Jim Hines taunts the Intarwebz in a short but hilarious post (via Tobias Buckell).

George RR Martin had a brief surge of optimism about his progress on the next Ice and Fire novel. Let's hope he can carry the good vibes and finish that finicky beast of a book!

An unlikely tale that almost is too far-out to be non-fiction, The Luckiest or Unluckiest Man in the World? at the Times Online (via Jed Hartman's blog). The story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, double A-bomb victim... Well worth reading!

I stumbled upon this cool little blog: http://blogoficeandfire.blogspot.com. It's the record of someone reading the novel(s) for the first time. The blogger, a certain Jason, has a nice down-to-earth style and tone that is quite funny when contrasted to the deadly seriousness of much of George RR Martin's writing... Enjoy.

After the long period of inactivity I plan to get back on track with my blogging service - and here's some more stuff to keep my visitors surf-satisfied:

Jay Lake is back in Cancerland and writes about with his usual openhearted candor >> I really feel for him and hope he gets better soon. He writes wonderful short stories and cool novels, is a blogging voice I have come to rely on, and has worked so hard this year to drive off the Fear that this is just utter unfairness exemplified. But there it is.

British SF author Ian Sales lists his personal SF Film Top 50 in response to Time Out's flawed list >> His list includes many of my own favorites and hints at some interesting films I will have to dig up. And yes, Blade Runner, Alien and Metropolis are on his list...

From the Guide to Literary Agents blog, a list of the top 10 things that make a Literary Agent *stop* reading your manuscript. They're the obvious things, really, but it's nice to have them all together. Useful for framing purposes. That blog entry should come with a downloadable picture frame and wall-mounting instructions.

Just wanted to point out this link to Futurismic, where you can find some interesting news on the US-Mexico border protection strategy. It sounds eerily similar to what I describe in my first short story... I guess I better get it sold somewhere before it becomes completely outdated!

>>Excellent article on the BBC News site: Can science fiction keep up with modern times?
They asked this pertinent question to some of my All-Time-Favorite SF Authors; Nay, SF Authors I Adore and Wellnigh Worship in My Fanboydom: Ken MacLeod and Iain (M.) Banks. Also answering the question are Paul Cornell and Ian Watson. It's a bit short but nice to see these guys interviewed on a single page!

From the Spacewriter's Ramblings, this beautiful picture: Sand Dunes on Mars. The pictures the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been sending back have stunning in their high-resolutional brilliance. The HIRISE instrument in particular, which generates 3D images, has produced classic images that make you feel as though you're almost there. Of course, you're still at least 56 million km away (probably a lot more these days as this was the closest we got to Mars in 60,000 years or so, and that was in 2003).

Not much writing or blogging getting done these past few days. There's a simple reason: real life has stepped up and swept me to highs and lows both:

• my lovely wife defended her Ph.D. dissertation Monday night, so there was quite a build-up to that. She did great of course, and I'm now happily married to a doctor - albeit not a medical one :-)


• at the same time my grandmother took a turn for the worse. She's in hospital now, we'll see how she recovers. As she's suffering from oncoming dementia, it's difficult to tell how well she will cope.


• the day job is extremely busy and demanding.

Still, some links for the day:

>> Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing spotted a story about a group of eighteen-year-olds who sent a helium balloon 100,000ft up (just over 30km), right to the edge of outer space; their simple craft had a basic Nikon digital camera which survived the drop (at its extreme height the balloon popped because of the too-low air pressure) and brought home amazing pictures of its rise over the Barcelona area, up into space, and back down again.
Did some digging of my own and the full story with lots of pics and info is here: Meteotek 08 (this is the students' project blog in Catalan).

>> Mind-boggling wordage to be seen over at Jay Lake's. He's updated his bibliography. He has sold 240(!) short stories and written 8 novels so far. Blimey.

Bad Astronomy has a post on science coverage by the media, science education (all in the USA) and how it relates to the sorry state of scientific understanding displayed by many citizens. The research and articles cover the US situation only, but I'm afraid it applies to much of Western Europe as well; although perhaps just a little less so.

The post links to an study (PDF here) that illustrates just how bad the situation is. Some striking things that popped up: in many media outlets, pseudo-science hogwash gets the same attention as real science (e.g. in evolution vs intelligent design series, or in the many "docufiction" series produced by Hollywood for news channels). Not surprising that people start believing idiotic theories if they hear about them on tv every day.

