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Hi all, I know it's not the latest edition of Analog - and I still have plenty of earlier editions to read - but I learn a lot from reading older editions of what is probably the world's best science-fiction magazine. This time around, the magazine had one novella, one novelette, two short stories and part four of a serialised novel. The magazine began with the novella The King Who Wasn't by Lloyd Biggle Jr. It was a story about a political researcher who is sent to a planet to explore what seems to be a perfect political structure due to its absence of wars and political unrest. Inadvertently the researcher gets caught up in the politics and finds himself the chief advisor to a newly elected King. I enjoyed the story and its comments on what happens with a compliant and ignorant population. The story was more fantasy than science fiction as it could still have been told if the science elements, space ships and communication devices, had been removed. The novella was follo...

Hi all, We're well and truly into the new year, Christmas seems so long ago. It's Australia//Invasion day and I am watching the cricket. I've read that Mathew Reilly watches the cricket while he writes his very successful techno-thrillers. I am sort of glad Mick Dobson won the Aussie of the Year, as I am sick of sports people and self-serving celebrities winning it. Global warming guru Tim Flannery was a worthy winner two years ago. Interesting that Mick Dobson opposes the current government's Aboriginal intervention. For the third week in a row I did not meet my writing target of 5,000 words a week. I only wrote 3,800 words, but at least it was more than the previous week. I should have written 17,000 words so far this year, but I have only written 11,600. The deficit grows. I had hoped to be boasting that I had finished the first draft of the novel I am working on by now, but my dawdling writing pace and developing plot elements have combined to put tha...

Hi all, My weekly critters email had a link to a survey on online critiquing. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=aKiQQ2gam6kAeSOypOK8lg_3d_3d I completed the simple survey, which I don't think will be that informative for the masters student conducting it, unless a lot of people, like me, write lengthy comments in the comments box at the end. The survey listened 10 online critiquing groups - I know there are hundreds more than that - including one which I am already a member of: critters.org The names of two others got my attention: Online Writing Workshop for SF and F Other Worlds Writers Workshop. I went and had a look at both. The Online Writing Workshop costs money, $45 (US?) a year and I have an aversion to paying for critiques. It said that if you were really lucky one of their professional editors might choose your story to critique. The Other Worlds Writer's Workshop guidelines spoke to me, so I went and joined up, through Yahoo, which I try to...

Hi all, Last week was a lousy week for writing, so for the second week in a row I didn't achieve my goal of writing 5000 words a week. I got off to a very motivated start, but then on Wednesday our airconditioning malfunctioned on a day that was 43 degrees in Wangaratta . I only risked turning the computer on for a few minutes to quickly check my emails and write enough words to be able to say that I had continued lasts year's goal of writing every day. My DVD recorder started doing strange things and I spent a bit of time during the rest of the week experimenting with it. It has one of those pain in the arse intermittent problems, which means that now that I have sent it off to be repaired, it will probably work fine for them and only start acting up once again after they have sent it back to me. People not pulling their weight with things like watering and weeding the garden also took away time I could have spent writing. At the moment I should have written about 12,000 wo...

Hi all, I finished Australian author Greg Egan's science fiction novel Teranesia a couple of weeks ago and have finally gotten around to this review. Egan is probably Australia's most critically- acclaimed , living , science fiction author - more so overseas than it would seem in Australia. According to the list on the front of the book, Teranesia is his sixth novel. I have also read his first novel Quarantine . Teranesia is set mostly on islands near Indonesia in the near future. It has three main threads to resolve beginning with the bizarre mutations occurring to the local flora and fauna on the island. Then there is the self-loathing the main character Prabir Suresh experiences after his parents are killed: he believes he caused it. The third thread concerns his over protective attitude towards his sister Madhusree . I actually found myself more concerned about the relationship aspects of the story then the science fiction aspects until the las...

Hi all, I have proved that my new year's resolution of 5,000 words a week is going to be a challenge as I only got to 3880 words, give or take a few hundred, last week. I had a bad start on Monday, really got going on Tuesday, but petered out at the end of the week. I will make the target this week. Being one of those males who is into numbers and statistics, I have records of my word count per day for the past few years. I had a suspicion that Tuesday was my best writing day, my records confirmed this. There is a substantial drop in word count on Wednesday and Thursday, and a further drop to Monday and Saturday. Friday and Sunday are my worst days. I am very happy with the progress of the novel. I am well into the second last chapter and it is coming together well. When walking home from work this morning I was writing the final chapter and a half in my mind and I had to rush inside to scribble down a few pages of notes. I should be finished sometime next we...

Hi all, Last weekend The Age had an article showing the Bookscan figures for the biggest selling books in Australia for 2008. I had been glancing at the bestseller lists every Saturday in The Age so it came as no surprise that Stephenie Meyer's young adult vampire/romance series dominated the top ten sellers taking out second, third and fourth spots. Each sold just over 200,000 copies. Another young adult novel Brisingr (141,000 copies), by Christopher Paolini , was number ten and JK Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard (201,000) came in at number five. So it looks like writing speculative fiction for young adults is the way to go. As usual, Bryce Courtenay topped the adult fiction list with his latest selling 127,000 copies, just beating Tim Winton's Breath that sold 126,000 copies. Mathew Reilly wasn't in the list for a change. I had a look at the blog, Pub Rants by a literary agent Kirstin from the Nelson Literary Agency in the US. In a post at the e...

Hi all, The new year has begun and, like most writers, I have been thinking about my writing goals for this year. I obviously want to finish the last three chapters of the first draft of the novel I am currently writing. I then want to tidy it up so I can put it out into the critiquing world. While it is being critiqued, and to sit on it for a while, I want to rewrite a novel I wrote the first draft of before I did a few writing courses. Finally, I want to redraft the novel that I have had critiqued. To achieve all this I am going to have to increase the amount of writing I do. Last year I had the goal of writing every day, which I did, but I think that became a self satisfying goal, rather than the quantity/quality of writing itself. So this year I have decided that I don't have to write every day, just complete a weekly word tally. Originally I was thinking of 7000 words a week, but with a target like that I would probably try and write 1000 words every day...

Hi all, Well it was a lousy year for film, especially in Australia. I didn't read many novels and commercial television in Australia kept on refusing to run or cut short some of the better science-fiction series going around. At least I have the sci- fi channel on cable - the limited Australian version anyway. Having said that I am still going to list the best of what I read and viewed this year. Novels - Cormac McCarthy's The Road was easily the best novel. It was filled with tension from start to finish and I really cared about the characters, even though I knew their situation - wandering around during a nuclear winter - was hopeless. The best science fiction novel I read this year was Matt Browne's The Future Happens Twice , a hard science fiction adventure with plenty of suspense to keep me reading. For a first time author this is a great novel and I am looking forward to the sequel. Non-fiction book - The World Without Us by Alan Wiesman . When I finally get aroun...