See, I bet you’re all looking forward to school now more than ever. Just remember to face the new year with a clean outfit, fresh school supplies, and a big ol’ smile on your face.

Aw yeah, that’ll do it. Everything will be all right.

Please enjoy the trailer:

Incidentally, I just found a review of Loups-Garous in, of all places, that internal bulletin of the international ruling class, The Financial Times. It’s actually a very interesting look at several works of SF in translation available in the UK, as all our titles are. It reads, in part:

Kyogoku meditates on a society so fixated on homogeneity and surveillance that there is scant room for freedom of self-expression any more. In a sterile, anodyne urban landscape, the generation gap yawns wider than ever; old and young seethe with mutual mistrust and antagonism. The loups-garous of the title – French for “werewolves” – are wayward youths, shapeshifting from respectful obedience to untamed, psychotic ferality, breaking free from societal constraints. As such, they reflect Kyogoku’s fascination with yokai, traditional Japanese fables. In this novel and his earlier The Summer of the Ubume, he’s exploring how folkloric monsters such as ghosts and werewolves might manifest in a rational, superstition-free era.

Now that’s some reviewin’!

Those are red velvet cupcakes! My favorite! And so, about this book…I can’t say I’ve read it, but apparently it’s the final book of a series. The books take place in a dystopian future where schoolchildren are forced to battle until there is one survivor, and one year the survivor manages not only to win the game but goes on foment rebellion against the oppressive system…hmm.

You know something?

I think I have read that book already!

Oh yeah, that does ring a bell.

I’m sure this series is great fun and I hope everyone enjoys the final installment. The books certainly must have something going on to rate midnight release parties and awesome cupcakes too. I hope customers weren’t too pushy to get the books though—a crowded bookstore event can turn into a real battle royale!

Heheh.

Warner Bros. has tapped Doug Liman to direct time-travel actioner “All You Need Is Kill,” produced by 3 Arts Entertainment.

The studio’s been developing “All You Need Is Kill,” based on the 2004 Japanese novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, since April when it bought Dante Harper’s adaptation. Producers are Erwin Stoff, Tom Lassally and Jason Hoffs with Hidemi Fukuhara exec producing.

Hey, I know two of those guys! Now that the director news is confirmed, we can expect other information to hit over the coming months: who will star, etc. if only Keanu Reeves was fifteen years younger…that’s what the copyeditor in the cubicle next to mine keeps saying, anyway! Anyway, you best pick up a copy of All You Need Is KILL so to better follow along with the wild ride to come. Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s follow-up Slum Online is worth checking out too!

In non-Haikasoru news, the nominees for the World Fantasy Awards have been announced and I am thrilled to see that the motion picture Ponyo has been nominated for the Special Award category! I edited The Art of Ponyo and will be at the World Fantasy Convention this October. I hope to bring home a statue for Mr. Miyazaki!

but this afternoon it will do.

Find the cat in Slum Online.

That means I should be getting my advance copies from the printer in a week or so! (The only other step left is to get an actual unbound copy of the interiors. I flip through all those to make sure that there are no horrible errors like a repeated or missing page, and then I sign off on it.) Very exciting.

I know that a number of you are anticipating this novel, as you’ve seen the anime, which looks very cute and which a clever person might be able to find snippets of online.

But for people who are looking forward to some science in their science fiction, we’ve found something to whet your appetites as well—an interview with Nojiri by JAXA, the Japanese space agency, published in English!

Do check out
Housuke Nojiri, the Future of Space Exploration.

See that on the lower righthand side? That the iPad link to Harmony. That wonderful book, and The Next Continent and Slum Online are now available for your reading pleasure (and my selling pleasure!) for the various Apple devices.

We should have news for the Kindle and other devices in a couple of months. What are you waiting for Apple fans? CONSUME!

We’re still working out the actual release date, but it should be within weeks. We’re starting with Harmomy, The Next Continent, and Slum Online for iPads, the more recent iPhones, and whatever other readers or systems Apple uses. Kids, I edit science fiction for a living. I can’t afford these gadgets. My boss showed me her iPad the other day, but I wasn’t allowed to touch it.

We’ll also soon have news about other formats and other titles as we bring out ebooks. Mostly, it’s just a matter of contracts, but there are some amusing technical challenges. Check out the first page of Harmony:

When the tech person saw this, we got an email asking “On content page - codes appearing in PDF (see attached PDF for ready reference). Please provide the revised PDF for this page or advise.” He thought they were live links, and not just part of the story! When you do get the ebooks though, you can go to our backpage where we advertise our titles and this website, and click directly back to here by tapping your screen.

Anyway, the books look pretty neat, as you can see above. Also, check out the first page for Slum Online:

When we get the exact launch date, I’ll be sure to let you know!

And Japanese robots just got very strange:

Meet the Telenoid 1. And it’ll be available for only $8000! So if you ever wanted to communicate with a far-off loved one in a bizarre sort of telepresent meatspace facsimile, you now can. And if you want to drive this far-off relative insane so that he or she will be declared legally incompetent and you can inherent millions, you can do that too. And easily! Yow, that’s one freaky robot.

I also spotted a good anniversary treat—an excellent review of Slum Online over at Strange Horizons, a magazine about to celebrate its own tenth anniversary. Who would have thought that an online science fiction magazine specializing in short stories and quality reviews could have lasted a decade, and as a non-profit organization? The review reads, in part:

It raises narratological issues about the representation of consciousness in game worlds. The problem is not too different from narrating the inner life of a mind, because our inner virtual realities are just as sensory-driven as Versus Town is action-driven. …

Perhaps a truly advanced tech will make the world simpler to negotiate, not more complicated. But what Slum Online sets out to show, I think, is that whether human worlds are simple or complicated, what makes them work are the usual invariants: friendships, compassion, and perseverance in the face of odds. The sound FX of applause.

See? It ain’t just kid’s stuff.