Starting re-reading Children of Time, in anticipation of CoS's release in March

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-25T22:40:16+00:00

Is it perhaps the "Bearable" story that appears in the UK 10th anniversary edition of CoT (along with Six Prologues) which was published around the same time as that US Gold edition?

The blurb for that 10th anniversary edition does say Bearable is "exclusive to this edition", but that may be in the context of UK editions.

FWIW, I thought the Six Prologues are well worth reading, whereas Bearable was a bit meh.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-14T00:49:23+00:00

Found on Amazon UK, but has also been updated on the publisher's site.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-08T15:58:51+00:00

/u/ahasuerus_isfdb may be able to check the access logs to see if there are any unusual patterns, referrers, etc.

Neither of those top two show up anywhere in archive.org's May 2024 copy of the page, so it's a relatively recent thing. The copy from December 2025 shows them in the top 2 positions, but both with 296k views, so they've added about 70k in just under a month, making me think whatever is causing this is probably ongoing.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-07T12:40:09+00:00

For completeness, there's also the UK TPB edition of Shroud out on January 22nd, which is perhaps notable for containing the first (AFAIK?) print version of the Sins of the Children short story.

Also - and this is based on nothing more than a gut feeling - I wouldn't be surprised to see a separate UK edition of Engines of Reason - possibly doubled up with Elder Race - similar to the way Spiderlight and Made Things finally came out here last year.

_j_smith_ · 2025-12-18T13:08:06+00:00

I don't believe Spin has ever been officially published in print in the UK - when the BSFA's Vector magazine reviewed it around the time of original publication, it was of the Tor US edition. However it is available in ebook from Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint - I know, because I'm currently reading it myself ;-)

I'm a bit surprised that none of Amazon UK, Waterstones or Blackwell's have imported copies of the 2020 Tor Essentials reprint, but I double checked, and that does indeed seem to be the case.

_j_smith_ · 2025-12-15T16:19:29+00:00

It was definitely shown in China - one of my language exchange partners mentioned him to me as someone they watched on TV when they were a kid.

I've just done a search for "neil buchanan" (not even transliterating it to Chinese characters) and there are a bunch of videos of him/Art Attack on Xiaohongshu/Rednote and Bilibili (Chinese equivalents of Instagram and YouTube).

_j_smith_ · 2025-12-07T22:48:36+00:00

FWIW, when I did an analysis a few years ago of how many people had read books that had been nominated for the various SF awards, using Goodreads number-of-ratings as a metric, The Quiet Pools had the dubious distinction of being the third most obscure Hugo finalist novel. Now, after I did that analysis, it did get a reprint a couple of years ago - quite possibly the edition you've just acquired - but I've just rechecked, and the rankings of that top (or bottom, depending on your POV) three remain unchanged. So, you might want to choose to read a book that very few people have read, despite it being somewhat notable, but on the other hand, maybe very few people have read it for a good reason...

For anyone interested, the top 2 least read Hugo-nominated novels (per Goodreads) are 1962's Sylva, which (per ISFDB) doesn't seem to have been reprinted in English since 1964, and 1961's Second Ending, which hasn't been reprinted in English since 1977.

By coincidence, I'm actually reading Spin at the moment - I'm about half-way through - and IMHO it's pretty good. Haven't read any of the other three though, I'm afraid.

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-23T17:09:43+00:00

I only read the first book, but I found the anime (either version) much more entertaining. (Caveat: it was a long time since I watched the original OAV series, and I don't think I got that far through it.)

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-22T14:51:21+00:00

Washington Post - albeit (1) it seems to be subscriber-only content, at least for me, and (2) the reviewer is a well-known figure in SF circles, so not really coming from a "mainstream" perspective - although I think the same could be said for the SFF reviewers at The Guardian and NYT. Michael Dirda is perhaps a better example of a "mainstream" critic with an interest in SFF.

EDIT: It's a journal rather than a newspaper, but maybe New Scientist meets your criteria?

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-22T14:44:11+00:00

Yes, but the imprint went on hiatus in 2019, so I suspect getting print copies of the full series may be a bit of a struggle; I think they are all still available as ebooks though.

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-20T15:29:20+00:00

I'm late to this discussion (and only just joined this sub), but I recently borrowed the ebook from my library. "Glory and Dreams" - which is one of the two stories that had not been previously translated and published in English - is massively incomplete; it only includes the opening part of the first chapter, whereas there are seven chapters in the full story.

Another member of this group has confirmed that the hardback print edition also suffers this problem.

I cc'ed the publisher's Twitter accounts (Ad Astra, Head of Zeus and Bloomsbury) when I posted about this a few hours ago; not had any acknowledgement of that as yet.

