Rejection: A-stream-atism
Yup, another rejection. This one wasn’t so nice, but at least the comments for it were helpful. Yeah, guess I should send this one off again. Anywho! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Poll: Winner and New Poll (and other things)
Alright, so the poll went mostly okay. I learned a lesson: don’t put too many titles in the same poll. So, I won’t do that for the next one. I also found out that some folks (such as those that us IE) can’t see the polls. I apologize for this, folks. I will try to use another polling system to see if it works better until Blogger updates their polling system. The winner, by one vote, is Sly Mongoose by Tobias S. Buckell. I’m happy about that choice (although I’d likely say that for any choice you all made), because I love Buckell’s work and have been looking forward to this book for a while. So after I finish the book I’m on, I’m going to that book. Now, to a new poll to choose the next book I read after Sly Mongoose. I used a new poll program for the poll. If you cannot see the poll, please leave a comment here. Edit: The direct link to the poll is here. Thanks and good luck voting. (Edit: Sorry, for some reason this didn’t get posting, but it is now.)(Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Vandermeer on the Internet
Worldly advice from someone very aware of reality: (6) Understand the negative aspects of the internet and manage your behavior accordingly. Negative aspects of the internet and our electronic lives include: being trained in Pavlovian fashion to check our email every five seconds, having our Instant Messenger up 24-7, and writing on laptops where we can be interrupted at any moment. Some of these aspects of (post)modern life affect our attention span. Others turn perfectly viable tactics into an unsupportable and detrimental overall strategy. In all things, balance is required. As a writer, I feel the greatest dangers of the internet are (1) equating the constant appearance of new information and new correspondence with a requirement to immediately reply/be instantly available and (2) the constant, daily loss of uninterrupted time not only to write but to think about writing. Many writers and others who depend on the internet find themselves controlled by their involvement with the electronic world, without even realizing it. They still think they are in charge, but they are not: their tactics have become their strategy. If this addiction were an addiction to, for example, alcohol, the results would be obvious and the reaction of friends and society corrective. But when it comes to the internet, we’re nearly all addicted, and we receive so much instant gratification without understanding or monitoring the attendant dangers that we often do not even realize what we may have lost. Thank you for making me painfully aware of my own addictions (so says the man who is writing this at 1:28 AM to be posted at 9:30 AM on the same day). (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
RIP: Thomas M. Disch
Just found out from Locus and Ellen Datlow that SF writer and critich Thomas M. Disch committed suicide on the 4th. This is depressing. I’ve been meaning to buy one of his books that the Slugstore (i.e. the college bookstore) carries. He will be missed… (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)