This is a pretty amazing story and one that touches me on a few levels: as a comic book fan and because my mom works with autistic kids.
But the main reason I was fascinated by this story: exactly why did this fellow have a Spider-man costume in his locker at the fire station…?
– S.
Did you know that cold fusion–derided as quackery and even as pseudo-science for decades–has a new, less threatening, less discredited name?
“Low-energy Nuclear Reactions”: that’s the new name (LENR for short) for research into room-temperature nuclear reactions. I had no idea science could be so concerned with being P.C.
I bring this up because of an article I saw on the BBC recently about LENR sessions at last week’s American Chemical Society’s 237th National Meeting. The ACS has organized sessions surrounding LENR research at its meetings before, suggesting that the field would otherwise have no suitable forum for debate (the main theme for this year’s conference was “Nanoscience: Challenges for the Future”–a much sexier topic).
This meeting roughly coincided with the twentieth anniversary of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons’ much ballyhooed but ill-fated announcement that they had succeeded in achieving cold fusion, that long-sought-after source of boundless clean energy. Fusion is, after all, the energy source of the sun and the stars.
Attempts to replicate their experiments failed, largely discrediting the cold fusion field in the eyes of ‘mainstream’ science, but a number of researchers continue to insist that cold fusion is possible.
The ACS meeting heard of several approaches that claim to produce fusion power.
Many of the details of Pons and Fleischmann’s original electrolytic cell feature in more recent work, including the type of metal used in the cell’s electrodes and the use of deuterium, aka “heavy water”.
One wholly new approach was explained by researchers from Hokkaido University, who have seen unexplained heat production in a chamber filled with compressed hydrogen and a chemical called phenanthrene.
One group of scientists (creepily enough from the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center) described what it terms the first clear visual evidence that LENR devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists view as tell-tale signs that nuclear reactions are occurring.
More information on the meeting can be found at the American Chemical Society’s website, where they have a nice article about some of the findings of the LENR sessions at the meeting.
– S.
Okay: it’s been a week so if you followed Battlestar Galactica you’ve had plenty of time to see the finale, so there are spoilers that follow but you’ve been warned.
Last Saturday in the New York Time there was an article that looked back (with some decent insight) on the run of Battlestar Galactica. You can find it here.
But it wouldn’t be a review of a sci-fi (or is that syfy now?) genre show if the reviewer didn’t take a swipe at the genre as a whole. The reviewer writes:
But the show could not break with the genre’s tradition of hokey, hopeful earnestness. Landing finally on a pastoral facsimile of Earth, the human-Cylon partnership vows to start anew with pledges not to let science outpace soulfulness. One hundred fifty thousand years later, a city of neon stands on the green terrain — as well as the assumption that we won’t make all of the same mistakes over again.
I guess that’s why I’m a fan of science fiction but…I kinda like the genre’s “hokey, hopeful earnestness.” Why is that ‘serious’ literature need be bleak and depressing to be ‘real’ or ‘meaningful’? Why can’t serious literature examine ways in which things could (and should) be better in the human experience? Why not give us something to strive for rather than show us simply how things are?
It also makes me suspicious of whole arguments and sets of opinions when any reviewer uses Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” as an example of the SF genre. It’s a great book and one of the few SF works that have gained mainstream literary respectability…but it did come out in 1969. When it is touted as an example of what SF is I think: “Yes, but has that reviewer ever read anything else in the genre? Have they read anything that came out SINCE 1969?”
– S.
That sound you hear?
That’s my jaw hitting the floor…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/books/11niff.html?_r=1&hp
– S.
I didn’t see this when it first came out but there was a great piece in the Globe & Mail a couple of weeks ago by Guy Gavriel Kay about the inherent perils for authors who blog.
