Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Scott's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Wednesday, January 1st, 2020
6:22 am	Aloha Welcome to my Livejournal, where I tend to rant and blather and occasionally juggle adjectives for everyone's amusement. Something to note- I do not automatically delete anonymous posts. In fact, I don't even automatically delete critical anonymous posts. But I certainly will automatically delete any cowardly, weak-sauce personal attack posted anonymously. If you're not going to attach an identity to your statements to back them up in some fashion, you might as well not even bother being a dick- your worthless scrawl is just going to vanish. Everyone else, enjoy!
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
3:11 am	Argh. I suppose my venom in my previous post can be attributed, in part, to a discovery made during tonight's revision binge. Namely, that there's a continuity error so glaring early in the final third of TRoT that I simply cannot believe I let it slip in in the first place. But these things clearly do happen, and there's an escalating continnum of author responses. Some errors can be rectified with the Painless Scalpel of Minor Adjustment. Others require the Burning Sword of Righteous Rearrangement. This particular knot in the story will have to be handled by the Sherman Tank of Paradox Eradication. (51 Comments |Comment on this)
1:34 am	Touched By A Crazy Person: The 2009 Remake of a Horror Classic A few years ago, I got my official first batshit crazy person e-mail, which I dissected here. That thing was a doozy, a spiel from some misguided, grammatically-variable wackaloon about how I'd personally ruined fantasy forever by letting black folks into my imaginary world. Now, despite the nigh-unreadability of much of that letter, it was a classic showcase for two infinitely recurring elements of author harassment. Authors receiving hate-mail or completely unhinged criticism are handed the following justifications over and over and over again: 1. I'm only doing this for your own good! and- 2. I speak for silent thousands of offended readers. Their colossal purchasing power is mine to dangle before you like a cat toy! You know, in general, I don't get much nasty e-mail. I think, in the past five years, I've received maybe three actual letters that I would classify as having come from a crazy person or a complete asshole, including the one above and the one I'm about to post. I get a lot of constructive or partial criticism, which I never mind- you're not a crazy person if you think a particular section of one of my books was weak. It's only when you start telling me that the Gnomes of Zurich put subliminal messages in my cornflakes to make it weak that you start to lose me. Now, as you probably know, as a side-side-side-project to keep the fires stoked while I finish more important stuff, I started posting chapters, serial-fashion, of a project I wrote a bit of last year. It's Queen of the Iron Sands, and it's got three chapters online so far. An important thing to note is that it also has a button for donations. I've received almost nothing but good thoughts on it so far- in fact, I may have more reader mail than I've yet read, because the scott@scottlynch.us e-mail address has been bonkers for a week. Now, I say "almost" because I have at last received a bit of QotIS crank mail... and the (first) rather extraordinary thing about it is that this crank actually followed directions and sent it to talldorkstranger@yahoo.com. His words are bolded for crazy: Dear Scott, You are an internationally selling author. Don't you find it beneath you to charge people for the content on your website? Well, it was just so tempting! I mean, PayPal lets you build a button for "sell item," and a button for "accept donations," and then it lets you build a button for "TAKE THIS PLANE TO CUBA!" I mean, how could I resist? Actually, what I mean is, "Wait, what? I'm charging people for the content of my website? On what planet?" I don't understand why you feel you have the right to charge people for things they have to sit at their desk to read. I refuse to pay attention to content if you expect me to put a coin in a slot to even reach it. It doesn't matter if its you or Cathryne Valente or Tim Pratt or whoever. I had a good long ponder on the incredible density of this note... I seriously wondered whether or not I was being punk'd, that maybe Jay Lake or some other miscreant was out there in net-land cackling their ass(es) off over it. Thing is, I just can't find a speck of irony or subtle humor in this thing. It really is just as dense and stern and myopic as it looks. So, good e-mail correspondent, since you have taken the time to catastrophically misinterpret everything you rant about in your note to me, while displaying virtually every flavor of self-entitlement