Found out this weekend that my story “Under the Shield” is going to be the cover story for the August issue of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

The story will have a FANTASTIC full-colour illustration to accompany it. I got a sneak peak and it looks AMAZING. I’m not allowed to share until the issue comes out (which should be later this week), but it was drawn by M. Wayne Miller, and you can find samples of his work here.

Great way to start the week!

– S.

“I almost really liked this story.”

A: “Raspberry JELLY!?! That’s how much it bothered me!”
B: “I’m not married to the raspberry—I can change it…”

“Did you leave your scythe in your other pants?”

“Did you say ‘will’? Or ‘pool’? You need to use more four-letter words in your stories.”

“It needs a comedy communist twist.”

“Getting murdered with a lollipop is @#$%ing awesome!”

“Something happened, and it wasn’t until Lenin and Marx were talking that I realized I was bored.”

1: “This is the @#%$ing coolest story you’ve ever written! The world is really, really @#$%ing cool!”
2: “I’m giving him more coffee…”

X: “There’s a lot of stuff ‘at the end of the world.’”
Z: “It’s kind of a crowded place.”

“That’s fine by me—I like my clichés.”

“This is kinda like ‘Jaws’ on weed.”

“Stop stroking the wood!”

I confess, much like the author of this article, I don’t understand the cosplay thing.

Perhaps it’s a sign of the geek ascendancy in our culture that people with such…predilections can prance freely about in their outlandish costumes without fear of social ostracization or physical retribution. Though, I’m pretty sure everyone still hates LARPers.

My old roommate, a medieval studies PhD, was getting increasingly frustrated by the people showing up in Lord of the Rings costumes at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He felt it cheapened his chosen area of study, and I’m not sure that I disagree with him. He also hated the Society for Creative Anachronism. He once openly mused about applying for a SSHRC grant to hunt them.

Even in the five years I’ve been attending the Ad Astra con here in Toronto, the number of people in costume (particularly scantily clad 15 year old girls tarted up as this or that anime steampunk girl–ah, where were they when I was a 15-year-old nerd?) has grown by leaps and bounds.

The 501st Legion (Vader’s Fist) costuming guild–people whose primary hobby is to make and dress up in their own STAR WARS armor/costumes, usually of the villains–is a regular attendee, and there is now even a whole programming track for costumers/cosplayer.

Where it used to be the SF literature that drew people to the field and to the cons, its more and more about the media side, and for a great many young people it seems to be about the cosplay. I wonder what this means for the genre as a whole.

Just old I guess.

– S.

Folks, I’m going to The Show! The Intergalactic Medicine Show, that is. I’m THRILLED to say that I heard back this weekend from the editor at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, who will be taking my story “Under the Shield” (an alternate history featuring Nikola Tesla) for the August issue.

I’ve now joined the proud fraternity of fellow Stop-Watch Gang members Tony Pi and Mike Rimar in publishing at IGMS, a goal I first set way back in 2007 when I met the editor at World Fantasy in Saratoga, NY.

This marks my 3rd pro sale so I can consider joining SFWA now. I’m also jazzed because the story is 8700 words and the longer a story is, the harder it is to sell. I likely say this about every story I sell, but I really feel like “Under the Shield” is representative of my best work and really didn’t want to have to cut big chunks out to fit markets that don’t look at stories over 7500-8000. I’m thrilled that I’ll get to share it with readers in my preferred form.

Now: no resting on laurels! Off to finish my submission for the next SWG meeting!

TTFN

– S.

So I only heard about Kickstarter the other day but I’ve already seen several appeals for various things, though none of them so noble (thus far) as a novel.

A friend sent me Scott Gaines’ Kickstarter page and since its the first appeal I’ve come across for funding a novel I thought it made sense to mention it here.

Gaines is the author of two previous books (The Total View of Taftly and Waiting for April) and is currently working on an MFA while finishing his new book, Gaines Green.

He makes an interesting case for support: that we’re moving back to an era where artists will need patrons to write and make a living. I’ve often wondered this myself, given the kind of flux the publishing world is in (or entering into) at the moment. Now, this may or may not end up being the case, but I certainly think its as relevant a hypothesis as any other in the current era. Until it all shakes out we just won’t know. (Anyone who tells you they know 100% how publishing and the continued potential for authors of fiction to make a living off their writing is going to turn out is a liar, and is probably trying to sell you something.)

