The 42 Challenge

Back on my New Year's Day post I named two projects I was going to be undertaking this year (two of several, but what those others are among the unnamed will have to wait for now, they're not ready to play with you, Internet Peoples). The first was my 25x52 giving project, which has now has two weeks worth of goodness under its belt and is rolling along nicely. The second, also numerically inclined, is the 42 Challenge.

While 25x52 was my creation, the 42 Challenge was born of and is curated by Becky of Becky's Book Reviews (and a few other blogs; aside from leaving a comment on her blog announcing my participation, I haven't really made her acquaintance yet, but I will remedy that soon enough). I had heard of it last year and thought it was a neat idea, but didn't give any more thought to it until I saw a link to it again at the end of the year (or two weeks ago, take your pick), when I read her call for 2010 participants. I have been wanting to put up reviews here for a while (along with interviews, so far only one in that category, but hopefully more this year), and this seemed like a nice way to do it and hopefully get a little more traffic the Manifesto's way.

What is the 42 Challenge? Well, the short of it, borrowed from the Challenge's blog, is to...

Review 42 sci-fi related items: short stories, novellas, novels, radio show episodes, television show episodes, movies, graphic novels, comic books, audio books, essays about science fiction, biographies about sci-fi authors, etc. Adapted or abridged works are okay as well.

Keen, no?

Originally, my first entry was going to be a review of Avatar, but everyone's mother has already done one, and I have ever-growing mixed feelings about it to posit any kind of decent review. Instead, I just received a long-anticipated short story collection from Subterranean Press that I'm almost through and can't wait to tell the world about.

Starting next week the 42 Challenge reviews will post on Thursday afternoons, weekly, until I hit the magic number--and maybe beyond if I'm inclined. I'll keep my requisite running list as per the challenge rules on the sidebar somewhere with linked entries to each of the reviews (that'll go up when the first review does).

Until then...