Book News, In Brief

The 42nd annual Nebula Awards (Science Fiction's answer to the Oscars) are being held in Austin, Texas this year. Sunday's Austin Chronicle had a brief bio of the award, along with an interview with an aspiring SF author who admits that the Nebulas are 'pretty incestuous' and definitely a case of 'who-knows-who.' The author still plans to attend, though, as "its a good chance to network with people – there'll be other authors there and agents and editors. I suppose I've been thinking, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I might take an agent or editor hostage long enough for Stockholm syndrome to set in."
Are you a sucker for this sort of thing? C'mere article. C'mere boy.

More and more websites are popping up that use Google Maps to chart where various movies/books/TV shows are set . The Guardian UK writes about one of the lit-related sites, GetLondonReading.co.uk. Click here to read.

The LATimes profiles a three man literary 'movement' that sells itself as rebellious, but actually sounds snooty as all get out. An excerpt: Outside of a few college towns, perhaps, it's hard now to embrace the cerebral unapologetically without a sense of irony, of operating a bit out of time. But that didn't stop Keith Gessen and some Ivy League-educated friends from launching, in 2004, the ambitious and pugilistic journal n+1, which was greeted by some as a kind of knowing, intellectual stunt. "Oh, no," Gessen, who has heavy brows and a wide Russian mouth, said one recent evening. "It wasn't a joke." That first issue was dedicated mostly to outlining what it opposed. "We were against the New Republic, we were against McSweeney's, we were against the war, we were against exercise," Gessen continued, sitting in a dive bar on the Upper West Side, where he once lived in an illegal sublet before decamping for Brooklyn, like most of the city's other literati. "And to this day we're against many things."
For the whole shebang, click here.