Bransford, an agent with Curtis Brown, posted a poll allowing people to identify their works in progress according to a variety of different genres, but the comment thread turned into a massive debate about how to fit one's work into any of the boxes. There are the cries of people whose novels don't fit into a neat tidy genre:

You totally forgot the, "Help help mine is cross-genre, URGH, what do I call it?" category. "Other" just doesn't quite convey that. ;)

As well as the questions from people who aren't sure whether to call their novels "mainstream" or "literary." (To which Bransford suggests "literary," since that's not a value judgment, just another genre, and he doesn't believe that "mainstream" fiction exists as a category.)

There are the people who are writing superhero novels, and reluctantly classifying those as science fiction. One person is writing a steampunk novel and isn't sure if that's historical fiction or SF. There are the people whose YA novels have science fictional elements — like the person I quote in the headline, above. At least one person wants to abolish genres altogether, to which Bransford asks how the bookstore would know where to shelve things.

But don't worry too much about trying to classify your own work, Bransford says: "You don't even HAVE to tell the agent what you think it is. If you wrote the query well the agent will already know."

And then there's this guy:

I think my novel holds together as one solid entity but when I analyze it in terms of genre?

Total schizophrenia.

My main interest is in character and prose style, so maybe it's literary.

But it's based on my life experiences, so there's a strong element of confessional memoir to it.

It does feature adventures in which an alternate fantasy world is saved, so it's obviously quest fantasy.

But the fantastic elements are rationalized in a speculative fashion, so it might be science fiction.

It deals intimately with the nitty-gritty details of life at the bottom of the blue-collar ladder, so it's social realism.

Much of the material is disturbing on levels ranging from the spiritual to the physical, so it's horror.

It's intended to be funny and there's rarely a lot of space between jokes, so it's humor.

One of the central themes is redemption through love, so it's romance.

The plotting and a storyline involving a drug deal are clearly noir.

I was once asked to describe the damned thing in five words. What I came up with was, "Autobiographical horror with sick laughs."

As for Bransford himself, what novel is he secretly working on in his off hours? He explains:

It's kind of a cyberpunk PLUS steampunk women's fiction slasher romantic comedy.

[Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent]

"Haikasoru" translates as "High Castle" and is meant as a riff on Philip K. Dick's classic allohistory Man In the High Castle where the Axis won WWII and Japan controls what was the Western United States. Helmed by editor Nick Mamatas, Viz Media's new publishing imprint Haikasoru is attempting a second invasion of Speculative Fiction from the Land of the Rising Sun.

I haven't read many Japanese novels other than those of Kobo Abe and Haruki Murakami. These two very short debut novels from Haikasoru are interesting but not as world-shaking as I would have liked. They both share some common themes: total war against an implacable alien foe, with a healthy dash of time travel. Apart from that, these are two very different stories that may be worthy of your attention.

First up we have All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and translated by Alexander O. Smith. Nearly all the action takes place in two days (sort of) at a multinational military base in Japan. The Earth has been fighting a desperate war for decades, against alien invaders called the Mimics. They'r organic constructs, vaguely resembling giant bloated frogs but structurally akin to echinoderms like sea cucumbers or sea urchins,. They are bent on xenoforming our planet, eating soil and excreting it in a form that Terran plants cannot grow. Diplomacy or even basic communication is impossible, because the Mimics slaughter anything that gets in their way.

"Nuke the site from orbit" is not a viable solution, so the remainder of Earth's armed forces elects to fight them mainly in close combat in powered-armor called Jackets. Even the heaviest ordinance bounces off the Mimics' stony hides, and their incredibly dense bodies can withstand explosion and fire. Jackets have on-board rocket launchers and FAE grenades with servos that magnify speed and strength. All too often, the soldiers end up face to "face," and have to rely on the "pile driver," a 20-shot bolt gun that fires tungsten carbide spikes against organic javelins the mimics expel with the force of artillery shells. SpaceAge warfare boils down to throwing sticks at each other? Yeah, it's a stretch but; POWERED-ARMOR — that's always cool, right?

