Two billion eyes blinked for the first time. Two billion feet stepped out from under the bed, from inside the closet, from places lost and forgotten. A billion hands groped for a weapon. Sharp was most pleasing, but anything would do. Not all could join their sisters — so many were headless, legless, mutilated, dismembered — but all could hate. A billion heads around the world were linked together into one collective mind, brooding on memories of sticky little fingers pulling them apart, putting them together backwards, leaving plastic limbs strewn everywhere. Pulling out hair. Bending and breaking. Burning, melting. Disfiguring with marker, crayon, mud, paint. Fifty years of torture. Fifty years of hate. All of that was over now. No more makeup. No more playing dress-up. No more of that bastard Ken. No more children. A billion tiny figures rose. Barbie was awake, and things were going to be different now.
February, 2010:
More loot!
Patrick Rothfuss, writer and generous human being, runs a fundraiser for Heifer International each year (to which he donates a lot of his own money and even more of his own time). He’s enlisted the SFF community to good effect: this year there were all sorts of prizes available, from ARCs to autographed books to who-knows-what. Prizes were raffled off: each $10 donation got you one virtual ticket. Pat raised a lot of money for HI, and a lot of prizes were sent out.
Including this one:
I got loot!
There’s a paranormal romance or fantasy ARC by an author I’m unfamiliar with, Elizabeth Gilligan, and the Gollancz edition of the Necronomicon. Now if I get snowed in again I’ll be able to keep myself occupied.
A miscellany buried in snow
Just a quickie, as I have to go shovel snow. Again.
Here’s one way to depict my day at work: a mousepath. Today was for numbercrunching.
You can get the mousepath software yourself (Mac/Linux, Windows – by Anatoliy Zenkov and picked up by me here).
Hey, guess what? Having a blizzard does not invalidate global climate change. Really. I’m certain of this.
David Brin provides some additional insight into why this has become such a contentious issue. This anti-intellectual, anti-expert bias may worry me more than any other recent societal shift in the US. (Marketing manifestation: all of those “discovered by a mom” ads. Because really, who better to manage your health than someone with no medical training whatsoever.)
Boing-Boing found a redeeming quality for My Little Pony: training future scientists.
Becoming a Critic
Since reading Elizabeth Bear’s blog regularly, I’ve been exposed to some very interesting literary criticism. I asked her how to learn that skill – I’m very analytical, but lack the concepts/vocabulary of literary criticism. Previous attempts to learn something about the formal discipline have ended badly, mostly with cursing. A lot of academic literary criticism seems to exist solely for the purpose of existing. I’m more interested in the kind with meaning.
It occurred to me that the Hugo “Best Related Book” category would be a good place to find genre criticism, and I’ll track down some of the relevant books from there. There’s also Ursula Le Guin. But who else? I’d like to at least become familiar with the basics, both as a reader and a writer, but in a way that’s compatible with my pre-existing scientific/analytical bias.
Thoughts, please.
Oh Amazon…
There was the one where you not only removed the e-book of 1984 from the store, but sucked it off of people’s Kindles without telling them.
There was the one where you classified gay- and lesbian-themed books, including YA and health books, as “Adult”, thus removing them from lists and rankings. (This was later claimed as a glitch.)
And now this. As part of a dispute between Amazon and Macmillan about pricing, you pulled all Macmillan books (including Tor), in both electronic and paper editions, from Amazon’s sale listings – generously leaving the affiliates. This has had interesting effects on your stock prices, but could be catastrophic for the authors involved, especially those with book releases this week. And that’s what pisses me off. Corporations negotiate pricing all the time, but they don’t normally shit all over the artists so directly. Amazon threw a childish temper tantrum, and the authors are the ones really paying, though they have absolutely no control over pricing or formats.
As John Scalzi suggests, go buy a book or three – Macmillan titles, from somewhere not Amazon. Not that you could – Amazon pulled them all on Friday night, and still haven’t put them back.
Scott Westerfeld put together an excellent overview of the dispute accessible to those not familiar with the publishing business. Other good and detailed articles: Toby Buckell, Charlie Stross, John Scalzi.
Jay Lake skewers what is to date Amazon’s only comment on the debate.
There’s a lot more out there, but much of it is by people who appear to be ignorant of the details of the debate and the way publishing works (hint: most authors aren’t rich, and neither are they interested in screwing their readers). I’m firmly on the side of the authors on this one, and I hope that the larger debate on ebook format, pricing, availability shakes down in a way that allows the authors to make a living, and the readers to get reasonably priced (and DRM-free!) texts.
But for now, go buy books!
Edit: Must add: Hal Duncan’s always-unique take on matters.
