The Week in Review

Welcome to the week in review! Every Friday, we comb through the links and images we found and shared this week, and pull the very best for this post. Consider it concentrated genre goodness from all around the web.

• io9 has a great article about a historic space flight that will hopefully take place this weekend – the first ever commercial space flight.
• Tor.com announced the Journey to Planet JoCo, in which writer John Scalzi interviews musician Jonathan Coulton every morning for two weeks.
• Are you in the publishing industry? A blogger? A bookseller? If so, maybe we’ll see you at BEA!
• The producer’s of the Ender’s Game movie answer fan questions.
• Any cosplay fans out there? Check out these amazing Wheel of Time costumes!
• You can take a sneak peek at some of our early 2013 book covers.
• Author David Brin talks about space, brain preservation and more.
• It’s Nebula weekend! Are you in DC? If so, you should check out the massive author signing going on tonight, starting at 5:30.
• More Scalzi, because he’s taking over the internet this week! Check out his article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is, which has also been posted on Kotaku and Jezebel.
• And finally, Neil Gaiman gives some advice to young people aspiring to a career in the arts.

And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes we have going on!

• Redshirts by John Scalzi (Ends 5/22)
• The May #TorChat Sweepstakes, featuring The Weird and Glamour in Glass (Ends 5/23)
• Earthseed by Pamela Sargent (Ends 5/25)
• The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (Ends 5/25)
• The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis (Ends 6/8)
• A City of Broken Glass by Rebecca Cantrell (Ends 6/8)
• Dark Companion by Marta Acosta (Ends 6/8)
• Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston (Ends 6/8)
• The Hollow City by Dan Wells (Ends 6/8)
• Queen’s Hunt by Beth Bernobich (Ends 6/8)
• Thieftaker by D. B. Jackson (Ends 6/8)
• YA Collection Sweepstakes (Ends 6/8)

News: 2008 Nebula Ballot Announced

The Preliminary Ballot for the Nebula Awards® for 2008 has been announced and Tor is featured prominently in the selections!

Four Tor books were selected in the Novel category:

Abraham, Daniel: A Betrayal in Winter
Bull, Emma: Territory
Doctorow, Cory: Little Brother
Goonan, Kathleen Ann: In War Times

Additionally, several Tor authors were nominated in the various other categories:

Novella:

Benford, Gregory: Dark Heaven (Alien Crimes, SFBC, Jan07)

Novelette:

Flynn, Michael F. : Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo (Analog, Aug07 (Jul/Aug07 issue))

Short Story:

Scholes, Ken: “Summer in Paris, Light From the Sky” (Clarkesworld Magazine, Nov07)

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. Founded as the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1965 by Damon Knight, the organization began with a charter membership of 78 writers; it now has over 1,400 members, among them most of the leading writers of science fiction and fantasy.

The Nebula Awards Weekend will be held April 24-26 at the Luxe Hotel Sunset Boulevard, with the awards presentation banquet to be held on the UCLA campus to tie in with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

To see the full list, click here: http://www.sfwa.org/news/2009/08nebprelim.htm

Congratulations to the nominees!