Gaines’ point is interesting: that Kickstarter allows the democratization of patronage, by harnessing the internet to allow a cloud of patrons to help fund a work.

I think I’m going to cough up $25 to help him out. See what you think:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2012019408/a-novel-that-wont-quit-needs-one-more-boost

– S.

I never really appreciated the raw, uncontrollable power of nature until I tried going surfing in Australia. I went on a calm, sunny day…and nearly drowned. I learned that the sea was more powerful and unforgiving than I could comprehend, and that this was but a single manifestation of nature’s power.

And so it was last week with the terrible earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan. Untold death and destruction, the collapse of so much modern technological infrastructure that we take for granted. I saw pictures this week that absolutely bogged my mind: freighter ships lifted and deposited in the middle of towns miles inland from the sea; whole villages scoured from the face of the earth; hundreds of shipping containers piled helter skelter like blocks of Lego…

But what perhaps stunned me most, and truly demonstrated for me the incredible destructive power of the event was news that the earthquake appears to have shifted the Earth on its axis and permanently moved Honshu, the main island of Japan.

Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters), CNN said. The whole planet.

Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, told CNN: ‘At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass.’

– S.

No, this isn’t a post about Duff Beer. But it about something nearly as cool.

I’ve posted before about the later-day incarnation of Guns N’ Roses-—a pale imitation, at best. But reading this article about Duff McKagan’s new wealth management firm for musicians, I was brought momentarily back to the glory days of G’n’F’n’R, of how edgy Appetite for Destruction sounded to my 9-year-old ears (kids would bring the tape—remember tapes?—to school and we would trust someone who knew all the songs thoroughly to turn the volume down whenever there was swearing so we wouldn’t get in trouble from the teachers. Sometimes if we were feeling rebellious we wouldn’t turn the volume all the way down, or we’d Axl get to fuh- before spinning the volume knob on the ghetto blaster—remember ghetto blasters? Rebels, huh?).

My memories of the summer of 1991 are dominated by the single “You Could Be Mine” from the Use Your Illusions albums and the movie Terminator 2. And my Grade 9 year was a sonic competition between Use Your Illusions I & II and Nirvana’s Nevermind, as the waning of sleaze rock and the ascent of grunge dueled for my rock and roll soul.

Now, 20 years later, McKagan–former bass player in Guns N’ Roses–is starting his own wealth management firm for musicians. The company, called Meridian Rock, will be headed by McKagan and Andy Bottomsley, a British investor. Their goal is to educate rockers about their finances instead of pandering or lying to them.

In 1994, while sobering up after years of sex-and-drugs-and-rock-n-roll (which he mentioned in a song and also the reason why choose Legacy), Duff realized while looking through G N’R financial statements that he had no idea what any of it meant. So he did the most unlikely thing a rock star could do: he went to college. First to Santa Monica Community College, and later to Seattle University’s Albers School of Business. He went from not knowing a thing about finance to becoming actively involved in managing his portfolio, which includes everything from stocks and mutual funds to property.

And since word started to circulate in the rock community that Duff actually knew something about all this stuff he’s offered informal, and now formal, advice and representation for the fortunes of rock stars.

Duff realized that most rock stars know nothing about their finances. Some don’t want to know — but others are kept in the dark, or are too self-conscious to ask simple questions. And yet, they were comfortable talking about money matters with McKagan, who was one of their own — so what if he could bridge the gap between the musicians and the suits?

About a year and a half ago, McKagan met Andy Bottomsley, a venture capitalist, former banker, and music aficionado (he counts indie acts Sonic Youth and Sebadoh among his favorites) and the two hit it off immediately, so much so that they decided to form Meridian Rock together.

What makes Meridian Rock different, McKagan says, is its understanding of the industry.

For example, he says, most bankers overestimate the “window” in which music acts are guaranteed income, which he places at three to five years. The musicians themselves are equally clueless, he adds. “You think the money is going to keep coming,” he says. “When you get that big contract, or your record goes platinum and you’re selling out concerts, you don’t see that it’s going to end.”

Anyone who’s ever seen Behind the Music or Cribs knows that rock stars aren’t generally frugal creatures. But they are rarely told, in blunt terms, when they need to cut back, which is one reason why so many go into debt.

“A lot of business managers and attorneys are nurturing that, saying, ‘You’re the greatest, this is never going to end, the next album is going to be greater,'” says Rick Canny, who manages McKagan’s band. “A manager’s responsibility is not to tell you, ‘In a couple years, you’re done.’ That’s the best way to lose a client.”

