Aprils Links bring May...

It's amazing to look back on this last spring semester and realize how inactive I was online. Only a handful of reviews, and almost no blog comments. I've been reading a lot in books, magazines and online. So in my brain I've much more connected; basically I was just lurking everywhere. So thanks to all the folks who actually post regular content--at least I feel like I know what's been going on, even if I haven't been actively involved.

• Thanks as always to Niall Harrison, especially for hosting discussion on the awards lists such as the Clarke Award. I'm jealous that he'll be going to the SFF Masterclass again, and I'm looking forward to seeing what new discussions the reading list and participants will spark.
• Likewise, I also appreciated Nic Clarke's take on the award nominees.
• Abigail Nussbaum continues to write awesome reviews, including this one of Joe Hill's Horns. It didn't make me excited about Horns itself, but it does impress on me the necessity of picking up 20th Century Ghosts.
• I've been enjoying Jonathan McCalmont's Blasphemous Geometries column on video games over at Futurismic; definitely some interesting perspectives on a field I'm less familiar with.
• I've been extremely saddened by the border-crossing difficulties and abuses suffered by Cheryl Morgan, Peter Watts, and Adam Israel. So many things continue to go in the exact wrong direction instead of the right one. I am very glad that Cheryl has found a home for now and that Dr. Watts avoided jail time. I hope that Adam's case gets better instead of worse.
• I loved the recent podcast with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe. It felt just like hanging out with them at a con, except that they weren't interrupted ten times and got to actually complete some of their thoughts.
• Thanks to Jay Lake's links I've been enjoying the conservative blogger Daniel Larison. It's nice to read an opposing viewpoint that you can really respect.
• In more general interest news, I've been enjoying reading items from both The Atlantic and the Smithsonian online. James Fallows in particular could write about a phone book and make it interesting and worthwhile.
• I was very happy to hear that Asimov's magazine will be accepting online submissions, I hope it works out well for them. I also wanted to give Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld mad props for designing their submissions system; he (and his magazine) continue to be made of awesome.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get back into the flow of things a bit more soon. I've already begun my Hugo reading, and posts will soon be following. I have plenty of draft reviews, but I want to smooth out the language a bit more. However, I doubt that I'll be going full-tilt this summer. I'll be taking a (relatively easy) summer class to finish off my Masters Degree, but I've also signed up for quite a bit of overtime work this summer. So we'll see how it goes.