End of the World As We Know It

Friday linkspam is here to tell you that’s great, it starts with an earthquake! Birds and snakes and aeroplanes! And Lenny Bruce is not afraid! Eye of a hurricane! (Okay, I’ll stop now.)

• Foz Meadows at The Book Smugglers Smart and spot on essay about bad boys in genre books and the reader’s predisposition to sympathize with them–and how that can lead to minimizing abusive situations
• Not Saving the World? How Does That Even Work? Jo Walton on the well-establish fantasy trope of world-saving and how hard it can be to write against that. She mentions Bujold’s Sharing Knife series here and this is one time I disagree with Jo Walton–I don’t think those books are about not saving the world–I think they’re about a world that has already been saved.
• How I Used Kickstarter to Reboot a Book Series and My Career and Maybe My Life Related: Harry J. Connolly’s take on the issue with regards to his defunct series.
• Dear Writers: 10 Blunt Messages from Me to You on the Eve of 2013
• Sex, YA Books, and Some “E” Words Excellent post at Stacked about a trend of publishing YA books with explicit sexual content intended for adults and how that undermines the purpose of YA as a genre–which is books for the teen market and how they deserve to have books and stories that center them and their experiences.
• It Matters If You’re Black or White: The Racism of YA Book Covers This post really breaks down what’s going on, complete with pictures.
• Genevieve Valentine’s annual post about the “National Costume” competition in the Miss Universe Pageant Oh, DENMARK. (Also, FLAPPERS FOR EVERYONE!)
• Courting Respectability Romance and its marginalization by the greater literary community. Great stuff here. Related: Don’t Hide Your Harlequins: In Defense of Romance
• The end of an era: It’s Official: SF Titles from Baen Books are coming to the Kindle Store
• Jill Sorenson on Vagina Envy Indeed. Let’s not be coy.
• Fairytale of New York the story behind what is quite possibly the best Christmas song EVER.
• io9 on Circlet Press’s Fantastic Erotica anthology“This erotica book might be the year’s most dangerous science fiction anthology.”
• The Basement Some incredible juxtapositions here.
• The Rolling Jubilee Mails Its First Debt Forgiveness Letters
• 27 Science Fictions that Became Science Fact in 2012