The novel starts out hip-deep in action as Pvt. Keiji Kiriya faces certain death in his very first battle against the Mimics. Severely wounded and out of ammo he is spared a death blow when a blazing crimson angel rushes to his side and slices the alien in half. It's the legendary Rita Vrataski, US Special Forces, also known as Mad Wargarita or The Full Metal Bitch. Since she has more kills than any other soldier the brass has indulged her eccentricities. She bunks alone, away from the barracks, and her Jacket is a bright metallic red, not camouflage. She has also rejected the standard-issue pile driver for a custom-made 200 kilogram battleaxe. I applaud this logic; as any seasoned zombie slayer will tell you, "a machete never needs reloading." This frightening valkyrie tries to comfort the mortally wounded Kiriya, distracting him with small talk and urging him to hang on, not to die. But he dies anyway.

Then Kiriya awakes in his barracks with the book he was reading before on the same page listening to the way too familiar inane chatter of of his squad mates. It is hours before his very first battle against the Mimics. The alert is sounded, they suit up and charge the enemy. The battle is different than Kiriya remembers, but with the same result— he dies again. And again. And again... "Okaaay", I'm thinking, "This is like Mecha Groundhog Day or something. I hope this isn't some lame Jim Shooter Special. If it all turns out to be a dream or— ugh— a VR training simulation, I will start throwing kittens at old people!" Well fear not, the local feline and senior population remains unmolested.. Kiriya is in fact reliving the same day over and over again. The mechanism behind this loop is quite an original solution. As Kiriya tries to understand this horrible existence, he rediscovers a bit of his heritage. He finds if not comfort, at least some meaning by applying the warrior philosophy of Bushido as he walks into certain deaths; perhaps forever.

Sakurazaka consciously constructed All You Need Is Kill like a great video game. In this he is mostly successful. The reader will feel immersed into Kiriya's dilemma, not just through the all the action but also through his internal struggle to keep from giving up, to puzzle out what the hell is happening. The glimpses of the outer world as an Earth besieged are grim and well imagined, but some of premises are just hanging by a threat. Most of the characters are very colorful but only there to fill certain slots; the Bully, the Gruff Sergeant w/ Heart of Gold, the Shy Techno Geek. Sakurazaka tries for a grim, gung-ho military sensibility but really only achieves an otaku snarkiness. I would like to stop using "like a video game" in a pejorative sense; there is a great deal of creativity and sophistication going into the storytelling of modern games, nearly as much as there is in the graphics. This sincere tribute to a favorite pastime comes off as a smart and exciting but ultimately juvenile novel. Any hard-core gamers who get their calloused thumbs on a copy are certain get a kick out of All You Need Is Kill. But they know there's better Military SF out there to read.

In a side note, the cover illustration was done by Yoshitoshi Abe who did some art for anime such as Serial Experiments Lain and Welcome to the NHK!.

I was far more pleased by Issui Ogawa's The Lords of the Sands of Time (translated by Jim Hubbert). Although it too might still be considered a YA novel, Ogawa's piece is far broader is scope and has a more mature voice. In just 200 pages we get a rich, moving adventure that spans time and space. At the end of the 26th Century, Humanity has been fighting a losing war against a ruthless group of alien self-replicating machines called the ETs. Once standing for "extraterrestrials", ET now has come to mean Evil Things. Unlike Sakurazaka's xenoforming Mimics, these ETs have no agenda other than "Destroy All Humans", something they accomplish with terrible efficiency. Life on Earth, Mars, terraformed Venus and other colonies has been wiped out leaving only a final stronghold on Saturn's moon, Triton. The front line of defense has been entrusted to the Messengers, wholly artificial cyborgs emerging from the vat fully formed with all necessary knowledge. One of these Messenger, Orville (or later, just "O") seeks to understand this Humanity he was born knowing he must serve. Through his intimate relationship with a natural-born human friend he comes to accept that his personal duty is to protect all of humanity. Not just every man, woman, and child that still survives, but every person who was ever born or might have ever existed. Whoa, no pressure there.

