Posts Tagged ‘websites’

Eight Less Known Websites for SF Readers and Fans

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Everyone knows a dozen author web­sites to read, and the indus­try blogs that tell you about the lat­est movies and TV shows. But what if you’re inter­ested in hear­ing about out­landish ideas you might pil­fer for a story? Or maybe you just want a quick kick of reality-​​based sen­sawunda. What web­sites to do you turn to for that? Try this list for starters.

1. Futurismic

Almost solely the hard work of Paul Graham Raven, Futurismic picks up on the near-​​future sci­ence news faster than any­one else I read at the moment. More impor­tantly, Futurismic is not afraid to con­tem­plate the ram­i­fi­ca­tions and impli­ca­tions of new tech devel­op­ments. Paul has the mind of a great sci­ence fic­tion writer in the mak­ing, I think. I some­times wish he’d spend less time on Futurismic and more time writ­ing short stories.

Futurismic also fea­tures reg­u­lar guest columns–one of which is by Brenda Cooper on trends in futur­ism. Those are well worth a read as well.

2. Curious Expeditions

For a lapsed world trav­eler such as myself, Curious Expeditions is a real treat. Written by Michelle Enemark and Dylan Thuras , the site doc­u­ments weird and obscure loca­tions around the globe. Their fix­a­tion on cab­i­nets of curiosi­ties have given me many ideas for the Dr. Roundbottom project.

Their pho­tos are always visu­ally rich and unlike any­thing else you will find else­where. It’s a source of his­tor­i­cal sensawunda.

3. Post Secret

Post Secret is a project in which peo­ple mail anony­mous post cards with secrets in to the project cre­ator. Each week, he posts a new batch of cards.

This one has almost noth­ing to do with spec­u­la­tive fic­tion exactly, but for a writer, it’s an amaz­ing insight into the inner lives of other human beings. I always come away from the Sunday posts of secrets feel­ing a lit­tle more wise and a lit­tle changed by the expe­ri­ence. I can’t say that I’ve used any of the secrets directly in my work, but read­ing the site is def­i­nitely fur­ther­ing my under­stand­ing of how peo­ple work in a more gen­eral sense.

4. Sentient Developments

The project of Canadian futur­ist George Dvorsky, this site brings me buck­ets of news about robot­ics and research in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. It does take a bit of a cred­i­bil­ity hit by pay­ing lip-​​service to the dis­cred­ited “aquatic ape” the­ory in my opin­ion, but I can under­stand the appeal of such wacky the­o­ries. Regardless, it’s a great source of sci­ence news.

5. Douglas Rushkoff

Here’s another blog by an eclec­tic and inter­est­ing thinker. Douglas leans left polit­i­cally, so you may not be inter­ested in his cur­rent fix­a­tion about tak­ing the world back from cor­po­ra­tions, but he’s been a great source for me of off-​​the-​​beaten-​​path eco­nomic news. About every­thing else, Ruskoff is inter­ested, it seems to me, in the future of human­ity. This can be a lit­tle pub­lic­ity heavy at times, as he is sell­ing a book, but when he shares an arti­cle, it’s almost always worth a read.

6. Strange Maps

There have been a lot of very, very strange maps drawn through­out his­tory. This blog brings you scans of the some of the stranger ones. Not much else to it, and that’s why I love it.

7. Street Use

This is another sim­ple site. It doc­u­ments with pho­tographs the unusual inven­tions and mod­i­fi­ca­tions of off-​​the-​​shelf tech in 3rd world coun­tries. They quote William Gibson in their expla­na­tion: “The street finds its own use for things.”

Possibly a great web­site if you’re writ­ing post-​​apocalyptic SF.

8. Centauri Dreams

Interested in space explo­ration? This blog by the Tau Zero Foundation is all about that, and tan­gen­tially often about the notion of alien life. I some­times find it an odd read, but it’s def­i­nitely rich with SF mate­r­ial for the writer and afficionado.

So, what are some sites that you think are good brain fod­der for the SF type?

Reader Questions: How Do I Decide How Much Work to (Self) Publish Online?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Let’s kick off reader ques­tion answer week with a real doozy. CDThomas asks:

I don’t have a web­site or blog. And I don’t know if I want one.

I under­stand if I’d cre­ate a blog for nat­ter­ing on, but most of that itch gets scratched by Twitter. I’m not much of an essay writer, because I think I find oth­ers who say what I’m think­ing bet­ter than I would.

That leaves self-​​promotion, pos­si­bly, of my fic­tion (plays, poems, short sto­ries). If I don’t want to go the full Doctorow and Creative-​​Commons license every­thing, then how do I decide how much of my work to pub­lish online?

I’m not going to be the type of writer who obses­sively searches for online theft, but I need to find a way of talk­ing about what I’m doing before I’m pub­lished reg­u­larly by mag­a­zines, online or oth­er­wise — learn­ing how to be part of a writ­ing SF/​F/​H com­mu­nity, I guess, but with­out my ques­tions get­ting lost on web boards.