possible, I am taking this as a teachable moment served up on a silver platter and responding openly. I won't repost your name or address, of course. If you feel you're getting a bum deal here you can always shoot back, privately or publicly. Now, I am not claiming, at all, to speak for Cat Valente or Tim Pratt; they had donation-supported serial works up online before I did, but the one thing we all have in common is that the work is VISIBLE ENTIRELY FOR FREE, in every single case, and often in multiple formats (I just offer an RTF version of my story for people who don't like to read HTML- Cat, by comparison, offers freakin' audio files of her reading her book aloud), and the donation buttons are entirely voluntary. This is absolutely key here, and also 110% plain as day to anyone with an IQ higher than that of a jar of olives. By the way- Tim Pratt's Bone Shop. Cat Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Check 'em out! Anyhow, we now return to the crazy, already in progress: You have a movie deal. You're an AUTHOR. Where do you get off going around with a tin cup in your hand like you got laid off from a Ford plant or something? I like how you capitalized AUTHOR, like it's glaringly obvious that everyone who ever sells a book receives a deed to a Scrooge McDuck money bin in the mail the next day. I would love to deny my reality and substitute that one, butt-stick, but here on Earth Prime that's not the fucking case. This falsehood is a perennial delight of author-badgering twits, but contrary to the misapprehension of the sterile echo chamber you call a skull, writing is a job. That's what it is and all it is, and while it's a great job if you love to write, it doesn't fucking excuse writers from having to pay their rent, or their taxes, or their medical bills. It didn't take away my wife's asthma or my grandfather's cancer; it's not a goddamn magic fairy plane ticket. I don't have a "movie deal." The option rights to my first novel were sold, several years ago, and that was a lovely and completely unexpected windfall, but it wasn't some sort of prelude to a champagne fountain in my front yard. Studios buy options to keep their fingers on media properties in case they relate to something that becomes a hot concern. At any given point any major studio holds options on hundreds of literary works, out of which one or two might, might, MIGHT make it to principal photography. The rest are lucky just to make it to the outermost suburbs of development hell. Let me offer you a slice of delicious clue pie: Having a screenplay gets you no closer to an actual movie than buying a Florida orange grove gets you to launching moon rockets from Kennedy Space Center. Really, you should be grateful that people want to even read what you put online in the first place and leave it at that. Oh-HO, the sudden shift to your real point, that I should exist to amuse you for free, and that I should be grateful for the crumbs of attention I get repaid with. This is another fucking classic in the arsenal of the monumentally entitled, that writers do not deserve to make money from their work, in any capacity, and that it is somehow uncouth for us to offer voluntary means of payment like donation buttons. However, as is typical with crusaders for online dignity like yourself, you're not actually condemning the stuff I write. You're interested in the stuff I write. You're an SF/F person! You didn't stumble across Cat Valente or Tim Pratt by accident, I damn well guarantee. But for some bizarre reason, it pisses you off that we don't just magically set our work out for your perusal and vanish meekly into the woodwork like house elves. You know, to get tangential for a sec, one of the reasons I admire greygirlbeast is her relentless unwillingness to allow the release of her new work to float by quietly and gently, without notice. She doesn't twiddle her fingers demurely for fear that a mere author might be seen as disturbing the rich and complex lives of real people. She puts the word out and keeps it out. Now, I'm going to re-state the very obvious: I am exceptionally grateful for every speck of attention paid to my work, in any format, and deeply pleased when I hear good things or constructive criticism back from readers. But only, and I mean only, when you can write back and tell me that your paycheck consists entirely of praise and warm pats on the back do you get to sit there and tell me whether or not I should have an optional donation button. The Queen of the Iron Sands donation button is a tip cup, you presumptuous jackass. The text of the novel is free, and always will be free, in multiple formats- but every reader gained from it is important. Every dollar earned from it is important. It costs money to host; it takes time and effort to iron out the bugs. I would be stupid not to leave that tip cup sitting around for the