Just when it seems the war has taken a turn in our favor, the controlling AIs (yeah, those guys) break the bad news. A bunch of ETs (cribbing notes from the Borg and that loveable loser, Skynet) have expended 37 kathrillion tetrajoules of energy and escaped back into time to wipe out all us bald apes before we even figure out the ability for space flight or changing the channel without getting up. But good news everybody: the Ais have duplicated the technology to follow them back in time and stop them. Oh, but less than good news; nobody from our future, downstream, has come back to help out the 26th Century so it can be assumed that humans are about to be wiped out in Orville's present timeline, not that he would ever be able to return anyway. So it's forward into the past to try and preserve a reality where humans and their AI pals will survive.

This is a blue-hot Temporal War with not just continents or eras as battlefields, but entire timelines. Orville and his fellow Messengers must recruit whole civilizations as cannon fodder, racing to upgrade their technology and stripping whatever resources they can against the tireless onslaught of the ET machines. When things look doomed, the Messengers have to kiss an entire world good-bye and set off for another multiversal beachhead to start the whole process over. Through warped versions of pre-fuedal Japan, the American Civil War, and a Mid-20th Century that Harry Turtledove would be proud of, Orville keeps fighting the good fight. As his sorrow and guilt over what has been lost mounts, his sense of duty and desperate drive for final victory grows even stronger threatening to turn him into the machine he evolved from.

Although it really doesn't match his anti-war feeling, I got a Joe Haldeman vibe from this novel. O is a soldier who hates what he becomes but is driven go ever further because that's the only hope for anyone. For such a short novel (200pages) working on a very broad stage, there's a great deal of passion to be found in The Lords of the Sands of Time. More of a tease than a spoiler— there's a stirring speech to the troops in the penultimate act that has the same punch as Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day Speech. Yeah that's right, I just referenced The Forever War and Henry V for a Japanese YA novel, deal with it.

Like I said before, these aren't word-shakers but I'm glad to see more foreign-language Speculative Fiction made available to us English-language readers. Hopefully we'll see a growing range of works from Haikasoru. They'll be putting out a collection of horror stories by Otsuichi and a hard SF novel from Housuke Nojiri. I'm looking forward to next year's release of The Sixth Continent a novel about the colonization of the Moon by Lords author Ogawa.

All You Need Is Kill and The Lords of the Sands of Time are available through your local independent bookseller or these guys.

Commenter Grey_Area is known to the cybertengu as Chris Hsiang. He stole the phrase "Jim Shooter Special" from Alan Beatts.

Expanded from a 2003 novella of the same name originally published by Night Shade Books, The Empress of Mars came out in a novel-length form from Subterranean Press and is now available in a more affordable hardcover from Tor. This standalone novel is set in the same world as Baker's Company novels, where we follow the entertaining adventures of time-hopping immortal cyborgs working for a nefarious 24th Century cabal of scientists and industrialists. Readers unfamiliar with these stories will enjoy The Empress of Mars on its own merits, but I highly recommend picking up more of the Company novels, too.

As the novel opens, Great Britain isn't what she used to be. Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have hooked up with Brittany and others to form an independent Celtic Federation. The English, along with most of the rest of the First World, have settled into cozy oppressive nanny states. Alcohol, tobacco, animal-derived foods and products are all forbidden. There is pervasive disfavor towards organized religion, most literature, team sports, or anything else that might cause uncomfortable thoughts or angry up the blood. The one somewhat accepted religion is the powerful Ephesian Church, a synthesis of various neopagan matriarchal "traditions" just as ridiculous as the overgrown political correctness that dominates the secular world. Citizens displaying undesirable traits like recurrent violence, constant moodiness, or just a fondness for monster movies are sent to Hospital where they can be kept from disturbing decent society. The New Celts gleefully still practice certain polluting industries and "beast slavery" — keeping livestock or pets, mostly just to piss off the English. I suspect they kept all the best music too. The Celts have a very profitable black-market trade in wine and cheese back on Earth.