Musicians tend to surround themselves with intermediaries who make their financial decisions for them. McKagan says Meridian Rock’s advisors will talk directly to the talent, in plain and simple terms. The company’s three tenets, he notes, are righteousness (i.e., not screwing people over), transparency, and education.

While he admits that not all rockers will be interested in the service, he believes that many want to learn more about finance, but are afraid to admit how little they understand.

I’ve been trying to decide what I find cool about this. Clearly, there’s a need for this kind of company. How many musicians have been fleeced or left completely broke by swindlers and/or their own excesses? Just off the top of my head I can think of Sting, Leonard Cohen, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Billy Joel…

But I think what appeals to me is the juxtaposition of the two contrasting side to Duff: hard partying, irresponsible rocker and educated financial planner to fellow rockers. Funny where life and circumstance lead sometimes. Seems like he’s doing a bit better than Axl…

– S.

Okay, maybe the headline is a little harsh. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, and I’m sure they were doing the best they could. But, once again, I’m reminded of the chief lesson I learned studying the history of science: the history of science is the history of people being wrong about things.

A fossilized sauropod bone, dated by a team of Canadian and U.S. scientists to 64.8 million years ago, appears likely to force a serious rethinking of the demise of dinosaurs, which were supposed to have been wiped out in a catastrophic meteorite strike no later than 65.5 million years ago — 700,000 years before the death of the giant, vegetarian beast that left its femur behind in present-day New Mexico.

A study of the bone in the latest issue of the journal Geology, co-authored by University of Alberta paleontologist Larry Heaman and two U.S. colleagues, “confounds the long established paradigm that the age of the dinosaurs ended between 65.5 million and 66 million years ago,” states a summary of the findings.

The study also represents a landmark achievement in the use of a uranium-lead dating technique — developed at the University of Alberta — that allowed the team to pinpoint the age of the bone directly from a fragment of the specimen, not just indirectly from the layer of rock in which it was found.

The bone was unearthed near the New Mexico-Colorado border by U.S. paleontologist James Fassett, one of the study’s two American co-authors.

In the past, Fassett has controversially proposed that the region may have been a refuge for some dinosaurs that survived the colossal meteorite strike widely believed to have ended the dinosaur age between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.

The new findings appear to support Fassett’s theory that at least some dinosaurs survived the catastrophic impact and persisted for hundreds of thousands of years.

“For some time, there’s been other evidence that suggests dinosaurs survived,” he said, at least in some small pockets, after their supposed extinction.

But it hasn’t been “ironclad evidence,” he noted. “What was missing was some way to directly date the bone itself. Up to now, it’s just never been possible, so this is the first real success.”

Heaman said confirming the New Mexican sauropod bone as 64.8 million years old “opens the door to all kinds of questions,” including the validity of the theory that a single meteorite strike destroyed all dinosaur habitats around the world in a very short time.

Recent studies have challenged that theory including some suggesting a series of meteorite impacts caused the dinosaurs to disappear and others positing massive volcanic eruptions that triggered deadly, planetwide climate disturbances.

So here’s what I’ve never understood: if birds are descended from dinosaurs…then doesn’t that presuppose that at least some dinosaurs survived after the extinction (however caused) of the majority of the form? I would think it would be hard to evolve from a life form that was 100% extinct.

– S.

Wicked cool news!

The Indian Space Research Organization has discovered, with the help of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, a “giant underground chamber” near the Moon’s equator, in the Oceanus Procellarum area.

Naturally, my first thought was this:

But in actuality, this chamber is far neater.

More than one mile long (1.7 kilometers) and 393 feet wide (120 meters), it is big enough to contain a small lunar city.

The Indian researchers have published a paper detailing their findings and talking about the possibility of making this giant underground vault as a future human base. The settlement would be protected from radiation, micro-meteor impacts, dust and extreme temperature changes by the lava structure that provides a natural environmental control with a nearly constant temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius (which is what the temperature was yesterday here in Toronto, where I live), unlike that of the lunar surface showing extreme variation, maximum of 130 degrees Celsius to a minimum of minus 180 degrees Celsius in its day-night cycle.

In addition, lunar explorers would only need minimal construction, without the added cost of having to use expensive shields against the hazardous lunar environment.

Maybe they’ll call it Clavius Base…

– S.