use of readers with good hearts. Because that, there, is part of the business model- that's my baseline fuckin' assumption, that the solid majority of my readers are good and honest people, and deserve to be treated as such. I refuse to twist my brain into some Ellisonian pretzel and view myself at war with my potential audience every second of my freakin' life. I wouldn't take shit from that sector on the wisdom of offering stuff for free online, so I hope you can understand, really understand, why I take such umbrage at your equally crazy notion that I am somehow forcing anyone to do anything involuntary by merely offering a donation option. I'm disappointed. I was planning to buy both of your books but I really doubt that will be happening now. Wow, you really told me! The CLASSIC "I was gonna but now I won't!" bit, where you get to claim anything you like, and it's usually something lucrative and noble, except now I'm the guy that blew it for everyone. ("I was going to donate millions to charity, Mr. Lynch, until I found out that you supported those charities!") Well, you know what? I was gonna send some robot ninjas to your house with free ice cream and bottles of liquor for you, but you can kiss that deal goodbye, asshole. The story's free, but robot ice cream ninjas are for donors! (99 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
2:13 am	"Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer!" Pat Buchanan, historically ignorant fascist moron or repulsive, lying fascist scumbag? Come to think of it, it doesn't have to be either/or. Current Mood: Nnnngggghhhhhhh (33 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
5:55 am	Get Your Ass to Mars There's a shiny new surprise at my website, to pass the time while other stuff is coming. Update: And any bizarre text issues should now be corrected. (26 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
2:13 pm	More News: Conquering Swords Anthology Something else I can reveal, by kind permission of the masterminds involved. Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan have been working to put together a collection (tentatively) titled Conquering Swords, an anthology of new swords-and-sorcery tales from the various young turks currently working in that vein, along with new tales from some of the Old Masters and Mistresses. I sold them a short story titled "In the Stacks," in which an armed expedition attempts to return books to an ancient magical library that has gone feral from all the long centuries of percolating in its own strange energies. Lou's take on the project is here, and Jonathan's is here. They've given me a rather mind-blowing list of the writers officially involved, but that hasn't been formally released yet, so I'll just name-drop the ones that have spoken or been referenced in public: Glen Cook, James Enge, Steven Erikson, C.J. Cherryh, and yours truly. Look for it in 2010, and look for various announcements from Lou and Jonathan before then. (15 Comments |Comment on this)
12:15 am	New Website Freebies, Including TRoT Prologue Have you ever visited an author's website and checked out their available previews or excerpts, only to find that each one is about a page or two in length? And have you ever banged your head on your desk and yelled, "Hey asshole, 1996 called, IT WANTS ITS INTERNET PARADIGM BACK!" Well, I am through being that guy. As part of an ongoing, step-by-step effort to restore and deepen the functionality of my website, I have updated my excerpts page with two new treats. The first is a 40,000 word preview of Red Seas Under Red Skies, with an added bonus-- a set of notes from yours truly on the origins of certain story elements, the writing process, and anything else blather-worthy that came to mind. The second is the complete prologue to The Republic of Thieves. Yes, the whole thing. And it's a long historical flashback prologue, akin to that found in TLoLL. This prologue introduces us, at long last, to the character of Sabetha Belacoros. So caveat emptor... if you want the suspense concerning her to continue, don't read it yet. Next week I'll put together a new preview for TLoLL, at least as large as the new RSURS version, with similar author annotations. And it will replace the feeble excerpt currently available, and from here on out we're gonna party like it's the fucking 21st century. (45 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
1:51 am	Oh Goodie! My scott@scottlynch.us e-mail is going to get fixed, but it might take about 24 hours or so. So, if you put anything terribly important in that box in the last two days, please be aware that's it's Schrödinger's Inbox until further notice. I'm told that if my website blips out briefly as well, it's just a side effect of whatever the hell they're doing out there in the intertubes to unfuck my stuff. I'd better get a coupon of some sort out of this.