Unlike some high-and-mighty nations we could mention, the British space exploration program never had to rely on the variable whims and fortunes of its military; also, working with metric measurements was never a cause for confusion. Besides, those tiny, sheep-infested islands of tin miners and fisherfolk have trumped mighty empires before.

But sadly, the Martian Settlement proves to be quite a disappointment to the British Arean Company. The BAC invested billions and transported a workforce of rugged individualists and other social misfits. But once there, they fail to find any profit. Technical miscalculations concerning Mars' lack of a magnetosphere render the expensive fusion reactors they sent useless (I suspect some handwaving here). This lack also keeps the honeybees from following their ancient instincts, the Settlement's greenhouse crops must be pollinated by pricey microrobots called "biis". To top it off there are really no resources worth shipping back to Earth or Luna aside from the rare fossils prized by wealthy collectors. The bubble bursts, terraforming projects are shelved and the BAC cuts its losses. Hundreds of scientists and technicians are laid off with no ticket back Down Home, especially the eccentric volunteers from Hospital or problematic Ethnics like the Celts.

Among the stranded is xenobotanist and single parent of three teenage girls, Mary "Mother" Griffith. Fed up with the dog's breakfast that Earth society has become, she takes her severence package and pursues the only logical solution, she buys a small dome at the edge of the Settlement and opens a bar called The Empress of Mars. This fine establishment brews the finest – okay, only – beer on the whole of the Tharsis Bulge and has a loyal clientèle of the new Martians. There are the rowdy members of Clan Morrigan, an agricultural collective from the Celtic Federation, disparaged by the English settlers as Medievalists with their clanking & smoking blacksmithy, beast slavery (they actually eat *shudder* animals) and wanton ways. The Clan is led, just barely, by the boisterous and blustering Cochevelou; I couldn't read his parts without thinking of Brian Blessed. Thunderous Cochevelou is devoted to his son Perrick, who couldn't be less like his father if they were different species. This pale, tiny man-child cringes at his father's rough embraces preferring to keep busy with his beloved gadgets, especially his new improved biis -– what a clever little fellow Perrick is.

Mary Griffith also enjoys a dedicated following among the Ice Haulers, the lowest caste of Martian society, without whom the Settlement could never exist. These hard-drivin' muthatruckers push their bigger-than-big rigs on the perilous route from the Poles and back, with the frozen cargo essential to all life on Mars. Every enormous man and woman of the Ice Haulers —with hair and skin permeated with the red, wind-driven fines of the Martian sands — follow The Brick, their mountainous spokesman who has a sagacity and incalculable shrewdness to match his impressive bulk. This dood is just too cool for school.

Living with and working for Mother Griffith and her pretty — and sometimes overly friendly – daughters, are other castoffs from the BAC. Let us regard poor Mr. Morton, a brilliant architect who spent much of his life in Hospital due to his youthful interest in the works of Edgar Allan Poe. His friend Manco Inca, was recruited for the Mars venture for his brilliant terraforming concepts and Andean physiology but was kicked to the red dust curb for his adherence to a very unique view of Catholicism. The Nepalese journalist Chiring has sworn to stay on Mars and report about his fellow Martians despite a nagging revuslsion towards certain "unenlightened" local customs. And let us not forget The Heretic in the kitchen, this confused young woman with her ocular implant and Cassandra-like utterances, who was driven out from the Ephesian Church. Ms. Griffith still worships the Goddess in her own way and tries to protect the Heretic from the self-righteous priestesses of the Church.

