Katharine Kerr June 2nd, 2008
Digital texts are not necessarily the way to go, nor will they utterly replace paper books — I’ve long found this statement true. Now here’s an essay by noted historian Robert Darnton, who explains why it’s true better than I can. 
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514
Too many people think that everything digital is “the future” and thus somehow good. You know, the future could turn out kind of crummy. It has in the past.
Kevin Andrew Murphy February 2nd, 2008
Tor’s new Wild Cards website has been spiffed up and updated, with information on the mass signing in Albuquerque today with most of the Inside Straight authors. Moreover, Tor has just launched the American Hero website, the fully in-character blog and promotional website for American Hero, the superhero reality television show taking place in the Wild Cards universe and a central part of the plot of Inside Straight.
There are twenty eight characters on the show and we’ve got illustrations for all of them from the amazing Mike Miller. More, all of the authors have been writing confessionals from the standpoints of their characters. Up now for Week 1 are Joe Twitch (created and written by Walton Simons), Spasm (created and written by Daniel Abraham), Drummer Boy (created and written by S.L. Farrell), and Rosa Loteria (created and written by yours truly).
Go over and take a look. Ask the characters questions. Of course, the contestants are all busy with challenges on the show, but who knows, some of them might answer. (Mine are Rosa Loteria and The Maharajah.)
This is also kind of exciting as an author since it’s a new publishing venue. I’ve seen website expansions to the content from movies, most notably the rather amazing Donnie Darko site which had some neat fiction which expanded the movie, and likewise the (now long defunct) website for the Point Pleasant tv show. But this is the first time I’ve seen extra web fiction content being done for a series of novels and anthologies, especially author created and owned.
Anyway, please take a look and see what you think, and also, let’s talk about the web as a venue for new fiction in general.
Kevin Andrew Murphy December 16th, 2007
I’ve been mentioning it earlier about the new book coming out, but Tor has just launched the new website for Wild Cards, www.wildcardsbooks.com
There will be more added in the coming weeks, including bio with yours truly, but the preliminary launch is focusing on Inside Straight, which is coming out next month and as with all things publishing, may have early copies in some stores now.
There’s also a newsletter to sign up for and a story from Walter Jon Williams which is sort of the proto-Wild Cards tale.
David Louis Edelman July 13th, 2007
I’ve seen various theories put forward as to when the first science fiction stories were written. Depending on your definition of science fiction — and that exact definition can be quite contentious, especially on this blog — the first proper science fiction tale might be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (c. 1610) or maybe Lucian of Samosata’s A True Story (c. the 2nd century AD). Personally, I’d argue that you need to have the scientific method before you have science fiction, which disqualifies Lucian of Samosata and Shakespeare (depending on your definition of the scientific method).
But the question I’m interested in at the moment is when will science fiction end? I’m not asking this from a commercial standpoint so much as from an epistemological standpoint. Will there always be new science fiction? Or will the genre just wither up at some point and go away?
Here’s something I’ve noticed about futuristic science fiction stories: the characters in them never tell futuristic science fiction stories. Think about it. Can you think of a single example of a character in a futuristic science fiction story reading (or watching) a story that’s science fiction from their point of view?
Of course, you could argue that few characters in stories are actually shown telling stories at all, which is true. We tried that kind of metafiction in the ’60s, and that gave us John Barth and Robert Coover and writers of that ilk. Still, I can think of plenty of examples of SF characters reading nonfiction or history or contemporary literature (by which I mean contemporary from the characters’ point of view).
It seems to me that most of the counterexamples I can think of involve some primitive civilization telling stories about something that’s already proven to be true in the scope of the story. The spider creatures of Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky speculate about space travel and life on other planets, while we the humans watch them from orbit. The people in Edwin Abbott’s Flatland discuss the possibility of a three-dimensional world. And of course, there’s the old trope of the cut-off space colony that reverts back to its primitive roots while its SFnal history becomes the stuff of legends.
Then you’ve got the case of futuristic characters reaching for some even-more-futuristic contraption that simply extrapolates their current technology to the next level. We’ve got the Mega Giga Ultra Hyperdrive that allows us to travel at six times the speed of light! Wouldn’t it be great if we could invent the Super Mega Giga Ultra Hyperdrive that would let us travel sixty times the speed of light? (Impossible! say the doubting scientists. And then, of course, at some point in the story somebody goes and invents the damn thing.)
But where are the examples of people in a futuristic story themselves looking off into a fictional and theoretical future of wonder? I can’t really think of any. Maybe I’m not framing the question right, or disqualifying things out of hand.