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
3:48 pm	"The Colour Out Of My Cat's Ass," by H.P. Lovecraft Okay, little guys, seriously, what in the name of all that's holy did I just wipe up from the kitchen floor? Can I get an anatomical point of origin, at least? Wow. (25 Comments |Comment on this)
12:20 am	Stalking the Wild Armadillo ArmadilloCon was a pleasure, a very friendly and relaxed gathering of about 400 people, give or take. Emphasis was heavily on literature and conversation; there was no masquerade, dance, film room, anime room, etc. as you might find at a larger and more general convention. I don't mean that in any sort of stodgy fashion; there was programming on TV and film topics, and, geeks being geeks, just about anything was apt to be germane in blather at panels, meals, and room parties. The folks running the convention were universally warm and generous, even when operating on little sleep or harried by minor emergencies. I got to visit five or six restaurants around Austin, including the (in)famous County Line with its Million Billion Pounds of BBQ, and I was shown a great deal more of the city than I'd had a chance to visit back in 2006. ---- I think the writer's workshop went about as well as it could have. Feedback I received was positive and it seemed that our few slow or awkward moments were quickly steamrolled. It wasn't always efficient being part of a "panel" of sixteen people; conventional side-to-side discourse tended to break down after five or six panelists had taken their turn to speak, and we had to get used to just seizing our opportunities to talk. Panelists seemed to have universally solid credentials; there were hundreds of years of collective professional writing and editing experience to be tapped, and nobody introduced themselves with "Hey, I wrote some haiku about my cat once, and the con said I get a free lunch for showing up." Although that might be fun next year, just to see what happens. Nancy Hightower was my partner for the small-group critique portion of the workshop. Fortunately for everyone, each of the stories brought to the table had something genuinely worth salvaging or expanding upon. There was no need to conjure mitigating praise directly out of our asses ("I like your use of commas on page six,") and no desperate clinging, thank god, to that standby praise-which-is-not-praise "Well, I found your story very interesting." --- John Scalzi mentioned, after his appearance last year, that attendance at panels always seemed to be very high, and I would second that anecdote. I can't speak for the rest of the con, of course, but at least one of the panels I sat on was standing room only shortly after it began. Mind you, I believe that one was held in the smallest of the available function rooms, so I'm not claiming that we sold out the Astrodome or anything, but it was still neat. And nobody called any of my panels to a halt so someone from the audience could step up and sing a song. So, y'know, win. A few notes on the panels-- City Building: The main point I tried to stick to here was that when you have an interesting city you want to set a story in, you cheat your worldbuilding to support the existence of that city, you don't just woefully hang your head and leave the city out because you forgot to draw enough farms on your map or something. I'm not at all a fan of the "begin by simulating the tectonic plate movements of your fictional planet several billion years before the story begins" style of worldbuilding; as far as I'm concerned, you write what you want to write and you shuffle things around ex post facto to support them. Or you just don't fucking explain things at all-- the mere existence of your big beautiful boondoggle should, in itself, imply that somewhere, somehow, something makes it all work, even if that background detail isn't important to the story. This was a fun panel with some useful participant viewpoints; it didn't devolve into The Ten Millionth Iteration Of Basic Worldbuilding 101, and I was very pleased that everyone seemed to be making a strenuous effort to keep away from the "now let me spend ten minutes telling you about a book I once wrote" trap. I'm becoming more and more convinced that when authors are on a panel, that particular trick is a major derailer of panel momentum and useful conversation. Mysticism and Religion: A few people noted that I was a bit quiet on this panel, and I was... it seemed to be largely dominated by two or three people in particular, and I don't mean that in a bad way-- the conversations they started were highly energetic and informed, and trying to talk over them would have been grandstanding to no useful purpose. The audience became heavily involved (this is one of those topics where it would take riot police to hold them back), and one guy in it heroically kept the discussion on track at a crucial juncture by forcefully reminding everyone that science is an investigative process, not a set of religious beliefs. I have seen rooms full of people stumble into total