This week's online discoveries

I've had an great week of discoveries online. Charlies Stross's blog introduced a fascinating discussion on English speaking science fiction, fantasy, horror and alternative history, involving some of the leaders in the field on the comments to his entry.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2006/08/genre_neuroses_101.html

Some noteworthies that I found chatting there:

http://www.privatemarsrocket.net/novel/TheMarsRunv3.htm

Peter Watt's wonderfully professional and creepy website Rifters, where texts of two of his books are free and many stories:

http://www.rifters.com/

And I suppose it's just really nice to have my biases confirmed. Alt history is diverging from SF as a genre. Fantasy is escapism. American Science Fiction has lost much of its optimism and drive at present, due either to editing risk-aversion or to the sociopolitical conditions. UK Science Fiction is flourishing. He talks about the degeneration of horror as the child of tragedy from bloody catharsis into neurotic eroticism and glamorized cliche.

In addition I had the pleasure of hearing Gil Fronsdal read his own translation of the Dhammapada online through www.zencast.com, and the fun of being able to use Wikipedia and Amazon for any old enquiry I might have about sundry things.