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The New York Times adds a column with reviews of science fiction books. The first installment includes short reviews of several books. The reviewer is Jeff Vandermeer.

Christopher Hitchens profiled Stieg Larsson last year in Vanity Fair. He speculated about how much of the Millenium trilogy is based on fact and whether Larsson’s early death might have been the result of nefarious activities by the kinds of people who might expect to show up in a Larsson book.

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Jared Diamond’s Collapse:

A thousand years ago, a group of Vikings led by Erik the Red set sail from Norway for the vast Arctic landmass west of Scandinavia which came to be known as Greenland. It was largely uninhabitable—a forbidding expanse of snow and ice. But along the southwestern coast there were two deep fjords protected from the harsh winds and saltwater spray of the North Atlantic Ocean, and as the Norse sailed upriver they saw grassy slopes flowering with buttercups, dandelions, and bluebells, and thick forests of willow and birch and alder. Two colonies were formed, three hundred miles apart, known as the Eastern and Western Settlements. The Norse raised sheep, goats, and cattle. They turned the grassy slopes into pastureland. They hunted seal and caribou. They built a string of parish churches and a magnificent cathedral, the remains of which are still standing. They traded actively with mainland Europe, and tithed regularly to the Roman Catholic Church. The Norse colonies in Greenland were law-abiding, economically viable, fully integrated communities, numbering at their peak five thousand people. They lasted for four hundred and fifty years—and then they vanished.

John Klima at Tor.com takes a look at the nominees for the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Paul Kincaid writes about the three Hugo nominees for best novel that all share a theme.

When I set out to blog this year’s Hugo shortlisted novels, I imagined something conventional like a separate post on each book. For the first two books I was able to stick to that modest ambition, but the next three I read set off such resonances and cross-currents that I felt I had to read each in relation to the other two. Hence this composite post on The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, Boneshaker by Cherie Priest and Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson.

They are all novels that explore, in one form or another, the decline of America. Each takes the topic in a very different way, but the overlaps interest me. Bacigalupi and Wilson both set their work in the future but employ old-fashioned technology; Wilson and Priest both use the American Civil War as their touchstone for decline; Priest and Bacigalupi both take the cause of decline as morally neutral but put the moral weight of their stories on the people coping with decline.

A free (for the month of July) ebook.

Described as “vibrant” and rich with “verve and wit,” it’s a seagoing fantasy yarn that is like “Gulliver’s Travels crossed with The Golden Compass and a dollop of Pride and Prejudice.”

I have no idea if this book is any good, but it’s free, and the description sounds intriguing enough.

Suggestions for more novels in the vein of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

J. D. Salinger’s The Nightmare In The Rye

Synopsis: Teenagers dream of playing in a field of rye near the edge of a cliff. As they approach the brink, they  are suddenly disemboweled by a hideously scarred maniac with razor-sharp fingernails: Freddy Caulfield. Caulfield is a once promising prep-school student who was expelled for cheating. Despondent over his failure to live up to his own high ethical standards, he set fire to himself. Now he reaches out and kills “phonies” in their sleep.

Back Cover Blurbs: “A real page-turner—will keep you up all night! You won’t be able to close your eyes!” “To sleep, perchance to dream of being on the New York Times bestsellers list!”

Marketing Tie Ins: Starbucks coffee, Red Bull energy drink, Breaking Bad crystal meth.

Major Themes: The subjectivity of reality. The meaninglessness of materialism. Goddamn phonies. 

Rands wants you to read a book, chill out, and buy a T-shirt for a good cause.

If my prior report that a third of high school graduates never read another book didn’t freak you out, here’s a different pitch on why we want people to pick up a book: reading chills you out.

I’ve no idea whether my biochemistry is indicative of the rest of the planet or not, but I know if the world is freaking me out, reading calms me down. The act of pulling words off a page and constructing a thought forces me to clear my head, discard stress, and find my mental footing. In a world where whomever is screaming the loudest sound bite is considered to be providing information, I think the act of chilling out is essential.

Opens tomorrow.