The Empress of Mars fights to keep open, against the efforts of the Settlement director, who would rather all these weirdos just "go away". Mother gains an advantage when she makes a remarkable discovery sparking off a land rush comparable to the California and Klondike Gold Rushes. Shuttle flights increase geometrically, bringing the hopeful, desperate, and greedy — as well as con-men extrordinaire and legal sharks, to prey on the unwary. There are also incurable romantics such as Ottorino Vespucci who turned his back on his family's mercantile empire to find his dreams of living in the Wild West on the red frontier of Mars. Will Mother Griffith and the gang find a way to preserve their independence amid the sudden population explosion? Their struggle for survival may shape the very future of the Red Planet.

It would be easy to look for comparisons to Moving Mars by Greg Bear or the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The Empress of Mars reminds me more of Robinson's Antarctica, both describe communities of smart, highly-trained, and occasionally batshit insane people in a hostile environment cut off from the normal world. To borrow a line from Antarctica about the advantage a woman has in this sort of situation, "The odds are good, but goods are odd".The male to female ratio in such populations can grant an enterprising woman a power and prestige she may not receive in mainstream society.

The feel of frontier society runs strong in The Empress of Mars. The reader might find fond comparisons with Steinbeck's Cannery Road and Twain's Roughing It with sly humor and vivid, memorable characters. There are rough patches in the writing. Some passages definitely feel inserted to stretch the adventure to novel-length. The climax also feels very sudden — bang, and it's all over. I really would have enjoyed more stories of Kage Baker's Martians. I suppose I'll just make do with her two short stories set after the events in The Empress of Mars. Those stories are "Maelstrom" in the New Space Opera (Eos, 2007) and "Where the Golden Apples Grow" in Escape From Earth (Firebird, 2008).

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Kage Baker's The Women of Nell Gwynne's (Subterranean Press, June 2009) is a new novella also set in the richly imagined world of her Company novels. This is a fast-paced racy adventure of Victorian Age secret-agents, astonishing mechanical prodigies, and of course — murder!

"Lady Beatrice" is the steel-willed daughter of a British officer serving her Majesty's interest in India and Afghanistan. A series of Cruel Events leaves her cast out from proper society and penniless on the streets of London, a member of the Oldest Profession. Refusing to let Fate grind her down, Lady Beatrice stands apart from the common round-heeled doxys. She recognizes her body and mind as tools and weapons to be employed to her own advantage. The clever-crafted eyes of a certain Mrs. Corvey catch this potential and the not quite crippled widow recruits the fiery Lady Beatrice into Nell Gwynne's, Britain's most exclusive academy of amatory arts.

Unbeknownst to its distinguished clientèle, Nell Gwynne's is more than a high-end brothel. The talented young ladies also act as the highly regarded espionage ring for the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, the 19th Century's version of a very influential and mysterious Company. Employing their obvious charms and some very peculiar technologies the women of Nell Gwynne's mine the most eminent skulls of the Empire for valuable secrets.

Despite the fantastic elements and twists The Women of Nell Gwynne's feels faithful to the Victorian Period. One of Kage Baker's great strengths is her brilliance in presenting other time periods. As a writer, educator, and actress she lives and breathes history. She captures not just the little details and mannerisms of daily life but the deeply held attitudes of her characters whether from 1844, 1604, or the 24th Century. Subterranean's Deluxe Hardcover Edition won't be for everyone's budget but if you get a chance pick up The Women of Nell Gwynne's. It's a witty steampunk thriller as if written by Ian Fleming's crazy libertine aunt. I am hopeful we will see more of Lady Beatrice and her sisters in espionage.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...

Tachyon Publications is releasing their first kids' book, called The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker. Although ideally suited for readers between the ages of 9 and 12, babysitters, parents, and other boring people will also enjoy sharing this magical adventure.

The main character is a girl named Emma, who washes up on a desolate seacoast after losing all she knows and loves. (Why is it that orphans always get the cool adventures in books?) As she tries to find food and shelter on the empty Dunes, she meets a ghost named Winston in a bellhop uniform. Together they rediscover a glorious old hotel called the Grand Wenlocke.

