For those of you on Facebook, here is the event page.

The awards will be presented at the 2009 Nebula Awards® Weekend, April 24-26,2009 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

“Ian McDonald is one of science fiction’s finest working writers, and his latest short story collection Cyberabad Days, is the kind of book that showcases exactly what science fiction is for. ”

Read the full article here.

‘The title Cyberabad Days is a deliberate echo of the Arabian Nights. The stories are fairy tales of New Delhi. River was an Indian—novel, fat, many-voiced, wide-screen; Cyberabad Days is tales. Mumbai movies tell stories in ways that challenge our Western aesthetics and values. They’re not afraid of sentiment, they’re not afraid of big acting, or putting in song and dance, because Bollywood cinema’s not supposed to be a mimetic art form. It’s not about realism—that most pernicious of Western values—it’s a show. I wanted these stories to have a similar feel. There are dance routines in the ‘The Djinn’s Wife’ (and it ends in a Bollywood melodrama bloodbath). There are indeed princesses who fall from power and exact revenge on their enemies. There are brothers whose feud plays out over decades.‘

Read the full article here.

As well as grading the book as ‘Highly Recommended’, de Lint praises Freda’s novel to the rafters, saying  it is ‘…a real page-turner and a very magical book…‘ and that ‘…even the most jaded fantasy reader will quickly fall under the spell of her characters and the warm, intimate voice Warrington uses to tell us their stories‘. Read the full review here.

In other news Immanion Press are publishing an omnibus of two of Freda’s Blackbird titles – A Blackbird in Amber Twilight is scheduled for release in March – more info on Freda’s Immanion titles can be found here.

Freda reports that she will be attending this years Eastercon. She’ll be one of a number of Zeno clients who will be attending – and both John’s will be there too. More on this anon.

Alliette’s story is called The Lonely Heart and Steve’s has the typically uncompromising title of Fear.

Issue #09 is out now – subscribe here.

‘I’m in bits. Pieces of me are all over the place.

And I’m a part-time mage in World of Warcraft. Well, I’m not. But it might be fun. More fun than Second Life, where I could be some tedious avatar and hang with boring people.’

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John Berlyne says “Aliette’s reputation as a rising star of genre fiction had reached me long before I had the pleasure of meeting her in person at last year’s World Fantasy Convention in Calgary. That reputation was well founded – her work is both delightful and ingenous, her voice distinctive and her feeling for history and the ancient civilisations where she sets much of her work is instictive, thorough and a credit to her extensive research. No longer can she be considered merely one of the Writers of the Future (she was a winner of that competition on 2007) – Aliette is a very much a writer of today and one that is going to be around for a long time to come.“

Check out this review at Bookgeeks.com and if that intrigues you, nip over to Concept Sci-Fi via this link where an extract of the novel is available. And here is an interview with the author for good measure.