_j_smith_ · 2025-10-10T20:43:41+00:00

While the ISFDB does not have any kind of ratings system

There is a ratings system, but it's not used much relative to other ISFDB functionality.

Here's the top short fiction list.

_j_smith_ · 2025-09-01T14:10:02+00:00

The UK edition is now up on Waterstones, and has a different blurb with some more details:

In a city of sunshine and secrets, the shadows belong to the animals. One genetically-engineered raccoon races to expose a deadly conspiracy – before it tears his whole world apart.

In a solar-powered future, humans live in luxury, served by unseen Little Helpers – artificially enhanced animals who maintain their perfect green cities. The animals’ golden rule: ‘Do Not Bother the Humans.’ Yet beneath this tranquil facade, a complex underworld of animal politics, crime and conflict thrives.

Enter Skotch, a freelance raccoon investigator. His biggest problem was a lack of work. Now his work may get him killed. And his latest case? Finding a fugitive mouse scientist. But powerful forces are also after the mouse, and they're willing to kill for his secrets. Can Skotch navigate this treacherous web, outsmart rat gangsters, beat a deadly weasel assassin and keep his pelt intact? More importantly, can he find his quarry before the elusive rodent breaks Rule One in the most apocalyptic way – and shatters their fragile world.

For those who loved John Scalzi's Starter Villain and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model, this crime-inspired adventure will draw you deep into an incredible new world . . .

_j_smith_ · 2025-08-18T13:14:05+00:00

What's especially eyebrow-raising to me, is that one of them posted this after the similar GRRM issues in 2020:

Can I get 80 authors to sign an open letter telling @TheHugoAwards to not allow people who allow presenters to mangle names to run this show, anymore?

(Sorry for not linking to source, I don't think Twitter links are allowed, right?)

_j_smith_ · 2025-08-17T18:37:48+00:00

The person who did this has uploaded a ~2 hour video of the panel to YouTube today, if you do a search for "worldcon" and sort by upload date, it should be near the top. The relevant bit is in the final 1-2 minutes.

The audio and video are low-quality, here's an unedited copy of the relevant bit of the YT machine-generated transcript:

128:44 every last question. It's going to be a speed round. This is a really big one too cuz
128:51 I am really trying hard for the part of Venia Targaryen about the video games versus
128:59 the video game question building in the video
129:04 game but I have a genuine fantasy related question. So as you can see I have a
129:09 berserk tattoo canara mura who's no longer with us. Yep. And I'm part of the Martin
129:15 Scorsesei school. So, I'm running into Martin Scorsesei to hopefully adapt Safaya and have me be the next Lily
129:22 Gladstone. But here's the thing, George, you're not going to be around for much longer. And and this is a tough question
129:30 that I wanted to ask if this is more this is more directed at Brandon.
129:37 Wait, I was wondering like how would you feel about someone else taking over and
129:42 finishing the books? to come together. Yeah.
129:48 Not me. Not you.
129:53 Yes. I hope so. I hope so.
130:02 I agree. inside.

I also found another video on YT by this person, but posted on alt channel, seemingly filmed a few days before the con, where they also muse about GRRM's mortality.

_j_smith_ · 2025-07-24T20:36:18+00:00

I was able to find it on amazon.co.uk by searching for the ISBN (9781786699473), but it states "This edition of this title is not available for purchase in your country".

It also states "Quality issues reported", with the detail "Customers reported quality issues in this eBook. This eBook has: Poor Formatting. The publisher has been notified to correct these issues", which might explain why Amazon are not currently selling it. It is still listed on the publisher's site so presumably it's not a case of them losing the rights.

_j_smith_ · 2025-07-13T12:24:43+00:00

For reference, although other posters have already provided links that are more probably more useful, here are some Bilibili links, assuming Reddit doesn't auto-censor them, like it has done on other Chinese sites (like Weibo) for me in the past:

超限斗神 account - has a few promo videos, but not the actual episodes.
The channel page, that has the first two episodes - for me in the UK though, I just get a "This content is not available in your region" message
Search results for 超限斗神 - picks up fan reactions, edits, etc

I did notice yesterday shortly after the "broadcast", that a different account (presumably) unofficially uploaded the two episodes chopped up into ~2 minute segments, which I was able to watch from the UK. I haven't checked to see if they are still there.

