Posts Tagged ‘SF’

Some Recent Reading: Michael Chabon and Adam-​​Troy Castro

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I thor­oughly enjoyedThe Yiddish Policeman’s Union .  The com­bi­na­tion of alt-​​history, exotic-​​to-​​me jew­ish and Alaskan cul­ture, and noir detec­tive thriller was just the kind of thing I needed to read right now.   But more than the con­cept, I was engaged by the char­ac­ters of Landsman and Berko Schemets.   Science fic­tion has been accused of not hav­ing mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, and I sup­port that opin­ion.  I can name the num­ber of mem­o­rable SF/​F char­ac­ters on one two hands.  It takes both my hands and feet just to name the mem­o­rable char­ac­ters from Dickens.  There’s a def­i­nite dif­fer­ence there. For the strong char­ac­ters alone, I’m inclined to say this is more lit fic than sci fic.

The sec­ond book I read in October was Emmissaries for the Dead by Adam-​​Troy Castro.  This was a free­bie at WorldCon, snatched up at the same party I got the Chabon book.  I for­get the pub­lisher hold­ing that party, but I owe JJA for get­ting me in.  It was the best event I attended at the con, and not just because I got eight books out of it.  I had some nice con­ver­sa­tions with some really sharp people.

As to the book itself, it was trans­par­ent to me that this is a fresh­man out­ing.  I’ve been read­ing Castro’s short fic­tion for some time, but I don’t think he has found his foot­ing in the novel realm yet.  I picked this one up because it too had a noir murder-​​mystery pitch on the back cover, but with the added appeal of a strange con­structed ecosys­tem with sen­suwunda appeal.  Unfortunately, the narrator’s per­son­al­ity grated on me.  Andrea Cort, but I don’t know that I will remem­ber her six months from now. I don’t want to go into too much detail about this book because I would rather you read some of it your­self and decide whether it’s for you than go on my opin­ion.  It undoubt­edly suf­fers from fol­low­ing so closely my read­ing of the Chabon, which is a lit­tle unfair.  But I fin­ished it, which is more than I can say about the last half-​​dozen SF nov­els I’ve tried to read.

Roundbottom Research Publication

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Harkening back to my post about crazy uncon­ven­tial zine ideas, and all this talk and thought about relaunch­ing the Fortean Bureau, has led me to give some seri­ous thought to try­ing some­thing very very different.

Roundbottom is my core project right now, but I have a strong desire to launch a new ‘zine. At the very least, I am going to pub­lish a few sto­ries in the Fortean Bureau for­mat, but what if… what if I cre­ated a meta pub­li­ca­tion like the Surreal Guide to Botany or the Disease Guide from a year or so back–but as a kind of naturalist’s research pub­li­ca­tion.  Nothing stuffy and dry like real sci­en­tific mag­a­zines, but basi­cally pay­ing other peo­ple to write posts like Dr. Roundbottom.  I’d accept sub­mis­sions from both artists and writ­ers. I’ll pro­vide a forum for artists and writ­ers to team up, if they want to make a joint pro­duc­tion of an article/​piece.

Art would be allowed in any for­mat.  Not every­one has to do the pho­tog­ra­phy thing that I’m doing.  But the basic idea behind all of this is that each arti­cle is writ­ten by another nat­u­ral­ist in their own world, sim­i­lar or dif­fer­ent to Dr. Roundbottom, but at least pass­ably steampunk.

To start, I’d offer $50 a post (not longer than 2000 words) for the writ­ing and $50 for the art.  You’d be free to sell both any­where, and we will pro­vide a link to sell prints at your print store for artists.   We’d have an option to pay more at the end of the year to pub­lish a print edi­tion of the research notes.

Finally, and I’d be doing the same, you have to allow–and I’m not sure how to legally for­mal­ize this–references to be made to your work and char­ac­ters in other submissions/​posts.  For instance, Dr. Roundbottom him­self might ref­er­ence your paper and link to it while talk­ing about some­thing sim­i­lar in his world.  And you’ll be able to do the same with Roundbottom.  This kind of shar­ing isn’t cov­ered under any kind of Creative Commons license that I know of, so per­haps I would need some odd con­tract legal­ize.  I should talk to the Creative Commons peo­ple and see if they have suggestions.

Would any­one sub­mit to some­thing like this?  I’m basi­cally think­ing about the com­ments that hap­pen already on Roundbottom and for­mal­iz­ing a way for writ­ers and artists to par­tic­i­pate in this fash­ion and get paid for it. I under­stand that it would be dif­fi­cult to sell any writ­ing writ­ten directly for htis project to any­thing else, so that’s one flaw that i have to con­sider.  Please pro­vide your thoughts and com­ments!  Would you sub­mit some­thing to this kind of pub­li­ca­tion?  What rules do you think would need to be made?

A Request for Clockpunk Suggestions

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Hello all.  As you may know, I’ve been updat­ing Dr. Roundbottom on a weekly basis for some time now. (If you missed the new post yes­ter­day, be sure to go check it out).   The site seems to have matured itself and as far as I can tell is mostly sta­ble.  I have the most awe­some com­menters in the world. I don’t even know who half of them are.  Keep it up, mys­tery commenters.

