| Author |
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KJ Bishop
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 04:19 pm: | |
Rick Kleffel has posted a review of The Etched City on his Agony Column site:
http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/2003/bishop-the_etched_city.htm
And Gareth Wilson has a review and an interview on his Falcata Times site:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/falcatatimes/
If you have trouble with the javascript links, the direct links are:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/falcatatimes/kjbishopinterview.html
andhttp://members.lycos.co.uk/falcatatimes/theetchedcity.html
I've also done a print interview with Andrew Hook for Prism, the British Fantasy Society magazine.
Andrew runs the excellent UK indie publisher Elastic Press:
http://www.elasticpress.com |
Jason Erik Lundberg
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 06:44 am: | |
The Kleffel review was right on the money, especially when it comes to the common misconceptions of the term "fantasy". Very cool. |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Saturday, January 24, 2004 - 12:03 pm: | |
This is the first review of the Tor UK Etched City:
http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2004/0401/The%20Etched%20City/Review.htm
And there's one coming up in the Guardian...
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Geoffrey Maloney
| | Posted on Saturday, January 24, 2004 - 06:46 pm: | |
Like wow - you are now part of the New Weird movement!! A very nice review, indeed.
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Vera Nazarian
| | Posted on Sunday, January 25, 2004 - 03:08 pm: | |
What a great review!! Congratulations! :-) |
Kirsten
| | Posted on Sunday, January 25, 2004 - 04:45 pm: | |
Thank youse!
- and yep, I am now officially part of the New Weird. My tinsel wig and flashing necktie are, I am told, in the mail. |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 12:10 am: | |
The Etched City has been honoured with a review from Michael Moorcock in The Guardian:
http://tinyurl.com/3y6py, |
JV
| | Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 09:48 am: | |
Congrats!
JeffV |
Tamar
| | Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 02:00 pm: | |
An excellent review which I stumbled on when I opened my Guardian this afternoon. Congratulations. |
Forrest
| | Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 04:18 pm: | |
Congrats, Kirsten, good news!
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Luís
| | Posted on Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 07:07 pm: | |
Congrats! Moorcock's review is indeed, excellent.
Cheers,
Luís |
Geoffrey Maloney
| | Posted on Sunday, February 01, 2004 - 01:15 am: | |
Honoured? That is indeed one way of looking at it, and a very nice one too, but I just read the review and that was one of the most amazing rave reviews that I have ever read. Moorcock was so eloquent and it was obvious that he totally engaged with The Etched City; the way he discussed all the wonderful nuances was fantastic.
Kirsten, I will always feel a special bond to The Etched City and The Art of Dying too. It must be so wonderful for you to get a review like this, plus all the others, when publishers in Australia just didn't have faith. Congratulations!
Have you stopped bouncing off the walls yet?
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Trent
| | Posted on Sunday, February 01, 2004 - 02:15 am: | |
That's a wonderful review, Kirsten.
Congratulations indeed. |
Luís
| | Posted on Monday, February 02, 2004 - 12:48 am: | |
"Have you stopped bouncing off the walls yet?"
It's possible she had to be scraped off the ceiling. That's where I'd be, if that was my book.
Cheers,
Luís |
Robert Devereux
| | Posted on Monday, February 02, 2004 - 10:42 am: | |
Wow, that is certainly a great review. Congratulations (it's well deserved too). |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Monday, February 02, 2004 - 10:25 pm: | |
Thanks, everyone!
Luis is correct. I did have to be scraped off the ceiling, then remade into a Kirsten-shaped being, with the help of some instant potato whip, pink icing and photo-corners.
I want everyone to know that Etched City might very well have fallen to the bottom of the river in concrete boots - at several points - if it wasn't for Geoff Maloney taking an interest in it. Or Trent Jamieson, who spent a year helping me knock it into shape, or Jeff VanderMeer, who did a lot to promote it. You have my deep thanks, guys. And Luis Rodrigues, and Jeff Ford, and many others. I've really been overwhelmed by the encouragement and support I've been given. And I never realised I would make so many friendships just by publishing a book.
