[Links]
[links] Link salad is offended by Surfing Samurai Robots
On Measuring The Specific Gravity of Grief — GeekDad reviews my new single-title novella at Wired.com. A thoughtful, interesting review. If you’re interested, you can buy the book here from Fairwood Press.
Zombies, Steampunk, or Historical Fantasy – Help Me Pick the Next Novel to Read — This may be the funniest pre-review of one of my books I’ve ever received. Pinion is the conclusion of a trilogy that sounds fantastic to me. But I don’t want to read the first two books; their existence offends me. Huh?
Ozymandias — Art guru James Gurney with a very cool post about one of his Dinotopia paintings.
Complex Reactions on Titan — Centauri Dreams on the increasingly real possibilities of life on Titan.
A Softer World on honesty, empathy and tact — Ah, the marvels of Internet discourse.
SMBC explains the Prisoner’s Dilemma
Non Sequitur is hilariously political
It Will Happen Again — Bush admits torturing KSM and says he’d do it again. Gee, what a shock.
Hatch’s Partisan Military Service Bill — This just in: Republican senator caught out in mendacious hypocrisy. But I repeat myself. (Source is Rachel Maddow, in case you think she’s a liberal hack not worth watching. A well-sourced liberal hack, admittedly.)
?otD: Does the existence of any particular book offend you?
6/5/2010
Writing time yesterday: n/a (chemo exhaustion)
Body movement: Short suburban walk later (on the pump)
Hours slept: 8.5 (badly interrupted)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (forgot)
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 9/10 (on the pump)
Currently (re)reading: The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
Posted: 8:28 am Sat June 05 2010 |
Where am I?
You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
Learn more here.
Comments
Leave a Reply
« [photos] Your Friday moment of zen | [photos] Your Saturday moment of zen »
Tweets that mention [links] Link salad is offended by Surfing Samurai Robots | jlake.com -- Topsy.com
June 5th, 2010 at 8:37 am[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Matt Blum, Jay Lake. Jay Lake said: blog: [links] Link salad is offended by Surfi… http://bit.ly/cnCa7W #fb [...]
Bush League Critic
June 5th, 2010 at 10:44 am“Does the existence of any particular book offend you?”
It was a joke. Of course I’m not offended by the existence of any book! I’m always on the lookout for stand-alone genre fiction and was simply voicing my displeasure at discovering that Pinion (which sounds great) had predecessors.
I’m just one of those rare freaks who prefers stories that take place entirely between two covers.
Thanks for the traffic, though!
Jay
June 5th, 2010 at 10:56 amOh, it cracked me up. Wasn’t intending to slam you in anyway. You were very funny in how you put it. All’s well from my end.
Bush League Critic
June 5th, 2010 at 11:10 amI’m just amazed that someone actually read my blog.
Cheers!
Cora
June 5th, 2010 at 5:16 pmThe Softer World cartoon perfectly hits the spot.
As for books that offend me, one came close recently. It was a newly released novel by a fairly successful SF author who’s also won a few awards. I’m not a fan of said author, said author’s themes and works just don’t appeal to me. But I read a review/interview about the new book, because the cover looked appealing. Turns out the background of the new novel is a subject I know very well indeed. And author gets it wrong. Author gets it completely and utterly wrong. But since author’s take on the subject appeals to common prejudices, the book will probably do well and gain good reviews. It may even win awards. And yes, that book offends me a little, not just because it gets things wrong, but also because it promotes and reinforces that wrongness and makes it even more frustrating to bang my head against it.
That said, the book in question probably would have offended me less, if I hadn’t already spent several days beating my head against the wrongness, when I read that review/interview.
As it was, I vented about the book and interview to a coworker, who understands exactly how wrong it gets everything (and wouldn’t buy it anyway, since he doesn’t read fiction), and otherwise kept my mouth shut, because I try not to be like the people in the Softer World cartoon.