A few items of note this month - firstly, for an interesting take on World SF have a look at SF Signal's online interview with Lavie Tidhar: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/09/interview-lavie-tidhar/. Again, I would recommend you support Apex's venture to showcase SF writing from across the globe: http://www.apexbookcompany.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=86.

Secondly, this month's (October) issue of The Psychologist includes a focus on fiction, with a number of articles being publicly available should you be interested: http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk. Thus there is an analytic take on Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are; a look at the psychology of oral storytelling and an exploration of using prose to support the writing of a doctoral dissertation.

Finally, I'm pleased to report that Locus Magazine will probably be publishing an article of mine in their forthcoming November issue. This is essentially a socio-historical overview of South African speculative fiction down the ages. Locus have agreed that I can make this article available online once their subscribers have had a month to look at it. I will thus make this piece available online from early December. As a teaser, just to say South African speculative fiction in its broadest sense appears to be a growing genre.

Nick Wood - October 2009