[links] Link salad does the Watusi, watches I Love Lucy
Don’t forget the voting poll for the Post-Novel Ennui Contest [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ], here. Vote early, vote often, influence your friends!
The Campbell Award Pin fundraiser is now underway. [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
Pulp Magazines Struggle to Survive in Wired World — Simon Owens with a PBS article on the state of our field.
Non Sequitur on the rules of writing — Heh, yeah.
Photo Gallery: The World of Trench Warfare in Color — WWI history as you’ve rarely seen it. (Thanks to lt260.)
The Tabulator: 1917 — Shorpy with some seriously retro information technology.
Centauri Dreams with more on exoplanets — This is one of my favorite topics in science right now, in a big way.
Bad Astronomy on the oceans of Mars — Light from a distant sea, reflecting a red sky, showing us our own imaginations. Go, Schiaparelli!
The world has never seen such freezing heat — Scientific errors in global warming data. See the comments section as well. (Thanks to tetar.)
What’s a Christian Worldview? — Helpful hints from Focus on the Family. For example, let’s suppose you have bought the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder (secular relative truth) as opposed to beauty as defined by God’s purity and creativity (absolute truth). Wow. That’s a pretty bizarre definition of “truth”. Clearly I am not religious for epistemological reasons, if nothing else. (Thanks to danjite.)
Obama talks about his presidency — Worth the watch-and-listen.
Question of the day: Would you book yourself on a trip to the moon?
11/18/08
Body movement: 80 minute suburban walk
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville
Tags: Contests, Cool, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, polls, Process, Publishing, Religion, Science
Posted: 5:08 am Tue November 18 2008 | Comments(0) |
[publishing] “A Water Matter” up at Tor.com
My short story “A Water Matter” is now up at Tor.com. This takes place just after the first third of Green, within the same continuity, though Green herself does not directly enter into the story.
Go enjoy!
Tags: Books, fiction, Green, Publishing, stories
Posted: 11:39 am Wed October 29 2008 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad for a busy Sunday
Non Sequitur on writers and cartoonists — I’m looking at you, Howard Tayler. (The man is a highly accomplished SF novelist who happens to publish in daily cartoon format.)
The economics of the bookstore — In case you were wondering how that end of the world works. Links back to another great piece by Andrew Wheeler. (Nicked from paul_m_jessup.)
2 N.Va. GOP Leaders: ‘I’ve Had Enough With My Party’ — Apparently it’s fine for Republicans to call Democrats “communists”, but it’s shameful for Republicans to call other Republicans communists. Another case of “It’s OK if you’re a Republican”, I guess. Whatever happened to Reagan’s eleventh commandment? The Permanent Majority must have dragged it along when they left the building.
Powell Endorses Obama — I’m not as excited about this as some people seem to be, but then unlike most liberal-progressives I can actually remember Colin Powell shilling for the Bush administration’s cynical mendacity in the run-up to the Iraq War. So, um, the endorsement of a serial liar and prime enabler of the worst foreign policy disaster in modern American history is supposed to matter? ETA: My Aunt M points out that this might bring in votes from some pro-war conservatives who are otherwise uncomfortable with McCain.
10/19/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: 230.6
Currently reading: The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two by Anu Garg
Tags: Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Writing
Posted: 8:16 am Sun October 19 2008 | Comments(0) |
[writing] “Achilles, Sulking in His Buick”
My short story, “Achilles, Sulking in His Buick,” is now available in the December, 2008 issue of Realms of Fantasy. One of my favorite titles of mine, ever, and I think it has a heck of a set of ending lines.
Tags: Publishing, stories, Writing
Posted: 3:25 pm Fri October 17 2008 | Comments(0) |
[books] METAtropolis pre-order announced
I am pleased to announce that the audio-anthology METAtropolis is currently available for pre-order. Original fiction by Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, Karl Schroeder and me. This means the list of readers is also out, a very start-studded cast indeed. Here’s the ToC:
1. “In the Forests of the Night” by Jay Lake, read by Michael Hogan (Col. Tigh on Battlestar Galactica)
2. “Stochasti-city” by Tobias Buckell, read by Scott Brick (2008 Audie Award winner, for Dune)
3. “The Red in the Sky is Our Blood” by Elizabeth Bear, read by Kandyse McClure ( Anastasia “Dee” Dualla on BSG)
4. “Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis” by John Scalzi, read by Alessandro Juliani (Lt. Felix Gaeta on BSG)
5. “To Hie From Far Cilenia” by Karl Schroeder, read by Stefan Rudnicki (reader of the Ender’s Game series)
Pretty damned squee, hey?
The anthology will be released on October 21st. If you pre-order now through Audible, they will give you my story as a teaser.
