December 2007

World in the Satin Bag

Upcoming Things and Links

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Well there are some important things coming up soon here, and I’ll have some fun links for everyone too.First, I have an interview from Dana Copithorne in the works. I sent her my questions not too long ago. Sorry for the delay, but I not only was stuck right in the middle of the fall quarter, but I also didn’t want to send a bunch of typical questions. I came up with some good ones I think.Second, I’ll have a review for The Longevity Thesis by Jennifer Rahn soon. I’m catching up on all my reading over the holiday.Third, I’m thinking of releasing the first chapter of The Lies of Venicia, in its relatively unedited form, for everyone to read. Is anyone interested? It won’t read like complete garbage, but there might be little tidbits in it that will get changed at some later date, depending where the story goes, but for the most part it will stay the same. Now to links: Grasping for the Wind has this awesome link to a Youtube video where a guy shoots books he, I assume, doesn’t like with various police guns (he’s a police officer). I’m not sure if he really hates these books, but it’s somewhat entertaining to see what happens to these various books when they are shot with police-grade weaponry. Futurismic brings you cats that glow in the dark (yes, seriously). I’ve seen this article elsewhere. They apparently genetically altered these cats so they glow under ultra-violet radiation. The full official article is here. Apparently sex has already taken place in space. Yes, that’s a serious statement. US and Russian astronauts basically got to go up to space and have sex for science. I’m sure the lines for that job were rather long. The results? The Missionary Position…doesn’t work. Yeah. Who knew? Dinosaurs have mummies too! Paleontologists discovered ‘mummified’ skin in Montana. This discovery adds a whole lot to the whole dinosaur discussion! Read the article and look at the two pictures! Magnaverse has a really cool info-article-post-thingy, whatever you want to call it, that talks about parallel worlds in science fiction and fantasy. Check it out! Elizabeth Bear has a list of 15 things you should know or be aware of when you’ve finally made it (whether that be published or whatever). You can read it at Subterranean Press here. Apparently we missed Voyage 1 when it crossed the little zone called the ‘termination shock’: There, the solar wind – made of charged particles from the Sun – suddenly falters as it feels pressure from gas in the interstellar medium lying outside the solar system. Well, scientists didn’t miss Voyager 2’s trip through this zone. Nope. We were paying attention this time (I’m going to rant on this later, trust me). And apparently since the barrier fluctuates–wobbling if you will–so we got a glimpse of Voyager 2 passing through this zone a bunch of times. To add, apparently what was expected to happen during this event was a little off, and scientists are a bit puzzled. Read the full article here. The Thinking Blog has a video of what could be the next, more efficient energy source produced by wind! Wind could be used to cause the vibration of a band that could then produce cheap, efficient energy, or at least somewhat efficient. The little model the man in the video made could run a radio, a clock, and even some small LED lights. Pretty cool huh? Solaris Books have announced that they are going to produce a steampunk anthology called Extraordinary Engines: Airships, automatons and aether! Extraordinary Engines is a brand new anthology of all-original stories from some of the genre’s foremost writers. Featuring an eclectic range of Steampunk-inspired stories by such luminaries as Daniel Abraham, Kage Baker, Stephen Baxter, Beth Bernobich, Eric Brown, Keith Brooke, Paul Di Filippo, Hal Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Jay Lake, Margo Lanagan, James Lovegrove, Ian R. MacLeod, Michael Moorcock, James Morrow, Kim Newman, Robert Reed, Chris Roberson, Adam Roberts, Lucius Shepard. Brian Stableford, Jeff VanderMeer and Marly Youmans (Subject to change). All stories are original to this collection. Sounds cool doesn’t it? I’m excited about it! Artificial stem cells cure sickle cell in mice. That’s the title of the article at DailyTech. Scientists created healthy bone marrow cells by taking bad cells and snipping out all the sickle cell material and putting in healthy material. Then they take the bone marrow cells, throw it into the marrow of a mouse with sickle cell and let it go to work creating healthy red blood cells. That’s the short, rather uneducated version. Read the full article! How hard is it to find planets with plant-life? Well, in the near future it might not be so hard, assuming they exist. Futurismic has this article about new research in space research that postulates that spectral-analysis could help find planets with plant-life! So far the technology isn’t quite there yet, but some scientists have found out atmospheric contests of some gas giants around other stars. Here’s a clue: the atmospheric content is semi-related to something you put on foot to make it taste good. You can also read this article at UniverseToday and this related article. Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist has beautiful pictures of art prints for George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Check them out here. New Scientist has this article about a five story tall structure that focuses moonlight into a single beam over a small area. It might have medical applications, but really this is a fascinating waste of money and time. I mean that in a good way. It’s cool, but really sort of crazy. Prologues are evil and this article at The Toasted Scimitar explains why. Well, the article really just talks about prologues in fantasy and how fantasy redefined the meaning of prologue. Did you know that sitting down helps make you gain weight? The enzymes that control fat burning apparently just shut off when you sit