The discussion on Bad Astronomy was sparked by the terrible results of a national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences (phone survey of 1,000 people in December 2008). The lowdown:

• Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.


• Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.


• Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water. (the survey allowed answers between 65-75% as okay)


• Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

Quite stunning to see this. 41% of Americans think humans and dinosaurs coexisted? Oh my.

As I noted above, I would think, or hope rather, that the situation here in Belgium is better. Then again, on second thoughts, it might not be. We don't get pelted with conservative Christian ID propaganda, and science is not considered as "evil" or "anti-religious" by most of our religious tendencies. On the other hand, evolution is vehemently disavowed by our large Muslim minority, and recent debates on evolution have shown that that is likely to become a problem in the future.

I can only try to stimulate my own kids to question their environment, to probe it in an inquisitive and rational manner. So far that seems to be working quite well, as evidenced by my four-year-old's constant questions that I find myself almost unable to answer... How is steel made? How does electricity work? What am I made of? Why is electricity dangerous? Where do the photos go once we've printed them, are they in the computer still?
And so on. Challenging, for sure, but also good fun trying to come up with answers that are understandable at his age, but not too "bad science-ish".

Via - I first got this off Jay Lake's link salad.

A couple of sugary-sweet links for you sweet-tooths out there:

>> The Perfect Job as according to Neil Gaiman
Did I mention that Neil Gaiman is the author of some of my favorite books of all time?
Not only did I have something of a revelation watching Neverwhere on the Beeb when I was what, fourteen or so - the revelation being that fantasy did not have to be all-out in-your-face elves and orcs in order to be deeply interesting; no, he also wrote American Gods and Anansi Boys, two books that are thematically related and that left a deep mark on my soul. Underneath the light-hearted tongue-in-cheekness of Gaiman's writing lies a vein of sparkling insight in the core fabric of real life.
Anyway: Gaiman points us to his favorite job - let's just say it involves Iceland and elves. Hilarious but true...

>> Did Ambrose Pierce invent the emoticon?
On William Gibson's blog - yes, another one of my literary heroes - an interesting snippet about how the emoticon might have been invented as early as... 1912?

I promised some thoughts on Gibson. What has always appealed to me in his work is the absolute minimalism that characterizes his style. Using short, terse sentences, he somehow manages to both drive the plot forward at breakneck speed and to paint an intensely realistic picture of his near-future/future-present environments. And his short blog posts speak of this very same talent: sometimes no more than a few words and a link, sometimes a little worked, they all fit into his piercing analysis of our modern age.

>> John Scalzi on "Unfilmable" movies
Interesting article on books or comics that are (were) thought to be unfilmable, yet have been turned into blockbuster/failed (strike what does not apply) flicks regardless.
I also learned from this post that A Song of Fire and Ice (by George RR Martin, I'm currently reading volume 3) has been optioned by HBO. That sounds interesting!

So, some yummy links from the interwebs:

Charles Stross gives us the lowdown on the coming century in his FAQ >> Highly interesting questions are answered in a very straightforward manner. I almost completely concur with Charles' analysis of our near future...

Jay Lake's new novel Escapement is released to the masses in paperback.

"Lively and thought-provoking...Lake effectively anneals steampunk with geo-mechanical magic in an allegorical matrix of empire building and Victorian natural science." --"Publishers Weekly" (starred review) on "Escapement"

I really liked Mainspring, so I'll have to go for Escapement as well. Besides, Jay seems like a great guy judging from his blogodentity; so go out and shop!

Jed Hartman reports on the flood of submissions they're seeing at Strange Horizons >> Is this symptomatic of the collapse of a number of other fiction markets? Is this because they are one of the few "pro" markets who accept electronic submissions, which makes them much more accessible for the novice writer?

The SF Site is always a good source for news on the SFF publishing front: they spit out good and in-depth reviews on almost everything that is published in the SFF world, and they've now published their own "best of year" list for 2008.

Read the list here.

I'm sad to say that I have only read one of the ten novels listed on that page. I really must read more... I did read Neil Gaiman's the Graveyard Book. And I really, really loved that. I'm a big Gaiman fan. For me, he's perhaps the best SFF author around today.

As for the other books on the list, I'll have to check a few of those. Scalzi's Zoe's Tale is one I look forward to picking up - I really loved his Old Man's War, and I'm a regular on his blog as well.

