advice, but if you want to read more, you have to go to the Pegasus Pulp site.
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