The whole system is a mess, Madoff is just a slightly more extended case. Slightly. Paul Krugman has more. Ha, finally, the world is catching on? On, no, just parts of the world. And some people have been saying this whole system is crazy for years now.
Month: December 2008
RIAA Stops Suing Deaf Grandmas Who Have No Computer For Downloading Music… for now
We’ll see how long it lasts. Now they’re working with ISPs instead, which means… can you say, workarounds?
The Country of the Young
“The Country of the Young” appeared in Interzone 219, in November 2008. If you missed the print edition, Interzone 219 is available as an eMagazine at Fictionwise. This was the third full story I drafted at Clarion West, for the week when Nalo Hopkinson was our instructor. (And both Nalo’s and the class’s comments, and some discussion of the biology of aging with my classmate Guy Immega, were a great help to me.) I’d long been thinking of writing a story set in a post-reunification, corporate-annexed North Korea. A theme I’d intended to work with earlier ended up being set …
Roughing It…
While I’m no big fan of CanLit in general — it’s come up lately online with another Canadian or two, and I’ve decided it’s a genre unto itself (the mainstream stuff, anyway) and one not mostly to my liking — I still want to give a shout-out to my literary friend Alexis Kienlen who is one of the people running a new CanLit blog called Roughing it in the Books.
Speaking of Global SF…
Here’s a piece on Indian SF, via, er, I’ve lost the source among my millions of windows. (Sorry!) Apparently, it’s a much bigger market in various regional languages, but some SF authors also see developing an English-language readership as a key to a bigger audience. And here’s a recent piece on SF in China. Interestingly, SF entered China in 1902 in the same form it did South Korea (or, well, the Korean language, at least) in 1907 — that is, in the form of a translation of a novel by Verne. (In China, the respected literati Lu Xun translated Verne’s …
The Future of English?
Brian’s post — and Roboseyo’s comment appended to it — reminded me of a subject I haven’t yet posted about but have sometimes thought of discussing here. That is, the way SF authors imagine the future of the English language. This is a subject of particular interest to me, since I’m kind of working my way over to looking at SF in non-Anglophone societies, where the role of English-as-medium and English-as-culture impacts what non-Anglophones do (or don’t do) with SF as a literary genre. Of course, for a long time, many Anglophone writers simply assumed that the dominance of America …
Global SF Project… Just an Idea, For Now, But…
A friend’s recent post (on a mailing list, so no link) has me thinking about the fact I’m in a slump in terms of sending out stories and even in terms of writing. The last semester just really took it out of me. Between the stress of considering hunting for a new job, getting my freelance gig done, staying on top of my classes, and dealing with personal stuff, there’s been little energy or brain-space left over for writing. Which drives home to me the importance of priorities. What’s more important: freelance gigs, or writing? What’s more important: making each …
Books I Should Have Reviewed Already!
Well, I’m supposed to have reviewed these books, having received them free from Librarything, but it’s hard for me, because I always feel leery giving less than positive reviews of books. (Everything else, I am more comfortable panning, but books, well…) Anyway, I’m way late, but I’m going to say what I have to say, and then crosspost these to Librarything. At least I’m not panning all of them! The Book from the Sky by Robert Kelly is one of those books that made me think about genre. It’s become quite common among authors of speculative fiction (SF, fantasy, horror, …
Clarion West — Support or Attend!
If you love speculative fiction — horror, fantasy, SF, and so on — then I’ve got a way you can pitch in to keep pumping fresh blood into the genre. That is, the Clarion West workshop is looking for donations, and for students for next year. If you read this blog regularly, I’ll have mentioned Clarion West before, but I have described it in a while. So here goes: it is a workshop for speculative fiction writers, one that is sometimes described as a “boot camp” for them to cross over into professional publishing. I’m far from the only person …
Must Sleep, But…
Though I never did finish the book I tried out (which is actually the book he’s reading from in this book), I still really enjoyed this talk/reading by Pico Iyer: The section of that book titled “The Multiculture,” which deals with Toronto, was what I discussed with my class last week. Good stuff, well, for those who actually read and discussed. Neat essay, and an interesting interrogation of the idea of multiculture/multiculturalism as a way of being, as a policy, and as a not-quite-utopia. I especially enjoyed his comment (during the question period) regarding moving beyond fears of cultural homogenization …