Review of Clarkesworld #28 and Other Items

My second review of the year has been posted. Here's the link:

• Clarkesworld #28, January 2009, over at The Fix.

A few more items:

I was recently wondering what an editor's function might be when it comes to editing a reprint novel, since the line-editing has presumably already been done by some previous editor, so I asked one of the field's top, Lou Anders. His response led to a conversation of sorts, available for perusal here.

RT recently posted a list of the best SF films aimed for thoughtful audiences; again, Lou's post on this inspired a response by me that led to a little exchange.

Victoria Hoyle has written an interesting review of an un-missable collection, The Best of Lucius Shepard, over at Strange Horizons. Once again, Shepard's story "Only Partly Here" gets a pretty bad wrap ("disappointing clichés"). Paul Kincaid, for instance, wrote that "Shepard has done much more interesting work," and others have expressed similar sentiments. Despite all this, I continue to think it's an excellent piece, and I'm glad it was included in 2007's Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine 30th Anniversary Anthology. I find Hoyle's review to be a particularly good example of "reader-response criticism," tracing as it does her journey from initial dismissal to a reconsideration of the material, and her eventual (mixed) assessment of it.