Gosh, I'm getting all emotional. I think my photo-corners are falling off...
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Geoffrey Maloney
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 - 11:36 pm: | |
Here Kirsten let me stick that photo-corner back on your left shoulder. Yes, that's better; a bit more upright now.
I think the TEC is a great example of exceptional writing that ultimately breaks through the blinkered capriciousness of the modern market place (particularly in Australia) to reach its audience.
And I thank you for trusting me and letting me read it in MS form several years back. It remains one of my most memorable reading experiences. The emotion at the time was a bit like 'Oh shit, if Kirsten doesn't get this published, we really are all doomed to live in Tolkien's tomb.'
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Liz
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 01:05 am: | |
Kirsten, well done.
And CONGRATULATIONS also for making it to the Locus Recommended Novels list for 2003 for first novel. |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 11:54 pm: | |
Why, thank you Liz - and many congratulations to you, too, list-pal! |
Forrest
| | Posted on Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 08:55 am: | |
What a great Guardian review, Kirsten! I just got to reading it. Impressive. |
rwexler
| | Posted on Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 09:30 am: | |
Yes, great review. And congrats on the Locus list.
Robert |
JV
| | Posted on Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 10:05 am: | |
That's sweet of you to say, Kirsten. Hey--congrats on being a finalist for the International Horror Guild Award!
Jeff |
Chris Roberson
| | Posted on Thursday, February 05, 2004 - 10:52 am: | |
Quick FYI, Kirsten. The Moorcock review from last week's Guardian is included in the Appendices of the revised Wizardry & Wild Romance, due out from MonkeyBrain in April. Jeff and China don't know it yet, but Mike's glowing reviews of Veniss Underground and Perdido, respectively, are also included. |
Luís
| | Posted on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 12:14 am: | |
Chris: I had no idea there was going to be "new" material in W&WR. WANT! |
Chris Roberson
| | Posted on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 10:26 am: | |
Luis, actually, Mike has completely revised and updated the original text, in addition to the new appendices. We've probably not done as good a job as we could have to make sure folks know it isn't just a reprint. We'll try harder! |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 02:26 am: | |
Forrest, Robert and Jeff - thanks!
Chris - cool! I'll have to buy a copy! |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Friday, June 18, 2004 - 06:56 am: | |
Matthew Cheney, he of the marvellous Mumpsimus blog, has very kindly interviewed me. You can read it here, or archived. |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - 10:43 am: | |
A recent interview with David Carroll and Kyla Ward of the excellent Tabula Rasa:
http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/KJBishop.html |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Monday, October 18, 2004 - 10:50 pm: | |
David Lynton, from Galaxy Bookshop in Sydney, has interviewed me for Strange Horizons:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20041018/bishop-a.shtml
Reading through it now, I'm not sure I agree with myself about our sense of a past golden age being probably a memory of the womb. But I don't believe in a past golden age. Can you feel nostalgia for something you never knew? Does nostalgia always require an object? Tune in next time for more of the dust bunnies in my brain...
Many thanks to David and to Strange Horizons.
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J. Erik Lundberg
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 06:51 am: | |
A very good interview, Kirsten. |
Luís
| | Posted on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 12:07 am: | |
I dare say we feel nostalgia for some past golden age precisely because many of us don't know it as it really was. We've a tendency to romanticise history, gloss over some/most/all of the unpleasantness, and it helps us delude ourselves into believing things may have been better before. |
Kisten Bishop
| | Posted on Sunday, October 24, 2004 - 01:11 pm: | |
Actually, I was wondering if nostalgia is something we just feel, and then project on to desires such as the longing for a romanticised past. I'm thinking of nostalgia, with its original meaning of 'homesickness', as a more general dissatisfaction with the human condition, accompanied by the imagining of a better condition, especially one in which we didn't have to die. |
Luís
| | Posted on Monday, October 25, 2004 - 01:13 am: | |
Funny you should mention that unprojected sense of nostalgia. Over here we call that vaguely-shaped emptiness in the heart "saudade", and while you may look it up in the dictionary, the translation is far from simple. Saudade is more encompassing and more deeply-felt than nostalgia or home-sickness. Some even go as far as to call it "the Portuguese way of life", and it's certainly part of our cultural backbone. (It's perhaps no surprise, then, that polls indicate Portugal as the most pessimistic country in the European Union.)
