Wednesday, September 03, 2008

I've Been Melded...AGAIN!!!

The fine folks at SF Signal invited me to join in one of their regularly scheduled Mind Meld round-table discussions. This time, the theme was: How Do Media Tie-In Novels Affect SF/F?

Here’s part of my response:
The simple answer is that it means there are more Science Fiction and Fantasy books on the shelves. More books are a good thing right? The grain of salt to add is that 90% of everything is crap and media tie-ins are no exception. Let’s look a little closer, though.
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The early Star Trek novels are a virtual who’s who of talent and award winners: James Blish, Joe Haldeman, Vonda N. McIntyre, Greg Bear, and John M. Ford. Even before media tie-ins were the major aspect of the bookstore shelves they are today, it becomes pretty clear this cross-pollination has been going on for quite some time.

Go to SF Signal to read the rest. I’m in pretty great company, with some cool folks who know what they are talking about (unlike me since I'm not cool and I only play-act at knowing about what is I am speaking). To be honest, I’m pretty honored to be in the same company as these folks: Kevin J. Anderson, Alan Beatts, William C. Dietz, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Tracy Duncan, David Gerrold, Jim C. Hines, Paul Raven, Chris Roberson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Carl Vincent, Andrew Wheeler, Sean Williams, and Walter Jon Williams . Which reminds me, I’ve really got to get my hands on some of Hines’s Goblin novels, I’ve heard/seen nothing but terrific things about them.

On a side note, as my little blurb-bio indicates, Paul S. Kemp started up a similar topic in the SFFWorld forums about a year and half ago. I’ll be getting to your second Cale trilogy soon Paul! I promise.

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