That’s not true. Actually, I’m far from lazy. The problem with today is that there’s so much going on out in the world of SF & F that I can’t really ignore it anymore. I subscribe to 170+ blogs and, well, when I see things being repeated over various blogs and the like I have to mention things here.
First off, I did a review of The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction Volume One by Edge/Tesseract/Dragon Moon that you should all check out here. I also reviewed Neo-Opsis Issue #12, which can be found here. Both are good reads, the latter rather surprisingly (I may be subscribing to that one if nothing beats it out of the top spot).
Now for a series of links of interest:
This has been all over the blogosphere and I figure if ten or more of the blogs I read regularly mention this then it must be 
something worth bringing out here. I’ve already mentioned I’m not much into reading online, but for those of you that don’t mind, Solaris has released Chris Roberson’s novel Three Unbroken online. They’ll be publishing a new chapter every week. The press release can be found here. I got the information from Fantasy Book Critic, just so you all know, but it’s all over the net.
Futurismic put up this article that discusses the future of thermoelectrics. Basically, this means generating electricity by using heat. An example would using your body heat to power your iPod or other mp3 player. Well, they may have figured it out. That’s a good thing.
SF Bookworm has been running a huge series of articles on how to store and care for your books. For some of us who consider ourselves collectors, this is a great series. But I think a lot of us don’t have the means they are suggesting to fully care for books the right way. We can still learn some things like how to keep bugs off your books, etc.
Scalzi rants (effectively mind you) about Dragon Magazine’s re-opening to submissions with very bad requirements: giving up all rights to your work for a crappy pay rate. Read his rant, it’s good, and valid.
Futurismic has another interesting article about e-democracy, a concept we’re probably not very familiar with here in America. However, in the lovely UK they have a government electronic petition site, which, while not very effective for producing good results, is still a step in the ‘right’ direction. (I put that in quotes because some would argue it’s not the right direction, an argument I could agree with to some extent.
This is really only the tip of the iceberg though. I have links saved on my laptop and on my personal computer at home, so expect more links in the next few weeks.
3 Responses
170 blogs? Man that is a full time job! lol! Any good ones that are not specific to sci fi but more general fiction writing you could recommend?
Oh yeah that UK voting poll thing is just *so* wonderful and really helps the country.
Can you tell my words were so laden with sarcasm that they practically sunk to the bottom of the screen?
One of the first things they did was a poll about this car thing they’ve been talking about for a while. It’s wildly unpopular because it would make having a car ridiculously expensive, and the government would be able to track every move you made. So, more than a million people (I think nearly 2 million, actually) signed this petition … and instead of the government backing down, they’ve just gone very quiet. I’ve no doubt they’re plotting in the depths of Parliament about how best to subtly bring in their stupid policies.
Rant over.
That book storage person would have a fit if they saw how the books are stored in my house … The best bit is where we use large hardbacks for shelves. XD
To be honest I don’t read anything that is standard fiction mostly because I’m not interested in general fiction in any way. I read what I love to write. So I don’t have any general fiction writing blogs. I do have plenty of blogs of SF/F authors, places that discuss genre either in the writing context or in other contexts. I really need to update all my blogrolls because things have really changed and I should acknowledge blogs I enjoy.
Ellira, that sounds very much like the policies of a government that desperately needs and overhaul…like America :P.