Joe Abercrombie sounds interesting; I plan to put his work on my to-read list as well. I'm really enjoying the gritty world of George RR Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series, but I've taken a break on that series (don't want to get over-exposed because that would reduce my enjoying of the series; also he's still working on it so there's no hurry!). Perhaps Abercrombie would be a good fit for that hole in my fantasy reading slot :-)

On a more personal note, I need to finish some last edits on The Snow Fell Fast and Final, and then I'm going to officially call it finished and get on to something new. Something entirely different is playing around in my head, some with lots action, bushfires, and aboriginals. Yummy!

Excellent read here:

Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to Predict the Future >> Gary Westfahl on predictions of "the future" in Science Fiction literature, and why the predictions are almost always dead wrong. Very interesting, and quite along the lines of my own thinking when I construct the near-future world in which my stories seem to naturally take place.

Today's healthy dose of linkage:

Ireland's most wanted reckless driver has been caught >> A wonderful story I heard this morning from a few Irish colleagues here in the office, but apparently it's also on the BBC today [via Jay Lake and said colleagues].

Scalzi on writing media tie-ins (i.e. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica,...) novels >> A bit discouraging, this defense of the media tie-in novel by blogger-extraordinaire Scalzi. Especially the bits where he mentions how hard it is to make any money writing SFF. Perhaps I ought to rethink this whole venture?

A lengthy, interesting post on shifting POV (point of view) by Jacqueline Lichtenberg over on Alien Djinn Romance >> haven't read all the way through this article, but I will do just that later tonight. A lot to learn about the craft of writing on this blog. Thanks to the peeps at OWW for pointing this out.

Two quickie links for you writerly people out there:

::: Nathan Bransford hosts a discussion on writerly auto-terminology
Nathan is a SFF-representing literary agent working at Curtis Brown, and he has a highly interesting blog (to which I subscribe). He sometime asks pertinent questions to the sizable crowd of authors, writers, aspiring writers and fellow agents who frequent his journal. This week's question sparked quite a debate:

So. When do you start calling yourself "a writer?", as in, "I'm a writer, please go easy on me with the bad news."

When you finish a novel?
When you spend a certain amount of time doing it?
When you decide it's what you want to do?
When you have an agent?
Upon publication of your first novel?

And what about "author?"

::: Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy, General Useful Information & Other Opinionated Comments
You've probably seen this before, but I came across some broken links to this interesting list of Do's and Don'ts for new writers in the SFF field; so I decided to repost it here.
Actually it's more of a list of Don'ts only, but it's still really useful. Vonda McIntyre knows her stuff, she has quite a few SFnal novels to her name, though I have to admit not having read any of her work. I'll have to keep an eye out for her work. As to the Pitfalls, a recent crit of my latest short story highlighted a flaw that is listed in the Pitfalls: the Expository Lump of Dialogue. I need to work on that...

Just stumbled on an interesting rant by Jetse de Vries (formerly of Interzone, now the man behind Outshine twittermag and the Shine Positive SF anthology). He starts off rambling about national postal services who screw over their small private customers and focus on large commercial contracts instead.
I very much sympathize, because mailing off manuscripts to overseas publishers is something I haven't even started doing yet, because of the cost and the hassle involved. As long I have online submissions options I will pursue those first.

Of course, Jetse being Jetse, he turns the rant into a valid point on the future of SFF magazine publishing...

SF magazines are one of those 'small' customers: sending out a few thousand (let alone a few hundred) is not enough to get a bulk discount. So the postal rates for them go up, considerably, as well. Therefore, SF fiction print magazines are doomed (or more doomed than they already were): mailing costs will go up, and sending the magazines through commercial companies is even more expensive.

Read the complete article on Jetse's blog, In the Plane of the Ecliptic

Copying a common practice around the web here, with a light and fast link salad for your consumption. Only two ingredients today, mind you, as I've other stuff to attend to.

The famous Drake equation has been re-evaluated with the latest data >> Futurismic has an interesting post on the latest calculations for the Drake Equation, which is an estimate of the number of intelligent species in our universe. In a few words: the recent slew of planet discoveries has drastically raised the number of likely intelligent species out there, but the chances of ever encountering them locally remain unimaginably small.

TLOTR retold as a comic strip with RPG players controlling the protagonists >> And old one but a good one, if you ask me. Of course, this only makes sense if you have ever played role-playing games yourself. But if you have, some of this is very recognazible and quite funny.