Tags: audio, Books, Publishing, stories
Posted: 3:48 pm Tue October 07 2008 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad for a hump day
Extraordinary Engines is forthcoming — Including my steampunk short story, “The Lollygang Save the World on Accident”, which itself is an homage to K.W. Jeter’s Farewell Horizontal.
Just How Big Is the Damn Universe Anyway? — Professor (and fellow Tor author) Mike Brotherton explains how big the universe really is. We sneer at observability here on this blog.
tongodeon on Japan’s space elevator project — Yep. Nice to have priorities, isn’t it? So, how do you feel about the trillion dollar war in Iraq and the $1.3 trillion bailout?
Scientific American on media bias — Color me a bit surprised at some of this information. But then, I have my own observer biases. It’s also worth noting the specific measurements discussed are very narrow. (As opposed to, say, counting the number of Republican commentators covering the Democratic convention vs the number of Democratic commentators covering the Republican convention.) Also this article somewhat elides the definition of “media” in “media bias”, which lordofallfools and I have been going back and forth on for a while. Specifically, many conservative observers don’t seem to want to include talk radio in the “media” of “media bias” unless you also include Hollywood. Which strikes me as deeply cockeyed, as much of non-sports talk radio is explicitly political, while very little of Hollywood’s output is. (Thanks to lt260.)
The 1912 Republican convention — Some interesting political history. My favorite bit: Roosevelt had become the most dangerous man in American history, said Taft, “because of his hold upon the less intelligent voters and the discontented.” Which would pretty much be the core of modern Republican electoral politics: oversimplify the issues and sell to people’s fears. (Thanks to danjite.)
National Review Online on Monday’s failure of the bailout bill vote — “After the legislation was defeated and only one-third of House Republicans backed the plan, John Boehner and Roy Blunt took to the microphones and indicated that Pelosi’s speech had been so alienating and offensive that a significant number of House Republicans changed their mind and voted against the bill.
Can they be serious? Do they realize how foolish and irresponsible they sound? On one of the most important votes they will ever cast, insisting “the speech made me do it” is lame and adolescent. The vote, after all, was on the legislation, not the speech.”
10/01/08
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: 232.0
Currently reading: n/a
Tags: Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science, stories
Posted: 6:04 am Wed October 01 2008 | Comments(1) |
[writing] New adventures in copy editing
Ok, they’re really the same old adventures, just another round.
After cranking a couple of hours drafting on Tourbillon, I have now been reading lightly through the copy edit of Green. This allows me to review the queries and marked changes on each page. Once I’ve done with that, probably on Thursday in transit to FenCon, I will do a close read, at least so much as time permits between now and next Wednesday when I have to ship this multipound puppy back to Tor.
So far I have found two clean pages — 230 and 243. I must have been on a roll right about then. Every other page of the manuscript has markups. And I consider this a pretty clean manuscript.
At its best, being the beneficiary of a copy edit is a sobering experience. I have been reminded once more of my congenital inability to distinguish /that/ and /which/. My love of irregular verb forms has been exposed in the pitiless glare of house style. (Luckily for that one, I have my ’stet’ pen to hand.) Many minor strangenesses in the text, and a darling selection of crutch words, have been disgorged on the strand of editorial reason.
I cannot imagine what it takes to perform a copy edit. That task lies somewhere below “publisher” and somewhere above “Congressman” on the lists of jobs I wouldn’t be caught dead performing. I have an immense respect for those who can do those jobs, especially those who can do them well.
As for me? I have 630 marked up pages right here to demonstrate my execrable command of the simple English sentence. Excelsior, y’all.
Tags: Books, Green, Process, Publishing, Tourbillion, Writing
Posted: 7:00 pm Tue September 30 2008 | Comments(0) |
[writing] Green comes home for a visit
Oops. The copy edited manuscript of Green arrived today. It needs to be back in New York at the end of next week. I really don’t want to slack off on drafting Tourbillon, but I am not sure there’s enough time in my schedule over FenCon weekend to get it all done.
I realize this sounds like a hollow complaint (oh, my two contracted books are getting in each other’s way, woe is me) but it is a real problem. One which will be solved by me delivering the CEM in a timely fashion and dealing with the draft as best I can. I just don’t want to break momentum or lose the voice of the book.
Tags: Books, Green, Publishing, Tourbillion, Writing
Posted: 4:31 pm Mon September 29 2008 | Comments(1) |
[books] Alembical now available for pre-order
Alembical, an anthology of four novellas from Paper Golem press, is now available for pre-order. This book has some very fine work from Bruce Taylor, jimvanpelt, Ray Vukcevich and myself — in my case, the alternate history novella “America, Such as She Is” about a World War II which ended rather differently. I think it’s one of my very best stories to come into print this year.
So what are you waiting for? Go pre-order a copy!
Tags: Books, Publishing, stories
Posted: 6:07 pm Sun September 28 2008 | Comments(0) |
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