First of all, I don’t think every writer needs a web­site or a blog. Anyone who says they do is prob­a­bly sell­ing some­thing (to para­phrase The Princess Bride). Now, I sell web design ser­vices, but I would never try to sell a writer on a blog/​website if they didn’t have any inter­est in main­tain­ing or updat­ing it. It sounds like you know what you like, and that’s Twitter. That’s great! You can do a lot to build a rep­u­ta­tion and an audi­ence with just that ser­vice. I tend to rec­om­mend a more com­pre­hen­sive strat­egy. I think of it as being like fish­ing. You can fish all day in one spot if you want, and you’ll catch fish. You’ll catch fish if you change up your lure and move around too. Now, read­ers aren’t fish, but poten­tial readers/​fans can be found in a lot of dif­fer­ent places. Unlike fish­ing, you can be in mul­ti­ple places at one time. So it’s more like hav­ing a cou­ple of poles in the water.

Okay, that metaphor is stretched to the break­ing point. Moving on.

I used to blog rarely, think­ing basi­cally that I didn’t have any­thing unique to say. But I don’t think that’s true of any­one, espe­cially any­one who writes. Why do we write if we’re not com­pelled do to do so by a need to share some­thing we feel is unique? Everyone has some­thing unique to say. Maybe not on every topic or issue, but every­one has within them, in my opin­ion, the poten­tial to write a great and grip­ping blog. Sometimes this involves liv­ing a very pub­lic life, shar­ing your deep­est embar­rass­ments. Sometimes, it means shar­ing the lit­tle bit of knowl­edge about writ­ing you’ve gar­nered. But if you’re sure, no big deal. You don’t need to have one. Nobody’s going to order you to have one.

Now, how do you decide what fic­tion to release online if you don’t want to go the full Creative Commons route and release absolutely every­thing? My opin­ion is, unless you’re really, really cer­tain of it, don’t release it online unless it’s been pub­lished some­where. I’ve writ­ten pos­si­bly a hun­dred short sto­ries. But only about a dozen are avail­able for any­one to read out­side of my close friends and fam­ily, and only one of those was self-​​published online.

It’s hard to build authen­tic­ity as a self-​​publisher. It’s not impos­si­ble, but the thing is, there is a lot of stuff to read online. People are look­ing for rea­sons to key in on things to read, and just throw­ing your writ­ing out there all on its own can be a very hard way of build­ing authen­tic­ity. I’m not say­ing it’s impos­si­ble, but I per­son­ally wouldn’t want to go that route.

Now, say you’ve sold a cou­ple of sto­ries. You might want to release some of them online, but let’s back­track and remem­ber that we don’t have a web­site. How do we release fic­tion online and get it out there to be read if we don’t have a web­site? Well, you can throw up a quick free web­site with a ser­vice like Blogger or LiveJournal. Or you can sell your fic­tion as down­loads with Fictionwise. Or you could upload it to Scribd and take your chances. There are a lot of ways to put your work out there with­out hav­ing a web­site, but you take your chances with each one of them. It’s really, really hard to get peo­ple to pay atten­tion to you online.

I find that it’s best to try online reprint sales first.  Might as well get some money from it, right?  That’s more respectabil­ity than just pub­lish­ing it online your­self.  Most sites will archive it for a long time.  The pod­casts like Escape Pod, Drabblecast, and Starship Sofa  are another great way to get your fic­tion online in basi­cally a per­ma­nent fash­ion.  The main dif­fer­ence here is that some­one else is lend­ing cred­i­bil­ity to your work by select­ing it for their pub­li­ca­tion, as opposed to you putting it up on your per­sonal web­site.  If one place lik­ing a story gives cred, imag­ine that two places means even more cred.  Same prin­ci­ple behind the Year’s Best antholo­gies, I think.

As to how much of your work should you get online?  That’s up to you and I can’t give you a sat­is­fac­tory answer.  I per­son­ally try to get every sin­gle story online via the ways I’ve listed above.  If I can’t sell some­thing as a reprint or pod­cast, I’ll for­mat it nicely on my web­site and throw it up myself.  Especially if I want to do a cool illus­tra­tion to go along with it.  Once you’ve made all the money you can from a story, why not put it out there for free?  Stories are dis­pos­able most of the time.  If you write a story so great that you can resell it dozens of times, then, well, some­one will post it online for you whether you want them to or not.  Try Googling the title of a clas­sic SF short story, and you’re likely to find a boot­leg copy online on some poorly policed .edu site as much as any­thing else.  Might as well be the per­son to be in con­trol of it, right?

The last aspect of the ques­tion above deals with how to become a part of the com­mu­nity and take part in a con­ver­sa­tion with­out being lost amongst the noise. This is very easy. I’ll break it out in bul­let points.

  • Pick four or five blogs or forums and haunt them. Check them every day if you can.
  • Provide help­ful answers to ques­tions. Key word here is help­ful. Don’t be neg­a­tive or crit­i­cal unless it’s asked for. Talk about your­self and your work only if it relates directly to the topic at hand. Be pos­i­tive. Try to find a unique per­spec­tive on the posts you com­ment on.
  • Do that over and over again. You’ll get a rep­u­ta­tion quickly.

There are other ways, but I think this is the eas­i­est way. It involves putting in a lot of time, but being a part of a com­mu­nity isn’t easy. I have a really hard time keep­ing up with all the writer blogs and forums I would like to read in an ideal world. I try to stay on top of a few spe­cific ones as best I can. I’m not very good about my sec­ond point of advice, so bear that in mind, but I think if I could do things over again, that’s how I would approach it.

I hope some of these answers prove help­ful. If any­one else has any advice for CDThomas, please share it in the comments.