My ques­tion is this:  what other fea­tures could I add to the site?  Any basic func­tion­al­ity that you would like to see that is missing?

If you have sug­ges­tions for things you want to see/​read more con­tent about, please share that with me too.

I am mak­ing this my sole project out­side of my day job (and a cou­ple of clients I sup­port)  for the forsee­able future.  So any sug­ges­tions on things I could add or do dif­fer­ently would be appreciated.

Ray Bradbury & Prunes

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Doesn’t he hate being called a SF writer?

New Roundbottom: The Carrier Snail (And Desktops!)

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Good morn­ing! It’s Monday, and that means Dr. Roundbottom has updated his web­site with yet another sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery. I’m par­tic­u­larly happy with the work on this entry, pho­to­graph­i­cally speak­ing. The Carrier Snail is quite a nice pho­tonic cap­ture if I do say so myself.

As a teaser for the kind of thing you can expect to receive as a mem­ber of the Roundbottom Society, I’ve cre­ated a set of desk­top back­grounds of this week’s capture.

Desktop Backgrounds

800x600
1024x768
1440x900
1600x1200
1680x1050
1900x1200

If you have a res­o­lu­tion that isn’t listed, drop me a line and I’ll make you one in your desk­top resolution.

In other Roundbottom news, we had a record­ing ses­sion over the week­end for the first Roundbottom pod­cast.  Thanks to the help of our friend Nate Periat, this thing is going to sound about 100x bet­ter than I ever expected it to.  You can most likely look for­ward to hear­ing that next week!

Alternate History Story Idea for Someone

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This is not an idea for me, but for some­one else.  Write an alt his­tory where the point of diver­gence is that the fol­low­ers of Presbyter Arius of Alexandra win out over the adher­ents of St. Athanasius the Great.  How do you think that would change history?

SF: Mind Meld– Changing SF

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I was asked, along with the rest of the authors in Seeds of Change to make sug­ges­tions for change in the field of sci­ence fic­tion.  Regular read­ers can prob­a­bly guess exactly what I said, but check it out and see what you think.   Not as rev­o­lu­tion­ary as I might have been in my youth, but still call­ing for big changes.

There are a lot of things I wouldn’t mind see­ing changed in sci­ence fic­tion, but they mostly revolve around grow­ing the audi­ence. I am most inter­ested in cre­at­ing ways for peo­ple who would like sci­ence fic­tion short fic­tion to learn that it even exists. At one time, the defunct mag­a­zine SF Age had nearly 175,000 in sales of a sin­gle issue. The largest cir­cu­la­tion of any mag­a­zine is barely over 20,000 today and has been falling for nearly a decade.

That’s prob­a­bly the last thing I’ll say on the issue of the mag­a­zines for a while.  I’m going to focus my energy on get­ting my work inside of them, instead of wor­ry­ing about sav­ing them.  It’s wasted energy at this point and has become just another way for me to focus on the wrong things.

New Roundbottom Live

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The con­clud­ing chap­ter of the Case of the Steam Wraith  is now live on the Dr. Rounbottom website.

This four-​​part story has had some bumps, and if I wasn’t writ­ing with­out a net, I can see some edits that I would make.  I’m going to try to write these things far­ther in advance of post­ing in the future so that I can smooth out some of the incon­sis­ten­cies that develop.  It’s far eas­ier to write one-​​shot obser­va­tional posts than the sto­ry­line based posts.   I made some strides towards that goal of get­ting ahead this week­end, design­ing a new cap­ture and we’ll hope­fully get a pod­cast made this week as well.

One prob­lem with writ­ing the posts in advance is that I like hav­ing Roundbottom being respon­sive to the com­ments.  one of the things that sets this project aside from the usual fic­tion ser­ial is this aspect of involv­ing the input of the audi­ence.   If you weren’t aware of that–Roundbottom does inter­act with his read­ers, so if you want to jump into the story, you’re per­fectly able to do so.  Just start post­ing com­ments.  Make up a char­ac­ter for your­self if you like.  I’m not sure who my com­menters are because of the aliases, and it’s a blast to read what they have to say on things.

I hope you enjoy!

New Roundbottom: To Bind a Steam Wraith

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Another Monday, and another Roundbottom post has gone live over at clock​punk​.com. This week, the good Doctor for­mu­lates a plan to recap­ture the dan­ger­ous wraith.

We’re hard at work around here on more Roundbottom con­tent. The first pod­cast might very well be ready in the next week or two. My sound engi­neer Nate sent me a cou­ple of files over the week­end that were great. The pod­cast is going to have fan­tas­tic engi­neer­ing. Episodes will be short, run­ning only 2–3 min­utes most likely. But those 2–3 min­utes will be packed with aural delights, I tell you.

Dr. Roundbottom needs your help to find his audi­ence. Please con­sider link­ing to the site if you haven’t done so already.