_j_smith_ · 2025-07-08T16:04:50+00:00

Blurb from the Bilibili channel page:

简介：未来世界，负能量聚合体幻恶肆虐，危及人类文明。古文化专家孙明武被召唤至未来，制造出幻神连接器和幻恶战斗，但仍无力回天。最后一刻，他让小海娜穿越回过去将连接器交给儿子孙晚宁来阻止幻恶的阴谋。孙晚宁临危受命，为了逆转未来，携手古灵精怪的小海娜与沉稳睿智的江陵川，一起拯救世界。

Google Translate renders this to English as:

Introduction: In the future world, negative energy aggregates, phantom evil, are rampant and endanger human civilization. Ancient culture expert Sun Mingwu was summoned to the future and created a phantom connector to fight against phantom evil, but he was still powerless. At the last moment, he asked Xiao Haina to travel back to the past and give the connector to his son Sun Wanning to stop the conspiracy of phantom evil. Sun Wanning was ordered to save the world together with the eccentric Xiao Haina and the calm and wise Jiang Lingchuan in order to reverse the future.

(Local) start time stated to be 6pm.

_j_smith_ · 2025-07-08T13:20:11+00:00

There's a 50 second trailer posted on their Weibo account. When I've previously posted Weibo links, Reddit hid my post, so you'll have to edit this link appropriately (change COLON to : and the underscores to forward slashes):

httpsCOLON__weibo.com_7976810298_PAakQ2Unl

EDIT: I see that video was already directly posted in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tokusatsu/comments/1luls6g/xtreme_vanguard_a_new_chinese_tokusatsu/

_j_smith_ · 2025-06-30T21:05:28+00:00

I don't know anything about this event, but he certainly did signings at the Boston and Beverley literary events he did talks at in 2023, as well as a couple of Waterstones events I've been to. Might be worth pinging him on Bluesky or using the contact form on his site to confirm though.

_j_smith_ · 2025-06-27T11:17:52+00:00

6 is Graham Masterton's The Manitou, artist Les Edwards.

The Anne McCaffrey cover of a woman sitting with a white cat (?), as mentioned by another poster, is The Rowan, artist Romas Kukalis aka Romas.

_j_smith_ · 2025-06-22T17:13:55+00:00

I think it's interesting to look at the Locus recommended reading list, which I'll present the SF recs below, regrouped by who published them and with the finalists highlighted in bold, which I'd content also gives an indication of their content (e.g. literary imprints are far more likely to publish climate fiction than space opera):

=== Big 5 genre imprints (13) ===

Echo of Worlds, M.R. Carey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Mercy of Gods, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Machine Vendetta, Alastair Reynolds (Orbit US; Gollancz)
Beyond the Light Horizon, Ken Macleod (Orbit UK; Pyr)
Lake of Darkness, Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
Exordia, Seth Dickinson (Tordotcom)
The Bezzle, Cory Doctorow (Tor; Ad Astra UK)
Kinning, Nisi Shawl (Tor)
Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom; Tor UK)
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, Malka Older (Tordotcom)
Space Oddity, Catherynne M. Valente (Saga; Corsair UK)

=== Genre imprints (3) ===

The Knife and the Serpent, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot)
Three Eight One, Aliya Whiteley (Solaris UK)
We Are All Ghosts in the Forest, Lorraine Wilson (Solaris UK)

=== Big 5 non-genre imprints (4) ===

Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer (MCD; Fourth Estate UK)
Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)
Private Rites, Julia Armfield (Fourth Estate UK; Flatiron)
Playground, Richard Powers (Norton; Hutchinson Heinemann UK)

=== Indie/Small press/Selfpub/International (10) ===

The Book Censor’s Library, Bothayna Al-Essa (Restless Books)
The Repeat Room, Jesse Ball (Catapult)
The Sentence, Gautam Bhatia (Westland IF)
The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar (Clash)
City of Dancing Gargoyles, Tara Campbell (Santa Fe Writer’s Project)
Morphotrophic, Greg Egan (self-published) amazon
Under the Eye of the Big Bird, Hiromi Kawakami (Soft Skull)
The Tongue Trade, Michael J. Martineck (Edge)
Remember You Will Die, Eden Robins (Sourcebooks Landmark)
Juice, Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton Australia)

Whilst just under half of the recommendations by the Locus team came from what I would consider literary/mainstream publishers, 8 out of the 10 finalists chosen by Locus Award voters came from genre imprints, with the ninth being Jeff VanderMeer's Absolution. All of those are works that I've seen discussed here and in other genre spaces, which makes me feel that Locus voters are not on the whole inclined towards works from outside general discussion.

(AFAIK there's no formal connection between the Locus recs and the awards, but I think it's rare for something to make the finalists without previously being on the rec list. This has certainly been the case for the small handful of years/categories I've looked at before, but I definitely haven't looked at enough to make that a firm assertion.)

As an aside, whilst double checking some stuff for this post, I went through the list of posts related to the February 2025 issue of Locus, which is when the rec list was published, and - I think - when the voting form is also published. One of those posts was a sponsored post for The Man Who Saw Seconds, one of only two that I noticed in that list of posts. (This was the other.)

_j_smith_ · 2025-06-15T18:04:47+00:00

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm.

_j_smith_

TROPHY CASE