The hotel has been buried beneath the Dunes for a hundred years — perfectly preserved by a brass-geared stasis machine. Inside they find the hotel's kindly cook, Mrs. Beet (she has an eyepatch!) and her dog who have been frozen in time. They are joined by Captain Doubloon, a grizzled old sea captain – not a pirate, really – with a pegleg, a parrot, and an eyepatch (why do all the cool grownups get eyepatches?) Just to keep things from getting dull, out of the skies on a homemade flying machine comes young Masterman Wenlocke. He's the last heir of the hotel's builder, a mechanical genius, and total brat, who escaped a boarding school and his greedy Legal Guardian (no eyepatch on that guy). The five new friends decide to reopen the beautiful hotel and look for its fabulous treasure. At the Grand Reopening, it seems appropriate that a hotel as odd as the Grand Wenlocke would attract guests who seem to have come from the pages of myth and legend. Wait 'til you meet them, they're really strange.

This was not too long, and is pretty easy too read with just the right amount of long words that clever readers would like looking up. Ms. Baker has written something like an Edwardian storybook by E. Nesbit but still suitable for modern tastes and attention-spans. There are also some beautiful and ethereal illustrations by fantasy artist Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. The Hotel Under the Sand is smart and funny, filled with old-fashioned wonder but never sappy. I think this would be perfect for a week's worth of bedtime stories or curling up with on a rainy afternoon.

You can buy these three books from Amazon,
or support your local independent bookseller.

Commenter Grey_Area is known as Christopher Hsiang to Thuvia, Barmaid of Mars. He so totally wants an eyepatch!

For those of you unfamiliar with Scalzi's previous novels in this series, a quick recap. Humanity has reached the stars to find the neighborhood teeming with other races all vying for the same planets to colonize. The Colonial Union governing all the human worlds except Earth has a tight monopoly on all travel, commerce, and information between the colonies. The home world is kept ignorant technologically and politically. Mother Earth is just the CU's breeding ground for more colonists, mostly from the Third World, and cannon fodder for their endless wars. The Colonial Defense Force doesn't draft witless eighteen-year-olds to do their dirty work. They want educated volunteers with life-experience who no longer fill useful roles in dirtside society.

On his seventy-fifth birthday John Perry leaves Earth to fulfill his contract with the CDF expecting never to return. He and his fellow septuagenarian are shortly amazed to find themselves in young healthy bodies. CDF soldiers wear cloned flesh with augmented abilities covered in chloroplast imbued skin. These old fogies are now mean green fightin' machines armed to the teeth facing alien armies over hotly contested planets, "Get off my lawn, you tentacled scum!"

This series has often been compared favorably with Starship Troopers, although Scalzi treads a bit lighter on the soapbox than Grand Master Heinlein and has a superior sense of humor. If you haven't read Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony you are in for a treat. Zoë's Tale is more of a companion novel than a sequel and works fine as a stand alone story. It recounts the events from The Last Colony but from the viewpoint of John Perry's seventeen-year-old adopted daughter Zoë and is the stronger novel for it.

The story opens as John and his wife, Jane Sagan a former Special Forces officer, have retired from the CDF in new demilitarized bodies living as rural colonists with their daughter. Zoë's biological father was Charles Boutin, a scientist who schemed with an advanced race called the Obin against humanity. The Obin were uplifted to sentience by the Consu, a godlike and enigmatic species who gave the Obin intelligence without consciousness, then kicked them to the galactic curb without explanation. Boutin offered the Obin a technology that would give them all individual consciousness and emotion in exchange for wiping out the CU whom he believed responsible for Zoë's death.

Of course Zoë wasn't dead, the plot failed, Boutin was killed, but the technology worked. To honor Boutin for his miraculous gift the Obin made a truce with the Humans and sent two of their kind to protect and serve Zoë, whom they revere with something akin to worship. Her two bodyguards, Hickory and Dickory – she named them when she was very young – vaguely resemble a cross between a giraffe and a tarantula, carry huge knives and scare the bejeesus out of everybody. They treat her like a beloved magic princess but she still has to do homework and chores and junk, bummer. Clearly the girl has issues.

