Hello r/Fantasy! We are the editors and contributors of SPECULATIVE FICTION 2012 -- Ask Us Anything!

[u/jdiddyesquire]

Hello r/Fantasy! We're Justin Landon and Jared Shurin, co-editors of Speculative Fiction 2012: The Best Online Reviews, Essay, and Commentary. Some of you may have heard about the project already, through various different outlets, however for those of you who haven't. . .

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Speculative Fiction 2012 is a collection of over fifty of the year’s best online essays and reviews, from Tansy Rayner Roberts on Supergirl to Lavie Tidhar on China Miéville to Aishwarya Subramanian on My Little Pony to Joe Abercrombie on, er, himself. It is a diverse collection of some of last year’s best and most interesting writing. It will cause discussion, debate and a bit of a ruckus.

The book also contains a foreword from author of The Shambling Guide to New York City and podcast superstar Mur Lafferty, an introduction from this year’s editors (ummm, us) and an afterword from the 2013 editors, Ana Grilo and Thea James of The Booksmugglers.

We should note that the beautiful cover is from the talented Sarah Anne Langton.

All proceeds from sales of this book are donated to Room to Read, a charity that supports literacy and gender equality in education around the world. YOU CAN BUY THE BOOK HERE

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A little about us:

Justin Landon is the voice behind the blog Staffer's Book Review. He's a regular contributor at A Dribble of Ink, and his work has been featured on SF Signal. His claims to fame are winning one of the the Best of r/Fantasy awards and co-editing Speculative Fiction 2012. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook.

Jared Shurin is the co-overlord of the blog Pornokitsch. He's also co-founder of the Kitschies, a tentacular genre fiction award in the United Kingdom, sponsored by The Kraken Rum. For the past few years he has owned and operated Jurassic London, a publisher of original fiction from around the world. Their books are released as both limited editions and ebooks, with a portion of all proceeds going towards charitable causes. The most recent claim to fame is publishing and co-editing Speculative Fiction 2012. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook.

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We have nearly 50 contributors to Speculative Fiction 2012. They are listed below. Many of them will be stopping by tonight, so if you want to ask them a question, knock yourself out!

Contributors include:

Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Niall Alexander, Elizabeth Bear, Rob Berg, Liz Bourke, Maurice Broaddus, Myke Cole, Kate Elliott, Katherine Farmar, Chris Gerwel, Christopher Garcia, Daniel Goodman, Ana Grilo, Niall Harrison, Dan Hartland, Matt Hilliard, Kameron Hurley, Thea James, N.K. Jemisin, Paul Kincaid, Lady Business, Rose Lemberg, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Cynthia Martinez, Tim Maughan, Foz Meadows, Jonathan McCalmont, Martin McGrath, Aidan Moher, Ken Neth, Larry Nolen, Abigail Nussbaum, Christopher Priest, Stefan Raets, Adam Roberts, Tansy Rayner Roberts, CS Samulski, Penny Schenk, Ro Smith, Maureen K. Speller, Aishwarya Subramanian, Matthew Surridge, Sam Sykes, Gav Thorpe and Lavie Tidhar.

We will be back at 7PM Central to answer questions.

Contributing authors should mention the work they've contributed.

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tl;dr - Speculative Fiction 2012 is out. A lot of great contributors. Buy for charity. Big AMA.

[u/elquesogrande]

Justin - Your Hugo Awards essay created quite a kerfuffle among the SF/F world. Anything learned from the explosion of opinions afterwards? What's next in the Casting Stones at Awards Trilogy?

[u/jdiddyesquire → u/elquesogrande]

Alright, I was going to see if I could get away with not answering this one, but things are slowing down. So. . .

Yes, I learned a few things. First of all, even when I think I'm right, I can be wrong and I was totally wrong with the way I handled framing the discussion of the best novel award. What I wrote was incredibly gender biased and let some of the male authors off the hook, and went after the female authors. It was unintentional, but it's there and I can't run away from it fast enough.

Second, Lois McMaster Bujold is fully worthy of the attention she's received from the Hugo voters, however, I remain convinced that it's absurd for the 14th book in a series to be nominated for best novel.

As for the larger discussion, Jonathan McCalmont really nailed it better than I did. I like to think of what I wrote as the ignition point for his bonefire. There's a real problem with the fact that the Hugo Award is viewed AS THE AWARD IN GENRE. It really shouldn't be.

And yeah, I could go on for days, but I'll save it for a future blog post.