swirling incoherence after someone diverted the talk into the big dead end of "science VERSUS religion," and it ain't pretty. Villains: This was a fun, energetic panel that got to use the size and comfort of the main function room. Frankly, if you can't make hay with a topic this juicy you fail at existence itself. Elizabeth Moon was unfortunately not able to attend, so her place was taken by this obscure writer named Joan Vinge, who wrote some book about snowy queens and won some sort of award for it. I'd say a good time was had by all. Fannish Feud: This pastiche of the old Family Feud game show had an intriguing game mechanic. A panel of "pros" squared off against a panel of "fans" to try and fill out checklists of possible answers to geeky questions. The thing about these checklists was that the answers were taken from an online/audience survey rather than from objective reality, so in many cases actual knowledge of the topics at hand was positively damaging rather than helpful. It should have been obvious that the fix was in the moment we realized that nearly all the "fans" were sipping nice cold adult beverages while the "pros" were left to wander in the barren fields of sobriety. A full accounting of all the "fans'" various crimes against fair competition would only serve to depress us, so let's just say that us "pros" got rolled like an old knapsack, approximately eleven billion points to six. After this fore-ordained defeat, we were hauled out to the parking lot in chains, and piles of our works were burned before our eyes. ----- My last formal engagement at the con was a reading, which was also supposed to be a guest of honor interview of some sort. One of the doors to the reading room had a sign on it that read, "USE OTHER DOOR," but unfortunately that other door was stuck so tight that many people thought it was locked. Much confusion as to how to actually enter the room ensued, and some people that wanted to get in never managed to (a lot of people, for politeness' sake, are very, very self-conscious about entering panel rooms once the panel has started, especially if they have to enter at the front of the room rather than the side or rear). Although the room was empty as I arrived (a scene just about every author who's ever done public appearances should recognize from their nightmares), my presence at the front table seemed to reassure folks that something, anything, was actually going to take place, and after a few minutes a decent crowd had built up. I then asked if there was anyone from the con present who could tell me how long I was supposed to read, and how much time to save for the interview, but there was no such person. So, I winged it... those worried about my relative silence at the religion panel were probably repenting their concern before I finished, because when given an empty room and no instructions, I'll talk everyone's goddamn ass off until someone calls the police. I had meant to read a relatively serious interlude from The Republic of Thieves, in which Locke Lamora is invested in the rituals of a mystery cult on the night of his thirteenth birthday, but I decided to go with something a little more adventurous, an interlude called "The Boy Who Chased Red Dresses," in which Young Locke goes toe-to-toe with Young Sabetha in a battle of wits (Hint: He gets schooled). The audience reaction and laughter were pretty gratifying, especially when I later discovered how relatively few people there were familiar with my previous work. I read for just over an hour, then blathered for nearly another, at which point people from the convention showed up with nets and tranquilizer darts. So, the "interview" was a slight hiccup, but I think we took what we were given and made lemonade, and it was the only remotely out-of-sorts moment in five days that were otherwise exceedingly well-planned and handled by the con folks. So, let this be my epitaph for ArmadilloCon 31... I had a great time, I felt well-treated and welcome, I would encourage anyone to attend next year, and I myself am eager to get back in the future. (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
1:23 pm	August 22 This is the day that gave us the beautiful guipago, my wife. It is therefore the Best Day Evar. Happy birthday, sweetie. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
10:21 pm	The Premises, I Has Vacated Them Well, here we go. In a few hours I hop aboard an aerospace plane and launch skyward in a ballistic arc that takes us up to about 230,000 feet at a top speed of Mach 7.6, giving us a nice smooth ride from Minneapolis, MN to Austin, TX in a little over twenty-two minutes. Just enough time to finish the complimentary martini. Astrophyyyyyyyyssssssics, FUCK YEAH! What? What do you mean this thing hasn't entered commercial service yet? I have to ride in a subsonic turbojet? Like an animal? Balls. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