Unfortunately, the concept of "saudade" often (but not always) accompanies reactionary ideals and a kind of post-imperialist bitterness, so I tend look upon it with some contempt and embarrassment.
Anyway, I wonder if that's what's on your mind? |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Monday, October 25, 2004 - 01:08 pm: | |
It most certainly could be what's on my mind. I had heard of saudade, and had also heard that it's infamously difficult to translate into English. I looked it up on the net, and I see what you mean about the post-imperialist bitterness.
There's something which the Scottish writer William Sharp called 'the unspoken and nameless longing in the human heart', which perhaps is the same thing or similar. I think he meant something quite bleak, not sweetly-tinged as nostalgia for actual, remembered happy times can be. Does that sound like saudade?
There's weltschmerz, too, but I don't know if it's the same as saudade. Really, English ought to have at least one word for emotions of this sort; it's a blind spot in our language! |
Geoffrey Maloney
| | Posted on Thursday, October 28, 2004 - 08:41 pm: | |
Czech writer Kundera speaks of "litost" in one of his books which appears to be a intense but vague longing for an undefined something else.
It does look like a blind spot in English. Even with nostalgia it seems to me to be such a practical word which usually has a specific focus.
Geoff |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Monday, November 29, 2004 - 11:07 am: | |
New interview at British site P.H.U.K.:
http://tinyurl.com/5rnkb
And belatedly, a while back Jeff VanderMeer asked me and Minsoo Kang to justify ourselves:
http://tinyurl.com/6zlfq |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Sunday, December 05, 2004 - 10:10 pm: | |
Forrest Aguirre interviews me partly about Etched City and partly about We the Enclosed, the story I was very honoured to have accepted for Leviathan 4, at Infinity Plus:
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intkjb.htm |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 07, 2004 - 12:10 pm: | |
Here's a review of the Bantam edition by Rob Bedford at sffworld:
http://www.sffworld.com/brevoff/163.html
I'm happy that Rob mentions Jeff Ford's 'The Physiognomy', one of my favourite books and definitely an influence. |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 03:24 pm: | |
New interview at fantasybookspot.com!
http://www.fantasybookspot.com/?q=node/view/141
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Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2005 - 12:05 am: | |
The extremely thorough and possibly slightly mad (if he wasn't before, he might be now) Ben Peek interviews a whole lotta writers. I'm in there somewhere.
http://benpeek.livejournal.com/ |
Jay Caselberg
| | Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2005 - 04:02 pm: | |
Yeah, so you are. You and me both, eh? |
benpeek
| | Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2005 - 06:24 pm: | |
i tell you, it seemed like a good idea when i began.
at one stage, it felt like i was collecting author cards. who could i get? what were the rare ones? things like that. it's the sign of madness, right? |
Jay Caselberg
| | Posted on Sunday, April 17, 2005 - 12:43 am: | |
Aha. The first signs. Asperger rather than madness, methinks, Ben. Actually, the full set of symptoms could well describe much of the SF/F community. |
Kirsten Bishop
| | Posted on Sunday, April 17, 2005 - 02:13 am: | |
Indeed, one has those days when one feels a twinge of the old Asperger's.
So, Ben, are you going to tell us who you'd swap us for...? |
benpeek
| | Posted on Sunday, April 17, 2005 - 05:07 am: | |
i'd swap my australian set for a japanese girl punk rock set. do you have one? baring that, i'll take a set of icelandic literary scene.
unless you've got a set of asperger artists. i might trade for them.
in a bit the final stages will be up and i'll be done with this. not, of course, that it's been much work in the last days. just me watching old zatoichi films. |
Geoffrey Maloney
| | Posted on Monday, April 18, 2005 - 04:15 am: | |
Ben Peek is mad. It's silly crazy thing that he did. He'll probably somehow get famous for it. |
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