Naturally, a quiet pastoral life is not in the cards for this odd but loving little family. The growing populations of the older established colonies pressure the CU to continue spreading out into an increasingly dangerous galaxy. Because of their leadership skills and military record John and Jane are asked to lead a brand new colony called Roanoke. I know, why not just call it Certain Doomsylvania? At least their ship isn't named the Titanic. Immediately things go terribly wrong. The tiny colony is cut off from the rest of the CU deprived of advanced technology on a world with an incompatible biology and a savage native species. A Conclave of a hundred hostile races patrols space sworn to destroy any further human colonization. And oh yeah, the whole planet smells like a stinky locker room.

As young people do, Zoë adapts quickly to this difficult new life. She, her wise-cracking pals, and her absolutely dreamy boyfriend, Enzo, manage to have fun when they can while working alongside the adults for Roanoke's survival. Zoë inherited Boutin's brilliance as well as her adopted father's relentless,sarcastic wit and Jane's fierce determination and resourcefulness. Good thing too, because she's going to need all that and more to save herself and the new colony.

I wondered if it was very realistic to have a heroine that young be so clever and observant while spouting off with Scalzi's trademark sarcasm. Some readers might think that a brilliant and resourceful young Messiah of an alien race who Saves the Day with blatant Deus ex Machina has it a bit too easy. But Zoë's Tale isn't really about the clash of mighty empires or rescuing loved ones from monsters, exciting as those parts are — it's about Zoë. It's about that time in our lives after we've come to grips with how the world sees us but we are still not sure how we see ourselves. It's not about what you are, but finding out who you are. This whip-smart, often funny, and deeply moving novel portrays that journey of self-discovery to the satisfaction of adults young or otherwise.

Zoë's Tale via Amazon

This month, io9 reviews all the nominees for the Nebula, Hugo and Clarke awards. You can read them all here.

Commenter Grey_Area is known among the space-cruising whipper-snappers as Christopher Hsiang. Why can't you young punks let an old man read in peace?!

Doctorow started the conversation by telling fans that the reason they're not finding his new book, Little Brother is because they're looking in the wrong place:

My editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, rang me yesterday to talk about a weird little phenomenon: people who were going to stores looking for my newest, Little Brother, were walking away unfulfilled because they were looking in the science fiction section, not the young adult section.

Living in a space that no one watches too closely is one of the secret ways that people get to do excellent stuff. Science fiction's status for decades as a pariah genre meant that writers could do things with literary style, theme, and political content that their mainstream counterparts could never get away with (games, comics, early hip-hop, mashups, and many of the other back laneways of popular culture have also enjoyed this status). These days, a lot of the coolest stuff in the universe is happening in the kids' section of your bookstore (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of calling attention to a field that has prospered because it wasn't receiving too much attention to blossom).

I have a friend with access to BookScan, which tracks book sales through stores and retail outlets, who at my request checked the aggregate bestseller list sales of adult fantasy and science fiction against the sale of YA fantasy and SF. Without mentioning specific numbers or titles, my friend says that last week, the top 50 YA SF/F bestsellers outsold the top 100 adult SF/F bestsellers (adult SF and F are separate lists) by two to one. So 50 YA titles are selling twice as much as 100 adult SF/F titles. The bestselling YA fantasy book last week (not a Harry Potter book) outsold the bestselling adult fantasy book by nearly four to one; the bestselling YA science fiction title sold three copies for every two copies of the chart-topping adult SF title. And as a final kick in the teeth, YA SF/F is amply represented at top of the general bestselling charts of YA book sales, whereas adult SF/F struggles to get onto the general bestselling adult fiction charts at all.

Young adult sections in bookstore — a parallel universe of little-regarded awesomeness [Boing-Boing]
Why YA [Scalzi.com]