For authors with recent first-time pro sales, you might want to check your eligibility for a John W. Campbell Award (not-a-Hugo)[1] by going to this site. Once you’ve confirmed that you’re eligible, you should let the folks running the awards know that by clicking the “Contact Us” link on that same web page.
Good luck!
[1] That’s the full name of the award, yeah?
There’s a free casual game that my son really enjoys, called Square Meal. It can be played by two people at once on a single keyboard and it’s part puzzle, part monster-fighting. It’s pretty innocuous and the strategy is nice.
However, the company that made it had a couple problems making it work properly (which is why there’s no link) and I said I wasn’t going to play it again. Once through was enough, but kids like to play things several times.
Anyway, there’s a poll on their blog to choose which game they’ll make a sequel to, and Square Meal is only in second place. Would you mind popping over there and voting for it? Voting closes on February 1st, and currently a stabbing game called Double Edged is in the lead.
Thanks.
I’d meant to post a quick update on the guy who body-slammed a moving bus Wednesday night (lacerations, broken wrist) but instead I’ve been distracted by http://www.peopleofwalmart.com and it’s endless parade of furry boots with hot pants, hateful T-shirt slogans, epic plumbers’ cracks, pimp outfits, too-short skirts with no underwear, cellulite, high heels with hot pants (on dudes), animal prints, hair cuts that make a mullet look like a ‘do from a 5th Ave Salon, costumes, bellies protruding from tiny shirts, schizophrenics who dress themselves, kids on leashes, clothes made from trash bags, people with monkeys (seriously, why so many monkeys?), cars with random shit glued to them, hair styles meant to look like a toupee, hair styles meant to look like animal parts, hair styles meant to look like obscene gestures, yellow go-go boots with hot pants (on dudes), and complete grownups walking around with fake animal tails.
I… I just don’t understand it. Is this my country? Are these my people?
but it really does have a bunch of interesting posts there. More OKCupid data in convenient graph form, this time about how men and women rate the appearance of the opposite sex.
No kidding, but this is interesting. Be sure to look at the race post and the religion post.
Author Kage Baker is very ill.
“If we are lucky, the therapies will win her a few months; if we are incredibly lucky, 6 months to a year. If she gets more than that, it will be a literal miracle. ”
Anyone who’s a fan of her work can find contact info at the link above and send good wishes.
see more deMotivational Posters
Tor.com guest blogger Don T. Careallthatmuch writes a ridiculous post suggesting that Pandora, the fictional planet that serves as a setting for the movie AVATAR is where people were meant to live.
Fun quote: “Isn’t this how we were meant to live, and might live again? Hunting the forest, leaping through the canopy, killing beasts, taming others, enacting meaningful rituals? It’s the same dream offered by Tolkien’s Middle-earth—to be peaceful, nature-bonded hobbits, quietly growing crops, smoking pipes, drinking ale and laughing. An alluring fantasy life to be sure. And one perhaps worth fighting for.”
Don left out “crapping in holes” but whatever. This reminds me of something I heard Spider Robinson say at the late, lamented NW Bookfest some years ago (I paraphrase from memory, of course). He said that he reads science fiction because he wants to read about societies of the future, advanced societies where he can imagine living. Fantasy readers, he assumed, were doing the same thing–which made them fools. The typical human in a pre-industrial Europe worked incredibly hard and was incredibly uncomfortable; he’d tried to live a self-sustaining farmer’s life, and it was a nightmare. Fantasy readers, he concluded, were idiots.
Never mind that many, many people do not read books because they’re daydreaming about living in the setting. Sure, I might imagine how cool it would be to fight like Aragorn, kicking monster ass and getting to be king at the end, but that doesn’t mean I’d walk through a portal marked “Middle Earth: Entrance Only.”
I think something that throws people about this is that these action movies are taking place in a wacky setting. If I read a crime novel, does that mean I want to have a knife fight with a junkie in an alley? Hell no. Do I want to drive an souped-up car across a post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland? No and no again.
I enjoy the hell out of those sorts of stories, though. I may imagine myself standing alone on a bridge as the goblin warriors rush at me, or piloting a spaceship through a firefight, or confronting a vampire in it’s lair, but that’s part of enjoying an adventure story.
But to actually go there and do that? For real? Pass. And I think most sane people would agree.
At this point, let me tell you about a very good, very old friend of mine. At one point, he told me he was going to join the FBI. This was something of a surprise, because this was a guy who’d given up the chance to run his own martial arts school to pursue acting. He’d owned a bicycle repair business, repaired rental hardware for Lowe’s, produced documentaries and DVD extras, built movie sets, etc. But wear a suit and investigate people for the federal government? Where did that come from.
“The X-Files,” he said. Now, he knew it was a little ridiculous as he said it. He knew he couldn’t join the FBI to hunt aliens, but he’d enjoyed that show so damn much that he wanted to jump into it. (He cancelled his application midway through because he knew it was laughable, but still). There are scientists who were inspired by Star Trek, martial arts students who studied wu shu because of Jackie Chan, fencing students inspired by The Three Musketeers, kendo students inspired by Toshiro Mifune.
Yeah, there are people who love a story enough to try to make it part of their lives. But to give up everything and rush off to neverland? I look forward to Don’s future posts from the jungles of the Amazon. As for me, I’d consider it if it was an honest-to-god utopia and I could bring my wife and son. But probably not. I don’t hate my life that much, and I don’t want to crap in a hole.
This time I have some interesting ones, but they’re still… Behind the cut! Continue reading