10:28 pm	How Fantasy Stole Your Precious Bodily Fluids (I wasn't gonna post... I wasn't gonna post... but there I was, up to my hindbrain in freakin' revisions, when I felt a great disturbance in the internet, as though a thousand lolcats had suddenly hazd cheezburger, and gone silent.) ----- The Gollancz Twitter feed coughed up this, a weird little ditty with the misleading title "How fantasy took over science fiction." Christ, I thought, not this again, although this sort of thing is cyclical, rather like the flu, so it's bound to come 'round and 'round again. I've tilted this windmill before, and that post hurt a bit. It was frustrating to see someone whose work I've enjoyed (I dig Greg Benford's Galactic Center novels) being vigorously offensive about something near to my heart. As fatuous as Benford's screed was, however, at least someone reading it would know that he was familiar with the long history of speculative literature despite his wish to distort it. The author of this new piece, Philip Marchand, seems to be working off a set of data points that is cripplingly limited, and from them he tries to connect the dots of cause-and-effect in a fashion that would require a time machine to achieve validity. "Harry Potter rules. The unflagging energy of his creator, J. K. Rowling, writing volume after volume, sustains this phenomenon," he says, although the last book in the Potter series was published in 2007. Nobody's taken the books off the shelves or the movies out of theaters, but Rowling's unflagging energy has indeed flagged. She stopped sustaining the phenomenon directly, i.e. with the scratching of her pen, several years ago. "An atheist such as W. P. Kinsella ignores his own core beliefs and practically makes a living out of a sub-genre of fantasy, i. e. baseball fantasy," is his next major assertion, and it's even more bizarre. Kinsella (Field of Dreams Kinsella) was hit by a car in 1997 and suffered the sort of neurological injury that makes writers everywhere curl up in horror. His ability to focus was so disturbed that he's barely written or edited a word in a dozen years. I hope he makes a heck of a residual living off his past work, but he's not exactly pumping out baseball ghost stories as you read this. Perhaps Marchand just likes writing in the present tense, and I'm being overly harsh on stylistic laziness? The problem is that Marchand is postulating a trend, a change over time which would require chronological precision in the presentation of his evidence. Whether he's being deliberately misleading or merely innocently clumsy, he keeps attempting to shuffle past events into a nebulous now, and that dishonest re-framing is crucial to the failure of his argument. "One effect of this triumph seems to be the increasing presence of fantasy, or elements of fantasy, in works of science fiction, a genre traditionally opposed to magic and even to such folk-scientific phenomena as UFOs." And... that's it. The money shot, an alleged trend, from two data points. A woman wrote the most freakishly successful young adult series in publishing history from about 1997-2007, and a guy once upon a time wrote several wistful baseball fantasies, ending in 1997... and that explains the "increasing" presence of fantasy elements in a genre that has been an incestuous sibling to fantasy for its entire existence? My god, the Fantasy Vs. Science Fiction Self-Righteousness BBQ was burning hot for years before W.P. Kinsella was even born. Marchand goes on to discuss this summer's Star Trek film as his third data point. While our feelings are largely in synch on the matter of said film (I think it was very pretty, and excellently cast, and written by the Muppet Babies), it's a hell of a leap. We were talking about writers, two very different writers, and now we're dragging a big-budget summer action flick into the picture. Robert Sawyer gets quoted on the shit-tastic science of the film, and, you know, I can't get too worked up about the quotes. One of Sawyer's things is that he is (and has been for years, and probably will be forever) Canada's willing go-to guy for quotes on all things science fictional. Need a pithy sound bite for an article or essay? Give him a call, he welcomes it. But I can and will take issue with this sentiment:* "It was a striking example of the kind of wish-fulfillment Sawyer maintains is characteristic of fantasy and magic, as opposed to the devices of science fiction." Hogwash, bullshit, and plain ignorance. This is the old saw, the detestable old cliche, as unkillable as a Christopher Lee vampire, that science fiction has intrinsic moral qualities which fantasy lacks. That science fiction is akin to the vegetables left for last on a cranky child's dinner plate. That it's good for you, despite the taste... in fact, it's good for you because of the taste! Eating it will toughen you up, stiffen your spine, straighten your act! Science fiction has, from its inception, been a literature of wish-fulfilment, a literature of desire. The desire to unravel mysteries, the desire to transcend limitations, the desire to prove that we are not alone in the universe... and the contrary but equally valid