World in the Satin Bag

Lies: Pullman’s Persecutors

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I find this subject to be fascinating really. It seems that a lot of the things being spread right now by, unfortunately, a small sect of religious nuts about Pullman’s The Golden Compass, in light of the recent film adaptation, have been flat out lies. It actually amazes me how gullible people are to believe a lot of the things being said. Here’s an example: In the words of the author, “I want to kill God in the minds of Children…. I want them to decide against God and the Kingdom of Heaven.” I got this quote from here, but you can see it everywhere in this Google search. What? When and where did he say this? As the original link points out, the author, as far as we know, never actually said this. There’s no proof. No citation, not nothing. It was spread through an email as propaganda against the author and the movie.    The way it seems to me is that these people, rather than allowing their children to make their own decisions, are attempting to cloud their children from reality. This is just as bad as what they propose Pullman is doing (even though he isn’t). Kids are not idiots. I think adults have this illusion that children can’t understand matters that are adult. We think of them as these fragile creatures, when really they are not stupid or fragile. Kids can handle a lot, if you give them the opportunity to do so.    If you read this snopes article, you’ll get an even more elaborate idea of how crazy the propaganda really is. I particularly liked the part where the author of some email or post said they had found a synopsis of The Golden Compass that said the story talked about castration and female circumcision. Where exactly is this magic synopsis? It doesn’t exist. It’s made up. A load of bologna. I tried to find it, using the powerful Google, and came up with nothing consequential. I haven’t finished the book, but I don’t remember there being castration or female circumcision in it.Sadly…people believe this crap. Anyone know of any other similar propaganda schemes against literature? I’m curious what other books were lambasted with such comments.

World in the Satin Bag

The Waterboarding Fiasco

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Hold on, pause. This is not a politics rant, at least not in the traditional sense. I’m not going to argue the ethics of waterboarding, or foreign diplomacy or anything like that. This is going to be a musing on something I heard on the radio today that just made me stop and go “what?” in that ‘the logic of that statement is escaping me’ type of voice.    I won’t bother repeating what the waterboarding fiasco is, as most of you probably already know. There was a short radio section that had some guy talking about two tapes showing waterboarding incidents that were destroyed by the CIA–and created by them mind you. The gentlemen talking about this remarked that he thought , and the CIA thought, this was a brilliant move on their part because we don’t want those tapes getting in the hands of extremist Muslims (his words, not mine). Basically, they’d get mad and have a fun day with the tapes and having it shown on the net and the like would be very bad. On that point I would agree.    Here is where things got “what?”-ish. If you don’t want the extremists or anyone babbling about the existence of the tapes and being upset that, my lord, there is evidence that the CIA actually did use waterboarding torture, then why in God’s name would you announce that the tapes exist in the first place! Extremists don’t need the tapes to be pissed off about them. They don’t need to see them. The fact that you’ve just announced that the tapes exist goes completely against the whole point of not playing them on TV. If anything, this is a great example of the CIA trying to cover up evidence of something that is, technically, illegal. And now not only has the CIA talked about it, but so has Mr. Radioman, who has no idea what the hell he is talking about in the first place. If the extremists were going to get mad about seeing the tapes, they’re going to be just as mad now that it’s out in the open that the CIA condones the use of waterboarding to acquire information.     Great job idiots. Could this government do any more stupid, idiotic, moronic, imbecilic things? You be the judge. That one up there is high on the list. (P.S.: There’s a possibility I missed something on this story, but either way it sounds stupid to me, so I’m ranting about it.)

World in the Satin Bag

Terry Pratchett’s Sad News!

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Pratchett has announced some very sad news on this website. I wish the best to he and his family and I hope he can get all the writing he wants done before things become too difficult. Folks, I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”. We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet :o) PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think – it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this).