Kevin Andrew Murphy November 2nd, 2006
I have to admit I have a big love for fonts and typography. The way the different typefaces look, they way they help to set the mood of a book before you even read a single word on the page. I’ve noticed them ever since I saw my first illustrated capital in a book of fairytales before I even could read.
Consequently interesting typefaces have always caught my eye, and while I dearly love some of the fonts that came out of the 90s revolution of computer typography, most of them looked just awkward/grungy with far too much attitude and far too little readability.
So I set about making a few fonts of my own, or rather I should say, digitizing, cleaning up and generally twiddling with typefaces from old books that weren’t available from any of the modern font foundries. I put them out on one of my websites, and apart from a guy in Italy who loved one of the fonts until it crashed his computer (very complex fonts will do that), I didn’t hear anything more until last year when I was contacted by Bonnier Publications A/S of Denmark, who wanted to use my WitchHunt font for their history magazine. Of course, they also wanted a few extra Danish characters (and Swedish ones as well, for the Swedish edition), along with open type format and a few other whistles and bells.
Unfortunately, I’d packed up my fontography programs a few years and two computers before. Fortunately, however, I knew Dave Nalle who runs Fontcraft, about the top historic typeface company out there, and he not only agreed to make the extra characters for Bonnier, but asked me to join Fontcraft as one of their designers. So now WitchHunt is available from Fontcraft, in its newly prettified and gussied up form (thanks, Dave), as part of the Halloween 2006 promotion. Even better, it’s soon to be followed by some of my other typefaces and ornaments.
Currently rockin’ the William Morris vibe here. It’s very fun to have both fiction and typefaces of yours being out there.
Kevin Andrew Murphy August 14th, 2006
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Well, I managed to catch this just before it left San Jose. What is it, you may ask? Well, it’s the latest project from etoy, the Zurich-based artists who’ve done various avante-garde tech-savvy art projects over the years, including the ToyWar some years back, where I signed on as one of their “toy soldiers” to help drive the internet toy company “Etoys” (no relation) bankrupt for having sued them because it wanted their domain name.
Anyway, their latest project came to my home town and I managed to catch it before they packed up and left.
Constance Ash July 16th, 2006
“The days of judging a book by its cover are drawing to a close. Publishers have finally tapped into the MTV generation, and now it is possible to make your literary choices in advance online by watching a sequence of rapid-fire images accompanied by a thumping score, big flashing words and, if you’re lucky, a deep-voiced American talking about ‘one man’ and ‘his quest to find meaning in a world gone mad’. Yes: there are now trailers for books and soon, according to Steve Osgoode, director of online marketing at HarperCollins Canada, they will be everywhere.”
David Louis Edelman July 15th, 2006
Since my last Stupid Writer Tricks column about casting your characters with Hollywood actors proved so unpopular with — well, everybody, I’m hoping this one will be a little less controversial.
It’s very simple: make sure you have the right tools for the trade.
What are the right tools for the trade of writing? Well, obviously they differ from writer to writer. Some prefer to write longhand with ballpoint pens. Some prefer to bang their literary masterpieces out on a PC in their basement office. Here are a couple of items that have proven indispensible for me.
Copernic’s only one of many similar products. There are also good desktop search programs out there from Google, Yahoo!, X1, and, believe it or not, Microsoft. (And if I hear just one of you whine about how I wouldn’t have this problem if I used Mac OSX or Linux, I’m gonna hunt you down in cold blood.)
Constance Ash July 13th, 2006
 Deep Genre; Introduction; Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5;
Part 6
“Vampires” is a populous subgenre. Perhaps you would like to create a work featuring a vampire or vampires, but, you wonder, being the professional genre writer that you are, “Will anybody be interested in another novel, another movie, another television program or a non-fiction study dealing with vampires? There have been so many since Stoker’s classic Dracula.“Â
David Louis Edelman July 6th, 2006
According to the inimitable John Scalzi (who got his stats from Technorati), DeepGenre is the 41st most popular personal science fiction and fantasy blog on the Web.
What’s a personal science fiction and fantasy blog? Sez John:
I made the decision to not include “news” blogs or blogs whose material is not primarily personal and/or SF-related. This disqualified high-ranking sites like Boing Boing, Locus Online, SFSite, Futurismic, SF Signal, Emerald City and Meme Therapy, which are ranked by Technorati and would have otherwise been on the list.
I applaud this decision because it allows my personal blog to sneak onto the list too (tied for #50!), and might even convince some ignoramus somewhere that I’m as important and well-known as Nick Sagan.
So, DeepGenre #41 after only a month? All I have to say is: Neil Gaiman, you’re goin’ down.