He focuses mainly on George RR Martin and his long-delayed A Song of Ice and Fire series. Now, I admit I’ve never read any of the books in this series–I gave up on extended, multi-volume epic fantasy series when there started to be YEARS between volumes in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series–nor have I ever visited his blog, but I do recall seeing Mr. Martin at one of the room parties at the World Fantasy Convention in 2007 and thinking to myself: “Isn’t he really behind in his series? Shouldn’t he be hunkered down somewhere writing and not out partying at cons?”
So I suppose I’m guilty of some of the things that Guy Gavriel Kay mentions. But I do think that when an author proposes to undertake an ambitious multi-volume series–whether that’s a trilogy or something longer–he does make an implicit deal with the reader that if they sign up to come on the journey the author will lead, then not only will it be compelling and entertaining but its parts will be made available with some regularity (say, like one a year) until it reaches completion. That seems fair to me, both as reader and as writer.
From my perspective, were I to attempt to ‘commit trilogy’ I think I’d like to have at least the first two volumes done before the first one saw print; that would give a fairly comfortable buffer while writing the third volume to make it a worthy payoff for the series and still get it done in time to have the one-book-a-year schedule I think is reasonable. Don’t know if that’s realistic, but that’s my sort of ideal scenario.
But that having been said, I’m going to refrain from telling you that I’ve been watching a lot of March Madness NCAA basketball of late…
The full article follows.
– S.
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Release the fans!
A writer’s engagement with readers via blogs and websites creates a real relationship and unleashes the demands – sometimes angry demands – that go with it
GUY GAVRIEL KAY
Globe and Mail Update
March 6, 2009 at 5:41 PM EDT
A few recent online incidents regarding authors and readers on the Web are just too revealing to pass up a chance to consider them.
By way of a heads-up or disclaimer, I’m online myself. There’s an authorized site based on my work, and I show up there at times to give news or contribute a bit to discussions. When I am on a book tour, I use the site to keep a journal from the road. I also make puns.
George R.R. Martin is the hugely successful purveyor of an ongoing, seven-volume fantasy series called A Song of Ice and Fire. Four books are done. The first three came quickly, then there was a five-year wait for the fourth. The first indicated publication date for the fifth instalment, fiercely awaited, was 2006. That has rather obviously been missed: Martin is still writing it. The natives are restless.
How restless? Well, on his blog, cutely called Not a Blog, Martin fired back two weeks ago at what he called “a rising tide of venom” about how late he is. Seems some of his loyal and devoted readers are savagely attacking him for taking holidays, for watching football in the fall, for attending conventions, doing workshops, editing a volume of short stories, even for being “60 years old and fat” (I’m quoting here, trust me) – the implication being he might drop dead before fulfilling his obligation to do nothing else but finish the damned series.
George R.R. Martin
George R.R. Martin welcomed readers into his personal life via his blog, a move he may now be regretting.
It is at least worth debating whether an author engaged in a multivolume work that readers have bought into has some sort of implied contract with his readers to conduct his life in such as way as to ensure the book gets done. But surely readers who insist that means “do nothing else” are betraying a pretty shaky sense of how the creative process works, especially when spread over what might be two decades and more.
Martin wasn’t happy. “Maybe it’s okay if I take a leak once in a while?” he wrote. His blog response was accompanied by a flashing “angry” icon face.
It is all too easy for another writer to sympathize, and I do, hugely, but I can’t help but note that the only reason readers know about holidays and football games (and his favourite team) is that Martin has told them. On his blog.
There’s a twinned story, e-mailed to me the same day I was alerted to Martin’s flashing-angry-post. A younger writer, fellow named Patrick Rothfuss, made a splash two years ago in launching his own multivolume saga and he is (wait for it) way late, apparently, with volume two. Rothfuss, younger, perhaps more anxious, more inclined to appease a still-emerging fan base, nonetheless blogs – complete with cartoons – about the kind of aggressive e-mails he’s getting: “your just as bad as martin i cant believe i wasted my time on your shitty book.” (Enraged fans often pass on punctuation and Spell Check; it is a well-documented fact.)