desire to prove that we are strong enough to be alone in the universe. Whether it is a BANG! ZOOM! sort of wish-fulfillment (rocket belts, flying cars, antigravity, atomic-fucking-disintegrators!) or something more subtle (artificial intelligences, more perfect societies, nanotechnology, the defeat of mortality), science fiction is a litany of wishes, and in the very best science fiction of all, those wishes are fulfilled in words and images of fire. The notion that science fiction is some dour, dutiful, sanctimonious edifice that must be vetted and purity-tested against the infiltration of fantasy is pure crap. Science fiction and fantasy are two sides of a double helix, joined perpetually, cross-fertilizing perpetually, written to an overwhelming degree by the same people and read to an overwhelming degree by the same people. Individual tastes will always differ, extreme cases in either genre will always appear to have irreconcilable qualities. But every time some half-informed crusader comes along and tries to make science fiction out to be a lonely outpost of virtue surrounded by a sea of pink unicorn piss, they do no justice to it or to fantasy. ----- *Caveat: Because of the way it's phrased, there's just no telling whether this is a direct quote from Sawyer. So I'm hedging my bets and attacking the sentiment itself. (42 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
11:44 am	Until Armadillo I am re-posting my ArmadilloCon schedule; barring some unforeseen outrage or triumph, this will be my placeholder public post for the next several days. The only adjustment I have is to note that the reading on Sunday will be followed by an interview / question-and-answer session. *************** Friday, August 14 *************** 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM (Give or take)-- Writer's Workshop I will be one of the sixteen instructors at this year's Armadillocon writer's workshop, which will be going on most of the day with breaks for lunch, discussion, and bitter, bitter recrimination. 7:00 PM -- Opening Ceremonies A beginning is a delicate time. *************** Saturday, August 15 *************** 11:00 AM -- City Building (Panel) I have been known to toss a city or two into my work, here and there. 3:00 PM -- Fannish Feud From what I hear, this is a gameshow-style affair where two teams square off in a trivia or guessing contest. I don't know much about the opposition, and I bear them no personal malice, but we're definitely going to paint the walls with their blood and make orphans of their children. 5:00 PM -- Religion and Mysticism in SF/F (Panel) Holy fanboy squealing, Batman, I'm on a panel with Joan Vinge! *************** Sunday, August 16 *************** 10:00 AM -- Autographing Session All books cheerfully defaced. 1:00 PM -- Villains (Panel) Holy expectant fanboy moaning, Batman, I'm on a panel with Elizabeth Moon! 3:00 PM -- Guest of Honor Reading I will be sliced open and my entrails will be read to thunderous applause. Maybe I still have time to suggest some alternate plans to the committee. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 7th, 2009
12:36 am	Pedantry Dear Intarwebz: If you find yourself in the 1920s or 1930s, in a milieu ruled by the internal combustion engine, and you're starting to toy with anachronisms like transistors and atomic power, you're no longer in the realm of "steampunk." I say this only because steampunk is a fun aesthetic and always has been, and it would be a shame to dilute the word beyond all sensible meaning. As to whether or not it may be InfernoKrusher, well, InfernoKrusher is the warm, pulsating heart of fiction itself. Wherever a child cries out for nourishing sentences full of witty double entendres and exploding monster trucks, InfernoKrusher is there. It's just not necessarily steampunk. (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
3:05 pm	A Random Wonderful Thing You Should See At Least Once I'm going to be off the intarwebz until Tuesday. Try not to smash the place up too much while I'm gone. I leave you with this little tidbit from YouTube, Fred Astaire's rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz" from the 1946 film Blue Skies. Arguably, his most famous filmed dance number is the "ceiling dance" he did in Royal Wedding a couple years after this, but as neat as that one is, I think this performance better emphasizes his speed and precision (and don't forget, he was freakin' 47 when he did this). The movie in general isn't that hot, but this part is killer. Things start a bit slowly, get more interesting around 1:30, and then really hit their stride when he starts using his cane as a percussion instrument around the 2:18 mark. From that point on, it's the pure shit. As a child of my era, I find a lot of the song and dance films of the mid-20th century to be bland and soporific but I've always liked Astaire, in color or black and white. As this clip attests, there was a hungry, daring, highly aggressive side to some of his work-- look at the way he taps the hell out of that poor cane, and the positively feral grin he gives at the end of the performance. If you like this, you should also be sure to hunt down the other best performance of this song ever filmed-- Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. (16 Comments |Comment on this)
