#roy christopher

[tachyonpub]

Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA honored with Theaker's Quarterly Award

The Theaker's Quarterly Awards 2018 were recently announced with Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA garnering the prize on the books category.

As announced in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #62, these are the winners of the Theaker's Quarterly Awards 2018. Voting was open to the public from February 11 to 25, and people could vote for as many items as they wanted in each category. Items were eligible if they had appeared in or were reviewed in the previous four issues of the magazine. Here are the results!

Books

1st PIRATE UTOPIA, by Bruce Sterling (Tachyon Publications)

2nd I Am Providence, by Nick Mamatas (Night Shade Books)

3rd Metronome, by Oliver Langmead (Unsung Stories)

Roy Christopher’s annual summer book reading list compiled from diverse hands includes Peter Lunenfeld’s recommendation.

Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA (Tachyon, 2016) also interrogates culture’s tortured relationship with power, but from a deiselpunk perspective, creating an alternative past in which the Futurists take over the Regency of Carnaro to wreck havoc on their enemies. It was a nominee for the 2016 Sidewise Award, Best Short-Form Alternate History. In my alternate history, it won.

At LANGUAGE LOG, Mark Liberman’s discussion about Melania Trump's jacket choices includes this unexpected update.

Update — I should add that a semi-true history of Fiume/Carnaro/Rijeka in the period after WWI can be found Bruce Sterling's novel PIRATE UTOPIA.

For more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and illustration by John Coulthart

[deathbyscreens]

I stopped my son from playing videogames, and he began to develop all kinds of creative skills. It’s human to seek out the quickest reward, but if you get the reward immediately, you don’t go anywhere else. You learn that the delayed reward is more rewarding.

Michel Gondry, via Roy Christopher

[triciawang]

It’s time once again for the annual Summer Reading List. This is my tenth year of compiling reading recommendations from fellow scholars, musicians, artists, and other bookish friends. This year that includes regulars like Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Dave Allen, Paul Saffo, Zizi Papacharissi, Steven Shaviro, Ashley Crawford, McKenzie Wark, Alex Burns, Peter Lunenfeld, Brian Tunney, and myself, as well as newcomers Nick Harkaway, Lance Strate, Mark Amerika, Tricia Wang, Dominic Pettman, Jussi Parikka, Eduardo Navas, David Preston, and Barry Brummett. There’s a wide-ranging, far-reaching pile of books below to be sure. My own list has doubled since I read through all of these.