Young Rothfuss blogs that he’s, well, young. That he’s new to all this, that his life has been turned upside down by success. He tells us he has bought a house, a car, paid down his credit cards, and he needs to get his bearings back. He pleads for indulgence. His book is really long, he says. He also includes on his blog a Valentine’s post to and about his girlfriend, discussing, among other things, how her sexiness is “like the radiation from a nuclear bomb” when she “gets naked.” Could any young author then hurry back to a difficult 300,000-word book? Really?
This leads me to the flip-side point here again, because I am really not just being cheeky about Rothfuss’s blogging; there’s an issue here. These days, writers invite personal involvement and intensity from their readers. In direct proportion to the way in which they share their personalities (or for-consumption personalities), their everyday lives, their football teams and word counts, their partners and children and cats, it encourages in readers a sense of personal connection and access, and thus an entitlement to comment, complain, recommend cat food, feel betrayed, shriek invective, issue demands: “George, lose weight, dammit!”
Disturbing as this is, in some ways, I find it difficult to come down hard on readers of a writer who has steadily made him or herself “available” to them. A feeling of being part of an inner circle, or even the writing process, has to flow from that. Indeed, Rothfuss ends his rueful musings on how painful it is to have so many people so mad at him by dangling readers a carrot: Seems he’ll hold a lottery and the winner … gets his or her name plugged into the next book! In other words, he really is a nice guy (by all accounts, he really is). Don’t bite him.
Sometimes, in fact, the biting goes the other way, the fan base functioning as a mobile attack force for the author. When Stephen King rashly opined that Stephenie Meyer ( Twilight etc., etc.) was a very bad writer, one of her readers, interviewed by the press, threatened to organize fans to bombard King’s e-mail account with hate mail. (It could have been worse, I suppose.) Another reader suggested King’s motivation was pure jealousy: because he wasn’t as handsome as Meyer’s vampire protagonist. And no, I am not making that up.
Meyer, pretty clearly, had nothing whatsoever to do with this. But loyal fans can be used, rallied to support. Tess Gerritsen, a popular writer of medical thrillers, blogged her dismay at a critical review from a fellow named David Pitt. She declared that he had “slimed” her and posted extracts from a number of good reviews to “make myself feel better.” (The offending review can be seen, and judged as to slime factor, on amazon.com.) Reader comments on Gerritsen’s own site were entirely predictable, including, “We don’t care what anyone else says. We all love you,” and, “Apparently David Pitt’s middle name, which he doesn’t use in public for some reason, is SweatyArm.” Last I checked (online, of course) reviewer Pitt has not yet scored an endorsement deal with Right Guard despite this slam-dunk set-up.
A bigger bestseller, Patricia Cornwell, was even more direct. She blogged her unhappiness that so many amazon.com reader reviews of her newest book were negative. She suggested there was a conspiracy “by someone or a group of someones” (I’m really quoting here) and she encouraged her loyal readers to get out and balance things: “Right now I need my supporters. I am not asking you to write anything you do not mean. But why should hateful people be the only ones heard?” The blog then provided instructions how to register at amazon.com, how to post reviews, even how to label as “unhelpful” the negative ones.
The game is obviously changing dramatically.
Writers are on shaky ground if they want to be upset by readers feeling angry and posting their anger when authors are widely inviting that sense of pseudo-intimacy and intensity – and sometimes even employing their reader base as a weapon. “Release the fans!” seems to be the phrase that applies.
So, should young writers stay out of the blogging biz? Some will, but in general, I don’t think it is going to happen. The process is addictive, it offers lots of warm-and-fuzzy, and it is embedded by now in the culture. There is an expectation that writers will be available.
There’s another aspect. Imagine a young novelist querying his or her publisher’s marketing director: “So, what are the marketing plans for my book? What’s the, well, campaign going to focus on?” That marketing director (or junior publicist, more likely) is going to laugh. They are eventually going to recover from laughing and say, “Are you kidding me? With today’s budgets? Go blog! Get out there and blog yourself to flog your book!”
