Speculative Fiction Links of the Week for April 3, 2015

And here is our weekly round-up of interesting links about speculative fiction from around the web, this time in a special Good Friday edition:

Speculative fiction in general:

• At Kirkus, Andrew Liptak remembers A. Merritt and his influence on the early science fiction genre.
• Strange Horizons has published the 2014 SF Count and finds that SFF reviewing is still very white and male.
• The Fantasy Book Café offers a list of more than 1000 recommended SFF novels by women. 
• Alexandra Duncan talks about women carving out a place for themselves in science fiction.
• Lauren Panepinto, cover art director at Orbit, discusses the portrayal of women in SFF cover art. 
• Cat Rambo talks about being an "older" female writer in SFF. 
• Mark Finn attempts to trace the root cause of the current misogyny in fandom to the comic convention scene of the 1990s.  
• At The Tyee, Crawford Kilian takes a look at recent dystopian novels with female protagonists and points out that very often, those protagonists are looking for escape rather than solutions.
• At the Christian Science Monitor, Molly Driscoll wonders whether the trend of adapting dystopian YA novels to film is dying off.
• Daniel José Older has a list of urban fantasy writers of colour.
• Clarkesworld Magazine hosts a roundtable about Spanish science fiction. 
• At io9, Charlie Jane Anders shares a list of 10 authors who wrote gritty epic fantasy before George R.R. Martin.
• At Strange Horizons, Kari Sperring remembers the contributions of Katherine Kurtz to the fantasy genre.
• Damien Walter compares Game of Thrones and Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall. 
• C.P.D. Harris discusses industrial age fantasy.
• Tee Morris discusses the evolution of steampunk.
• Phillippa Ballantine talks steampunk fashion. 
• Vance Kotrla explains why superhero movies replaced the western. 
• N.P. Griffith discusses the lasting impact of Ellen Ripley. 
• Sound on Sight discusses the rise of artificial intelligence in filmic science fiction.
• At Fantasy Faction, Kevin James Breaux remembers the fantasy cartoons of the 1980s.

Awards:

• The finalists for the 2015 Rhysling Award for speculative poetry have been announced.
• The 2015 James Herbert Horror Award goes to The Troop by Nick Cutter.
• The first round of nominations for the 2015 Prix Rosny-Aîné for French science fiction have been announced.
• The 2015 FAAn Awards have been given out. 
• Kathryn Ptacek is given the HWA's first Mentor of the Year Award. 
• Joanna Russ and Stanley Schmidt will receive the 2015 SFWA Solstice Award.
• The Libertarian Futurist Society has given its lifetime achievement award to F. Paul Wilson.
• At File 770, Mike Glyer has two round-up posts of the current pre-Hugo Award nomination controversy. 
• Shaun Duke, Jason Snell, The G. and Cora Buhlert kvetch about the Hugo Awards and share some suggestions on how to improve them at the Skiffy and Fanty Show.
  

Writing, publishing and promotion:

• At LitReactor, Keith Rawson defends short fiction. 
• Loukia Borrell talks about originality. 
• Rosalind James asks what makes a book rereadable.
• Jamie Todd Rubin explains how he finds time to write.
• Elena Linville talks about the little things that boost creativity.
• K.L. Phelps talks about the importance of bad guys.
• S.A. Hunter introduces her character Thera of Allenholme.
  

Interviews: 

• Paul Weimer interviews Ken Liu.
• Heather Massey interviews Jenn Burke and Kelly Jensen. 
• Comic Book Resources interviews Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain De Caestecker from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Robert Dahlen interviews himself.
  

Reviews: 

• Elizabeth Fitzgerald reviews Graced by Amanda Pillar.
• Ignite Books reviews The Other Car by Paul Levinson. 
• Paul Levinson reviews episode 1.11 of Twelve Monkeys.

Crowdfunding:

• Mark King is looking for funding for his novel Siegmund Shaw: A Steampunk Adventure.  
• Keffy R. M. Kehrli is looking for backers for GlitterShip, a new LGBTQ science fiction podcast.
• Defying Doomsday, an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction with a focus on disabled characters, is looking for funding.
• Clowns - The Unlikely Coulrophobia Remix, an anthology of stories about clowns and jesters edited by Bernie Mjzes and A.C. Wise, is looking for backers.
• Apex Magazine is looking for supporters. 

Con reports:

• Chris Gerrib reports about Wizard World Chicago.
• At File 770, John Hertz reports about a meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.
• Cory Casciato interviews Kronda Seibert, chairperson of AnomalyCon, a steampunk convention in Denver, Colorado. 
• Kerry Dixon reports that the size of San Diego Comic-Con is exceeding the hotel capacity of San Diego, leading to a serious shortage of hotel rooms.
• Mihaela Perkovic reports about Istrakon 2015 in Pazin, Croatia. Here are part 2 and part 3.
  

Science and technology:

• The Curiosity rover has found biologically useful nitrogen on Mars. 
• Spaceships moving near the speed of light will leave detectable signatures.
• Elon Musk is worried about superintelligent robots.
  

Free online fiction:

• "Judgment of Swords and Souls" by Saladin Ahmed. 
• "Ballroom Blitz" by Veronica Schanoes at Tor.com. 
• "The Boy Who Needed Heroes" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
• "I am Graalnak of theVroon Empire, Destroyer of Galaxies, Supreme Overlord of the Planet Earth. Ask Me Anything" by Laura Pearlman at Flash Fiction Online
• "The Rescue: A Magnum Thrax Short Story" by Gene Bathurst. 
• "Three Women in a Stew (To Say Nothing of the Guinea Pig)" by Robert Dahlen
• "A Game of Scones" by Robert Dahlen. 
• "Hook Up of the Gods" by A. Lee Martinez. 
• "Undeath and You" by A. Lee Martinez.
• Chapter 21 of Dragon Physician by Joyce Chng. 
• "Anjou Wine", part 45 of Musketeer Space by Tansy Rayner Roberts.
• "First Frost", The Descendants Annual #7 by Landon Porter.

Odds and ends: 

• Watch a trailer for season 3 of Orphan Black.
• Watch a trailer for Maggie, a zombie film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin.
• Watch a trailer for Spectre, the next James Bond movie.