8:01 am	I For One Welcome Our Martian Dinosaur Partners in Cross-Planet Reality Television Opportunities Blatantly stolen from TNH's sidebar at Making Light, I now urge you to scoot your undeserving simian eyeballs over to Strange Horizons so you can read "Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs," by Leonard Richardson. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
8:32 am	Twit For Tat I done gone an got m'self a Twitter feed. http://twitter.com/scottlynch78 Right now my global media empire is a recursive loop-- the Twitter feed links here, the Livejournal links to the Twitter feed. There are potentially seconds of amusement to be had clicking these links! I will make a much more thorough search for people to follow when I get back from Armadillocon; I just snagged a couple for the time being to hide my nakedness. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
7:45 am	ArmadilloCon 31 Schedule (Tentative) I will be the author guest of honor this year at ArmadilloCon, down in beautiful Austin, Texas from August 14-16. A tentative schedule has winged its way into my inbox. Many thanks to the volunteers that toil over this stuff (at convention after convention, year in and year out), trying to stitch all of the variables of time and personnel together into something not unlike a four-dimensional Lego sculpture. Any additions or alterations will be noted as they take place. *************** Friday, August 14 *************** 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM (Give or take)-- Writer's Workshop I will be one of the sixteen instructors at this year's Armadillocon writer's workshop, which will be going on most of the day with breaks for lunch, discussion, and bitter, bitter recrimination. 7:00 PM -- Opening Ceremonies A beginning is a delicate time. *************** Saturday, August 15 *************** 11:00 AM -- City Building (Panel) I have been known to toss a city or two into my work, here and there. 3:00 PM -- Fannish Feud From what I hear, this is a gameshow-style affair where two teams square off in a trivia or guessing contest. I don't know much about the opposition, and I bear them no personal malice, but we're definitely going to paint the walls with their blood and make orphans of their children. 5:00 PM -- Religion and Mysticism in SF/F (Panel) Holy fanboy squealing, Batman, I'm on a panel with Joan Vinge! *************** Sunday, August 16 *************** 10:00 AM -- Autographing Session All books cheerfully defaced. 1:00 PM -- Villains (Panel) Holy expectant fanboy moaning, Batman, I'm on a panel with Elizabeth Moon! 3:00 PM -- Guest of Honor Reading I will be sliced open and my entrails will be read to thunderous applause. Maybe I still have time to suggest some alternate plans to the committee. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 27th, 2009
10:16 pm	I should really just staple my palm to my face already. It's gonna be there awhile. Ever wonder where female gamers get the idea that many of the people running the games business are members of a slobbering idiot boys' club that long ago purged itself of all members whose IQs were still scraping the double digits? From Ars Technica: EA puts sexual bounty on the heads of its own booth babes. From The F-Word: EA games invites convention attendees to sexually harass ‘booth babes.’ Good god, EA foisting this infantile shit on their own 'booth babes' was bad enough, but broadening the 'contest' to include every other booth model at the convention... nice fuckin' surprise. Idiots. Edit: You know, I've got to amend myself a bit. It's disingenuous and inadequate to pin this entirely on the people at EA responsible for conceiving this scorched turd of a promotion, because it removes the fundamental problem from its full context. This episode is indicative of the ongoing bullshit women face at too many conventions, namely, the persistent assumption that their bodies are part of the public environment in the same way the furniture is. It's entirely reasonable to admire an attractive stranger from a polite distance. It's perfectly acceptable to offer compliments, while maintaining that distance. Groping, stalking, and ongoing harassment are not reasonable; they do not logically follow from the above. But try explaining that in a culture where women are simultaneously pegged as solely responsible for inflaming lust ("But they dress all sexy!") and willfully cruel for refusing to sate it ("What a frigid bitch!"). The concept of "look but don't touch" doesn't sink into the skulls of idiot man-children because they think they're dealing with furniture, not human beings, and if you tell them they can't sit all over the furniture whenever they please, they act like they're being victimized. (56 Comments |Comment on this)