And they will. We are all online, to one degree or another, varying mainly in how much privacy we want to preserve, how much space between ourselves and our work, and between ourselves and our public. The dynamic between authors and readers is fundamentally altered by all of this. George Martin may end up having to post his daily workouts, down to calories burned, weights lifted, pulse rates before and after. With video, to prove it. It has probably been suggested to him already.
Guy Gavriel Kay’s most recent novel, Ysabel, won the 2008 World Fantasy Award.
It has often been said that since the Internet there has been less of a role for the professional reviewer, and that the democratization of opinion will render elite evaluation of the arts obsolete…But real democratization hasn’t happened, and we may never see what it really looks like: The system is too manipulable. Real power, in the online reviews, is held simply by those with the greatest resources or determination.
An interesting article from the Globe & Mail last week about the importance of starred reader reviews at online booksellers like Amazon.com and Chapters/Indigo, and how easily manipulable they are for some irate reader with time and a grudge, or with authors looking to artificially inflate their rating (or combat a one-star review…)
Food for thought in the digital age. You can follow the link and I’ve posted the text below.
– S.
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How a one-star review can sink a title
RUSSELL SMITH
From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
March 11, 2009 at 5:33 PM EDT
An e-mail went around from a colleague recently: Her book has just been published, and she would like friends to write as many good reviews on Amazon as they can, to get her star-rating up.
I remember when Amazon first came along, and authors first saw with a kind of disbelief what damage to your sales could be wrought by one aggressive idiot sitting in his mom’s basement in a town you’d never heard of. That guy – and it was usually a guy; guys are angrier – that guy could decide he didn’t like your book because you made some joking reference to The Lord of the Rings that insulted his entire life, or, more likely, he simply decided he didn’t like you personally, because of what you were wearing when he saw you on that one stupid television show that only a bag would go on anyway (it’s the host of the show who bugs him really, but really, only a bag would go on the show with that uberbag).
Before Amazon changed its policy, in 2005, to limit reviews to one per book per customer, that angry guy could actually, if he was determined, affect the sales of your book. He could post a furiously insulting one-star review of your book on Amazon, and then he could post another one, and then another one, all under the same name, all to change the average star-rating. He would do the same on Chapters-Indigo. So if you already had three five-star reviews up, he could single-handedly change your average rating to three. The fact that his attacks may have been misspelled or incoherent did not weaken their weight. In a perfect democracy like Amazon’s, ability – even today, where amateur reviewers compete for greater status by posting as many reviews as they can humanly write – has nothing to do with power.
Now at first, in the nineties, most of my colleagues would have been embarrassed to say that this free-for-all disturbed them. They would have dismissed amateur book ratings on the Internet as insignificant. Surely one good review in The Globe and Mail and another one in Quill and Quire and one interview on the CBC were going to be far more influential as advertising than this nonsense from nobodies who can’t spell? And we certainly didn’t want to be known to be planting reviews from our friends with the crass and ego-driven idea of boosting the ratings, or worse, writing reviews of our own books ourselves. I remember being disgusted by the idea.
This turned out to be embarrassingly naive. It is hard to measure empirically the effect on sales of bookstores’ star ratings, but we have all started to have the feeling that the star-ratings – the first thing you see, really, when you look up a book that you are thinking of buying – are actually far more influential than the reviews written by professionals in newspapers. Everyone in the publishing industry now agrees that newspaper reviews are less influential than they have ever been. The amateur reviews are for the most part so idiotic, so ideologically driven or otherwise missing the point, that to receive a low star-rating from them – particularly if one has had excellent reviews from professionals – has started to become offensive and maddening. So, if the star-ratings are so easy to manipulate, then we had better get started manipulating them.
