I still have one week before I hear from one publisher about my sfr novella Tethered (or so their new submission process promises). I'm still tweaking my scifi short Flaming Angel for an in-house anthology call and working on a cyberpunk short for another anthology call - I posted last week about the Sword and Laser anthology, and Liana mentioned it on the SFR Brigade blog here if you're interested. This week I've mostly concentrated on trying to clear my monstrous TBR pile and write some reviews, as well as do some research for another book.
Bookshelf
Well, I've read a lot the last week or so. First up was Neal Asher's Zero Point, book two of his Owner trilogy (hard scifi, review to come on the Fantasy Book Review website). Then Misa Buckley's sfr novella Tin Cat (review here), Jessica E Subject's 1NS short Unknown Futures (review due up on here on Friday), and I'm currently reading a steampunk novel called Revenge of the Mad Scientist by Lara Nance. I've also read Writing Sex when you don't feel Sexy by Em Petrova.
DVDs
I've added this because I've been loaned Firefly to watch (yes, I've never seen it) and Space Above and Beyond. So far I'm up to Jaynestown on Firefly - who knew Jayne had any kind of conscience?! I've seen the film Serenity so I'm assuming River and Simon's story would have had more prominence later on if it hadn't been cut, but so far I'm not warming much to Captain Mal. Am I going to get blasted for that? I'm enjoying it and I feel a sense of sadness that yet another scifi series got cut so soon. Why does this keep happening? Here in the UK, Doctor Who is now up to its 50th anniversary (although it was cut from our screens for a couple of decades), but new scifi (or speculative fiction in general) rarely makes it past the first series. Fades got cut after one. Merlin has now ended, and the UK version of Being Human (the ORIGINAL version I hasten to add) is now ending too. Primeval has been cut after shifting ownership a couple of times and finally moving to Canada for its last series. Why? Are the scifi fans hopelessly outnumbered by the rest of the television watching hoards? I don't get it...
Happenings
Jessica E Subject is my guest for Cover Love tomorrow - come and check out her choices of sfr covers and see if you agree with any of them. I'm still looking for more guests. Currently I have the 11th April still open, then slots from May onwards. There'll be no Cover Love post on the 21st March due to a blog hop.
Next week I'm taking part in the Rites of Spring Blog Hop, celebrating firsts. There's still time to sign up here if you'd like to. 75 authors are currently taking part and offering prizes, and the grand prize is a Kindle Fire!
Mal is the quintessential "outlaw with a heart of gold" Western character. I'm not surprised you're having trouble warming up to him.
ReplyDeleteThe Western genre tropes are so well embedded within Firefly it's hard to pick individual ones out. But I see how certain tropes could give pause to people who've never watched Westerns. It's totally enjoyable if you've never seen a Western show or movie, but the enjoyment goes through the roof when you have. It's so much fun finding all the nods to Western tropes.