[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

Last month, Wildside Press reprinted the first short fiction collection from Charles Stross, TOAST AND OTHER RUSTED FUTURES. Here is a tally of the revisions that have been made:

1. The title has been shortened simply to TOAST. (Some sources such as Gardner Dozois' YEAR'S BEST SF erroneously list the original as TOAST AND OTHER BURNED-OUT FUTURES, so the publisher is probably trying to avoid the confusion altogether)

2. The short story "A Boy and His God" has been removed.

3. The novelette "Lobsters" has been inserted in its place.

4. The original introduction has been slightly revised to show the above two changes.

5. A new afterword has been written by Stross, revising the argument he makes in the introduction through the fall of 2005.

I would strongly urge the fans of Stross to go out and get a copy of this collection. In addition to the great convention spoofs "Toast: A Con Report" and "Dechlorinating the Moderator," you get "Antibodies," "A Colder War" (sequel to H.P. Lovecraft's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS), "Bear Trap" (related to his novels SINGULARITY SKY and IRON SUNRISE) & the original novelette "Big Brother Iron," which is a sequel of sorts to Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR.

[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

The Australian magazine Cosmos has put up at their website about half a dozen of their recently published science fiction short stories, including Stross' "Remade." The link for this is over at locusmag.com, under the "Blinks" column. Other authors include Joe Haldeman, Gregory Benford & Paul Di Filippo.

[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

I see that Stross has finally found a home for his original [*The Laundry/Bob Howard] piece, "Pimpf." This was originally written for an original Golden Gryphon Press anthology that has since been cancelled; Jim Baen has now bought it over at Baen Books for the first issue of "Baen's Universe," a new online magazine that will debut in a few months or so. Each issue will contain over 100,000 words of original fiction, and will cost about $5.

[Yobmod]

Just thought i'd point out the thread over in fantasy on Stross: here (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11748&highlight=stross)

It may get more replies if Stross info is posted there too, the split between the fantasy and SF forums is pretty fluid.

[Yobmod]

2. The short story "A Boy and His God" has been removed.

3. The novelette "Lobsters" has been inserted in its place.

This seems like a bit of a con - If Boy and His God was good anough to be published in the first place, why remove it from the collection. Especially to replace it with Lobsters, which is in Accelerando AND free on the web.

[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

Yobmod: I agree with you about replacing "A Boy and his God" with "Lobsters." "Lobsters," it seems, is available just about everywhere these days; he probably should have picked "Rogue Farm" or some other recent story.

For those of you who are curious, "A Boy and His God" is up at Stross' website to read for free, along with 10 or so other older stories of his that may be even worse than "...God."

One other note: Stross' novella with Cory Doctorow, "Appeals Court [*Huw]," was placed up at the Infinite Matrix website back in January. It is a sequel to "Jury Service [*Huw]."