And so now everybody does. You can’t post multiple reviews any more (although most of the ones posted for devious purposes before 2005 are still up there, wreaking havoc), and Amazon now requires that you have made a purchase to contribute a review. But there is nothing embarrassing any more about sending out a mass e-mail – to people you know have purchased something at Amazon – asking for help. In fact, marketing consultants suggest that authors launch concerted campaigns to raise their star-ratings on book sites, by sending out review copies of their book to 300 friends and asking that they, in return, post a one-line five-star review on Amazon. You might even send out some sample lines of your glowing review yourself, to make it easier for your friends. Obviously the authors with the greatest resources available to mount such a campaign – such as the ability to hire a PR firm to do it – will be the ones with the most glowing reviews.
What this means is that the supposedly democratic reader ratings – just from normal folks – that give supposedly neutral ratings to books on large booksellers’ sites are now largely meaningless. It is impossible to tell if they are genuine or the result of marketing. (Or the opposite, a smear campaign.) It has often been said that since the Internet there has been less of a role for the professional reviewer, and that the democratization of opinion will render elite evaluation of the arts obsolete. A lot of people think this is a good thing, that public opinion is a more telling indicator of value than elite opinion is. But real democratization hasn’t happened, and we may never see what it really looks like: The system is too manipulable. Real power, in the online reviews, is held simply by those with the greatest resources or determination.
Which means that there will be jobs for professional critics, even in the digital age, for some time to come.
I’ve been traveling the last week and away from internet for most of that time so I got this news a bit late but with no less excitement: my friends and fellow WOTFians Aliette de Bodard and Tony Pi are among the five nominees for the 2009 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer!
W00t!
These awards will be given alongside the Hugos at the 67th Worldcon, Anticipation, August 6-10, 2009 at the Palais de Congrès in Montreal, Québec.
I’m thrilled for both of these very fine writers (and not just because I know them… 😉 My only problem is in having to choose between them. Hmm…
The full list of this year’s Hugo nominees (including James Alan Gardner for his fabulous novella “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story”–which is getting my vote, no question) follows.
– S.
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2009 Hugo Awards Final Ballot
The Awards will be presented at the 67th Worldcon, Anticipation, August 6-10, 2009 at the Palais de Congrès in Montreal, Québec.
There were 799 total ballots cast. Finalists include:
Best Novel (639 Ballots Cast)
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK)
Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)
Best Novella (337 Ballots Cast)
“The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
“The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008)
“The Tear” by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
“True Names” by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2)
“Truth” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
Best Novelette (373 Ballots Cast)
“Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Jan 2008)
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2)
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
“The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner (Asimov’s Feb 2008)
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s Mar 2008)
Best Short Story (448 Ballots Cast)
“26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Jul 2008)
“Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick (Baen’s Universe Oct 2008)
“Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
“Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
“From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s Feb 2008)
Best Related Book (263 Ballots Cast)
Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan University Press)
Spectrum 15: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art by Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood Books)
The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold by Lillian Stewart Carl & John Helfers, eds. (Baen)
What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid (Beccon Publications)
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)
Best Graphic Story (212 Ballots Cast)
The Dresden Files: “Welcome to the Jungle” Written by Jim Butcher, art by Ardian Syaf (Del Rey/Dabel Brothers Publishing)
Girl Genius, Volume 8: “Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones” Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Fables: “War and Pieces” Written by Bill Willingham, pencilled by Mark Buckingham, art by Steve Leialoha and Andrew Pepoy, color by Lee Loughridge, letters by Todd Klein (DC/Vertigo Comics)
Schlock Mercenary: “The Body Politic” Written, art by Howard Tayler (The Tayler Corporation)
Serenity: “Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days” Written by Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, color by Michelle Madsen, cover by Jo Chen (Dark Horse Comics)
Y: The Last Man, Volume 10: “Whys and Wherefores” Written/created by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled/created by Pia Guerra, inked by Jose Marzan, Jr. (DC/Vertigo Comics)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form (436 Ballots Cast)
The Dark Knight Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, story; Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, screenplay; based on characters created by Bob Kane; Christopher Nolan, director (Warner Brothers)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Guillermo del Toro & Mike Mignola, story; Guillermo del Toro, screenplay; based on the comic by Mike Mignola; Guillermo del Toro, director (Dark Horse, Universal)
Iron Man Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, screenplay; based on characters created by Stan Lee & Don Heck & Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby; Jon Favreau, director (Paramount, Marvel Studios)
METAtropolis edited by John Scalzi; Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, and Karl Schroeder, writers (Audible Inc.)
WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form (336 Ballots Cast)
Lost: “The Constant”, Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof, writers; Jack Bender, director (Bad Robot, ABC studios)
Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Battlestar Galactica: “Revelations”, Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, writers; Michael Rymer, director (NBC Universal)
Doctor Who: “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead”, Steven Moffat, writer; Euros Lyn, director (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: “Turn Left”, Russell T. Davies, writer; Graeme Harper, director (BBC Wales)
Best Editor, Short Form (377 Ballots Cast)
Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams
Best Editor, Long Form (273 Ballots Cast)
Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
David G. Hartwell
Beth Meacham
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Best Professional Artist (334 Ballots Cast)
Daniel Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Donato Giancola
John Picacio
Shaun Tan
Best Semiprozine (283 Ballots Cast)
Clarkesworld Magazine edited by Neil Clarke, Nick Mamatas, & Sean Wallace
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
The New York Review of Science Fiction edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kris Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, & Kevin J. Maroney
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal
Best Fan Writer (291 Ballots Cast)
Chris Garcia
John Hertz
Dave Langford
Cheryl Morgan
Steven H Silver
Best Fanzine (257 Ballots Cast)
Argentus edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger edited by Guy H. Lillian III
The Drink Tank edited by Chris Garcia
Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
Best Fan Artist (187 Ballots Cast)
Alan F. Beck
Brad W. Foster
Sue Mason
Taral Wayne
Frank Wu
The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (288 Ballots Cast)
Aliette de Bodard*
David Anthony Durham*
Felix Gilman
Tony Pi*
Gord Sellar*
*(Second year of eligibility)
The 2009 Hugo Awards are for works first published in 2008 or works first published in 2008 in the US that were published in a previous year outside the US.
Just read this. If you’ve seen 60 Minutes even once you’re sure to wet yourself…
I never thought I’d hear the words “synthetic curmudgeon” used together in a sentence.
Now I can die happy.
– S.
Like Gandalf the White, like a revenant from the graveyard of failed SF publications, Realms of Fantasy returns!
News today from SF Scope (rapidly becoming THE source for breaking SF news) that Realms of Fantasy has been bought from its publisher Sovereign Media and will be taken over by Tir Na Nog Press, under the direction of publisher Warren Lapine. Shawna McCarthy and Doug Cohen have agreed to stay on in their current editorial capacities. Look for the first full-color issue in May (that means only one missed issue in total!)
You can find the full story here at SF Scope and at the temporary ROF website here.
Congratulations to all involved for pulling this one back from the brink.
– S.
So I confess I think Twitter is pretty stupid. A website where you can post 140-character messages…why? So the whole world can keep up with all the inanity of your daily life? It’s like Facebook if Facebook was ONLY your status message and none of the other cool and occasionally useful features. Needless to say, I don’t use Twitter.
But after reading this story I almost wish I did.
See, LeVar Burton was in Toronto the other day to film a piece for CBC and through Twitter met up with a bunch of random strangers at a bar in Yorkville for drinks and some casual conversation.
Just like that.
You can read all about it in the Globe & Mail here. LeVar Burton always seemed like a nice guy on TV and from what this article says it seems like he really is. (My favorite part of the YouTube video attached to the story is how he says he would “never try this State-side”. Hahaha! Go Canada!)
And the best part of the whole “Tweet-up” was that even though these people came to meet him and none of them knew anyone else there, LeVar Burton got them all talking and they stayed long after he left the bar.
Imagine: the internet facilitated people making friends in real life (or IRL, as the kids say…)
As a Pakled once said: “We need a Geordi. He will make us go.” Who knew that applied to social situations, too?
– S.