Jon’s strategy with these podcasts is to steer away from the typical bland interview questions (“what was your inspiration for [insert book title]?”, “who were your biggest literary influences?”, etc.). So our 20-minute chat covered the coming death of the novel, the MacBook Air, the similarities between Infoquake and Grey, the pantheon of superheroes I created when I was a kid, my editor Lou Anders, how my dad taught me to always be the devil’s advocate, how 9/11 changed Infoquake, and the engineering of foreign toilets and doorknobs.

(Our conversation was actually over an hour long, and we talked about a ton of great stuff. I regret that our talk about David Lee Roth’s vocal track for “Runnin’ with the Devil” didn’t make it in.)

I’m quite pleased with this interview. Go give it a listen.

From the old media side of things, the renowned U.K. newspaper The Guardian reviewed The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 2, and gave a nice little shout out to my story “Mathralon.” It’s a capsule review, but I’m told it was very prominently placed in the issue. You can read the review on the Guardian website here, but it’s short enough to post in its entirety (emphasis mine):

Early in 2007 the science-fiction imprint Solaris marked its launch with The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction. A year later, editor George Mann returns with a follow-up, this time featuring strong stories from Kay Kenyon, Michael Moorcock, Mary Robinette Kowal, Eric Brown and others. Highlights include Dan Abnett’s brilliantly deadpan version of humankind’s first encounter with visiting aliens, a mischievous story that defies all established science-fiction convention on the subject. David Louis Edelman’s “Mathralon” is a deliberately dry, unconventionally narrated account of the mining of a rare mineral, a story on a galactic scale which only serves to show what very small worlds we inhabit. You can always rely on Paul Di Filippo to come up with something offbeat in his stories full of charm, quirks and quite breathtaking cleverness. “iCity” is no exception, telling of competitive urban planners vying to win the popular vote and reform entire city districts at the press of a button: in only an hour the cityscape will dissolve and re-emerge to the winning design. Roll on volume three.

And from the world of new media, I finally and at long last have a Wikipedia page. Someone please beef it up to make me look more important and ensure that the WikiVIPdeia don’t take it down. I think I deserve an entry at least as detailed as, say, Portugal’s, don’t you?

(While you’re at it… how is it possible that my friend and Pyr labelmate Kay Kenyon doesn’t have a Wikipedia page of her own? Multiple starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, nominated for the Campbell and Philip K. Dick awards, author of a novel selected as a PW Book of the Year… somebody needs to rectify this.)

(Also while you’re at it… Jon Armstrong is now the only one of this year’s Campbell nominees without a Wikipedia page. He’s a nominee for the Campbell and the Philip K. Dick Award and on the Locus magazine recommended reading list. Go thou forth and createth a page for him, I beseech thee.)

I read on somebody’s blog this afternoon that Scott Lynch would “win in a walk.” Between you and me, I’m expecting he’ll win the Campbell this year too, but at least I want to make him sprint for it a little. I haven’t heard a bad word about his Lies of Locke Lamora (except from me) or the follow-up, Red Seas Under Red Skies. I dunno, given that he’s the Hot New Fantasy Author on the block and everyone I know universally acknowledges him to be a great guy, there must be something wrong with him.

I met Jon Armstrong at World Fantasy this year, and I have read his debut novel Grey. It does share a number of thematic concerns with my own Infoquake — economics, rampant consumerism, class discrepancies — and it’s quite funny to boot. The book got one of the best advance blurbs I’ve ever seen from the inimitable Michael Chabon: “Jon Armstrong is a genius, with an umlaut, to the fifth power.” On a personal level, my impression of Jon (sorry, Jön) is that he’s a much, much nicer person than me, though that may be damning him with faint praise.

I haven’t met David Anthony Durham yet, but his name seems to crop up quite a bit these days as a fantasist to watch. He’s already got a solid foothold in Respectable Lit’rary Territory with his historical novels Gabriel’s Story, Walk Through Darkness, and Pride of Carthage. A vote for David might be a solid strategic move if only because it will put another dent in the armor of the snooty academics who look down on genre fiction.

I would be very, very pleased to see Mary Robinette Kowal walk off with the Campbell tiara. And not just because she’s smart, she’s my friend, she’s got a story in George Mann’s new Solaris anthology with me, she’s got a highly original voice (in both the literary and literal senses), and she’s dead sexy. She’s also the only nominated author this year with no published novel under her belt. C’mon, big New York publishers, what are you waiting for? Make this gal famous already so we can start our own cool, edgy, avant-garde writers’ movement.

My fellow Pyr novelist Joe Abercrombie stands a good chance of staging an upset win this year for his The Blade Itself and Before They Are Hanged. I’ll confess I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet, but the adjectives that get tossed around about this guy’s work are enough to make anyone jealous. Plus he has a highly entertaining blog. You know, on second thought, please help me bury Abercrombie’s work in obscurity before he totally reinvents the genre out from under the rest of us.

And what about my chances? Well, I’m not totally counting myself out of the running. But admittedly I was rather quiet for most of 2007, and I think by the time people read my upcoming MultiReal this summer and get reacquainted with my work, the voting deadline might have passed. I’m contemplating sending my spouse down to North Carolina to stir up some racial tension, and pressing for a recount of the Hugo ballots in Michigan and Florida. If I do win, I’ll make sure that the world knows it’s not because I’m a better writer, but because I kicked up more dirt, threatened more people, tossed around more money, and slept with more influential people.

But you want to know the real interesting question? I’m wondering if Patrick Rothfuss still got more nominations than any of us, even though he’s not eligible for the award due to a technicality. It’s simply not right to pen an article about Campbell Award nominees in 2008 and not mention Pat, who would otherwise be the bearded 800-pound gorilla this year for his debut The Name of the Wind. I’m kind of disappointed he didn’t pick up a Hugo nomination instead.