World in the Satin Bag

My Situation and My Waning Patience

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If you’re not interested in learning a little about what has been going on in my life lately, then skip this post. Just a warning. I don’t want anyone to waste a few minutes reading this thinking they are getting something else.    I spent the last five years of my life doing the following so I could get to where I am today: going to community college without a direction, trying to find a direction, and ultimately deciding I’m good at writing and realizing I should go in that direction; wrecking my first car and then losing my job when someone stole money from the safe and, needing a scapegoat, they decided “hey, fire the night manager” only to have it come out later that it was the general manager who was actually stealing money, and had been for months; shortly after losing my job, being diagnosed with cancer, having to drop out of community college with Fs in all my classes, after which I spent six months having surgeries and poison injected into my blood stream, which thankfully resulting in me surviving; going back to community college, now realizing how much I actually like school and at this point discovering my strengths as mentioned above, and then spending years, four actually, getting all my schooling done so I could go to Uni; and somewhere intermingled there’s the struggle to get a good paying job, being unable to afford to move out on my own because medical bills make sure you can’t in California, having my second car crap out on me on more than one occasion, and all through that trying to have some sort of social life so the depression of how utterly bullcrap life can be doesn’t destroy me. Yes, there is some bitterness in there and it stems from the fact that I don’t understand why good people, whether me or the millions of others out there, have to deal with crap like the above. It’s illogical and drives me crazy.    Anyway, so when I finally got my acceptances to Uni (all three that I submitted to took me) I had to make the decision of where to actually go. UC Irvine had a good literature and creative writing program, UC Davis was only a safety school, and UC Santa Cruz was beautiful and looked promising. It wasn’t an easy decision. I didn’t want to go to UC Davis mostly because I wanted out of Sacramento for a while. But Irvine and SC were both expensive places to live in (and I generally hate LA…it’s too big for me). Well, fortune came my way when my mother moved to Santa Cruz and offered me a room (for rent mind you, so I had to pay). She’d gotten off the alcohol wagon, looked to now have a stable lifestyle (I was living with my grandmother in her enormous house prior), and it seemed her partner’s job was stable. So I thought “I could save some money on rent and it would make my mom happy to have me around”. I could get my schooling done, and not have to go too far into the hole.    Well, we can all be thankful for the Murphy’s law I guess. My car, deciding it now hates me for unknown reasons, is falling apart–the tranny leaks like mad and my rear wheel bearings are about to break. I’m still arguing with the hospital over medical bills, trying to get them to make my life a little easier by doing it right the first time. And that stable home I thought I was moving to that would let me concentrate on my studies? You guessed it, it’s decided to go right to the crapper. My mother’s partner is going to be losing her job, not because she sucks at it mind you but for reasons beyond her control that involves politics and the fact that she doesn’t take crap from anyone, even someone with a degree, and especially when that someone is wrong. This might not be such a problem if it didn’t mean the following was going to happen: they’re moving to Eugene, Oregon, which for those of you that don’t have a map, is not anywhere close to Santa Cruz to make any sort of commute possible. This has all happened in the last weeks of the quarter–i.e. the final stretch and finals. I’ve tried not to think on it too much, and my girlfriend, the wonderful person that she is, is doing a lot of things to keep me happy and trying to keep my mind off of what will eventually happen.    I’ve been thrown into a situation that I don’t think any college student should have to worry about: I might be homeless or I might have to drop out of the place I’ve spend such a huge portion of my life trying to get to. You can imagine how I’m feeling at this moment. I can’t work a job because if I do, I lose ALL of my financial aid except loans. That means, I have to work even more, which means losing some of the loans, which means working more, etc. You get what I mean. If I lose that financial aid I cannot afford to live in Santa Cruz, which is a freaking expensive place (three bedroom houses rend for $2,000 to $2,800 in relatively crappy neighborhoods).    This puts me in a terrible predicament. I need a new car, or at least a used car that I can finance. I cannot afford to pay rent and the huge deposits that people require so that I can move into a new place, and with rent so high I might not even be able to afford that, especially if it means I still have to commute to campus. My mother found a place for me to stay, but it’s well above my price range and puts me in a position to have to decide between having money to see my girlfriend

World in the Satin Bag

The Huge Announcement!

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(I’m on my last essay by the way, which is due Friday) Tor recently announced something huge. Brandon Sanderson is officially going to be writing the last installment of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series! Read the full press article here. The new novel, A Memory of Light, will be the twelfth and final book in the beloved fantasy series which has sold over 14 million copies in North America and over 30 million copies worldwide. The last four books in the series were all #1 New York Times bestsellers, and for over a decade fans have been eagerly awaiting the final novel that would bring the epic story to its conclusion. I can’t comment on Sanderon’s ability to write as I haven’t read any of his work. I have listened to interviews with him on podcasts and he certainly knows how to work with fantasy world. It is the perfect match for Sanderson, who gratefully acknowledges the role Jordan played as an inspiration to him as a writer. In the tribute piece “Goodbye Mr. Jordan,” posted on his blog, Sanderson writes to Jordan: “Personally, I feel indebted to you. You showed me what it was to have vision and scope in a fantasy series–you showed me what could be done. I still believe that without your success, many younger authors like myself would never have had a chance at publishing their dreams. You go quietly, but leave us trembling.” Hopefully this will turn out to please all of Jordan’s disparaged fans. I would hate to see all of Jordan’s fans turn on Sanderson, who seems to have a very promising career ahead of him. This is good news though, because at least the story will be finished! Sanderson will have access to Jordan’s notes and drafts, so, at the very least the story will still be the one Jordan intended to tell but couldn’t get to. Good luck to Sanderson on this!(Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this)

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