{"id":467,"date":"2012-03-22T04:32:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T04:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/?p=467"},"modified":"2012-03-22T04:32:52","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T04:32:52","slug":"nick-wood-april-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/?p=467","title":{"rendered":"Nick Wood – April 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\t

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Reproduced with permission<\/p><\/td>

Two big African speculative fiction books are due to be launched in the next couple of months. Perhaps first out of the blocks with a 29 April 2010 release is Lauren Beukes<\/b> and her follow up to Moxyland<\/i>, entitled Zoo City<\/i>. This looks like it's going to be a rollicking, snorting follow-up, albeit a completely different story to Moxyland<\/i> and set in the grittier and grimier streets of Jo'burg. (It also features a great cover as seen in an earlier blog of mine, below, by John Picacio<\/b>). For more info from publishers Angry Robot<\/b>, follow the link: http:\/\/angryrobotbooks.com\/our-authors\/laurenbeukes\/zoo-city\/<\/a>.<\/p>
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Feted for a June 1st 2010 release is Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor's<\/b> Who Fears Death<\/i>. This also sports a great cover and looks to be an exciting and powerful story, garnering early praise and a starred review in Publisher's Weekly<\/b>: http:\/\/nnedi.blogspot.com\/2010\/04\/publishers-weekly-gives-who-fears-death.html<\/a>. Nnedi<\/b> is following up on the earlier successes of her previous books Zahrah the Windseeker<\/i> and The Shadow Speaker<\/i>. <\/p>
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The wonderful covers on both the Beukes<\/b> and Okorafor<\/b> are no mean feat in this era where there has been a tendency to 'whitewash' covers, with a prime example being the 'paling' of the central protagonist in Justine Larbalestier's<\/b> Liar<\/i>. As reported by The Book Smugglers<\/i>, there is a long and unfortunate history to this practice, so it's good to see such strong and authentic covers on the two books mentioned above: http:\/\/thebooksmugglers.com\/2010\/02\/cover-matters-on-whitewashing.html<\/a> <\/p><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

Finally, there has been some online debate as to what constitutes African speculative fiction, with a fine rejoinder by one of the authors mentioned above, i.e. Nnedi Okorafor<\/b>: http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/2010\/03\/can-you-define-african-science-fiction\/<\/a> In addition, Charles Tan<\/b> writes on Where is International SF?<\/i>: http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/2010\/03\/where-is-international-sf\/<\/a>. And so, if you're wanting to support international SF, what better place to start than the two African spec-fic books above? Furthermore, hopefully coming out later this year is volume 2 of the Apex Book of World SF<\/i>, focusing on Africa and Latin America. Volume 1 is still in print and well worth getting too: http:\/\/www.apexbookstore.com\/products\/the-apex-book-of-world-sf<\/a>. Due out sometime in the future is a compilation of Weird<\/i> fiction by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer<\/b>, who are trawling the world for a truly global collection. So start saving, you're in for quite a treat! <\/p>\n

Nick Wood - April 2010. <\/p>\n

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Two big African speculative fiction books are due to be launched in the next couple of months. Perhaps first out of the blocks with a 29 April 2010 release is Lauren Beukes<\/b> and her follow up to Moxyland<\/i>, entitled Zoo City<\/i>. This looks like it's going to be a rollicking, snorting follow-up, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010blogs","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickwood.frogwrite.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}