Timing Error

FOR THE BUDDING NEAR AND FUTURE HISTORIAN IN YOU

Good hippocket stuff: The Alternate History Discussion Board.

RING OF FIRE

Had some friends come over for my party: we all piled into some cars an went up to Mount Rainier. Rainier is what geoglogists describe as a "Big Fuc@#$% Mountain.

One of our friends is a semi local and knows more than a little about the ground exploding and the earth shaking (he's an Alaska native). We got a good education about lava and lahars. Worth remembering.

Ironically, Instapundit links to a wired mag look at a California quake; click over here for Wired's runddown of five potential hotspots. 

When the ring of fire blows, watch out; we have a hard enough time dealing with manufactured structural crisises. How we react when something real happens makes for a good thought piece.

(Sorry about the pic; Rainier was covered in fog the day we went. Still, interesting.)

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

(Wherein the curtain is pulled back a bit)

 

Hey, all. By way of introduction, my name is Fred (same as the phonetic Phred) J. By the time you read this, I should be somewhere over the Atlantic heading home.

 My fifteen months in Iraq is up, and I am going home to take a knee.

A GOOD ROUNDUP: THE CARTOON LAWS OF PHYSICS

The original Laws and addendums.

Objects launched into the air need not follow parabolic trajectories. 

FOR THE BEST WIFE IN THE WORLD: THREE YEARS...

1. For putting up with my long work hours.

2. For putting up with my frequent absences.

3. For saying those extra few pounds around my middle are sexy.

4. For making some house our home.

5. For the yard work.

6. For listening to me rant.

7. For the iPhone ;)

8. For being there.

9. For being you.

10. For saying yes...

You are the best wife in the world!!!!

(and yes, I am trying to boost your google ratings ;)

ALMOST DONE

Missed another Flash Fiction Friday; duty calls. One thing I’ve learned about writing a two to three thousand word article, especially about something near and dear, is that the first fifty thousand words are easy.

Just saying what I want to say: that is the hard part.

WORLDBUILDING 101

Via io9, SF Signal asks authors about worldbuilding.

SCRIBD: BOOK NAPSTER

I confess; I've dug around Scribd for the past couple of days. It's both an interesting experiment and a "cess pool" of copyright violations.

Media, particularly American-style media, is reaching a broader audience; this audience cannot meet the cost associated with acquiring legal copies, so they pirate. Eventually, accommodations and compromises will have to be made on all sides (not necessarily ownership; rather cost and availability).

Scribd is entering a long line in the Pirate's Decade: napster/music, blogs/information, torrents/movies, puretna/p0rn...

Well, you get my point.

(BTW, as perhaps the world's only .pdf junkie, I love iPaper)

STROSS LESSON #SOMETHING

Charlie Stross dips into word counting; important information for any pixel stained peasant:

A piece of flash fiction is under 1000 words — a two minute read. Real short stories are typically defined as 1000-7500 words; an experience that lasts three to thirty minutes.

I DON'T HAVE A DOG IN THIS FIGHT...

...Because I don't have a book in the shoot. But here's a good roundup on the young adult market and science fiction. Basically, I came to science fiction through Heinlein; they strenght of his work I that I couldn't tell you today which was young adult and which wasn't (Starship Troopers was. Stranger in a strange Land, not so much). I scanned* Doctorow's Little Brother (steal here) and it's a solid work; so what makes young adult, young adult? Hmmm. I think young adult means being able to get away with some themes and ideas a more mature audience would reject.

Be sure to check out the comments (where available) for more comments.

Gaiman, who begat Doctorow and lo, led me on to Scalzi.

*I've read all of Cory's shorts online; but I've never gone through one of his books. Same with Scalzi (I got a .pdf of Old Man's War from him way back when). So when I get them, I usually read a chapter or two; the plus side (for the author) is that I book the author against my personal preference. So when I run into Eastern Standard Tribe or Android's dream, I've already validated the authors against my preferences and tend to buy their books (for that matter, I got into Stross in much the same way). For me, free reading (freading?) is a great way to sample off of the menu.

My two cents.

SPACE COPS

Man, this article about a UN Spacy just screams for a modern day interpretation:

Space Cops to Enforce World Peace

Man-made satellite rocketships may soon revolve in endless orbits around the earth, policing our civilization.

Via Boing Boing

UPDATE: Add the Rocket Racing League into the mix, and you're in business:

"The Rocket Racing League on Monday detailed plans to move from a sci-fi fantasy to a full-fledged commercial enterprise — including 'vertical drag races' using rockets."

[STEAL THIS PITCH] YES, MISTRESS...

Charlie over at io9 weighs in with some good advice on writing near future fiction and a writing assignment:

So here's your exercise: Betty goes on a date, with some guy she met online. And it's a really, really bad date. The guy is a pompous dung-wad, and he keeps asking her annoying questions about what she does for a living. Describe Betty's bad date in detail, including how she traveled to the restaurant, what kind of food and drink they have, and what the guy is lecturing her about. Think about details, like how farming might be different in twenty years, or how ettiquette might change if everybody's got internet-enabled crap implanted in their heads.

I think I'll noodle around with this and see if i can come up with a flash fiction friday story.

STEAL [ING] THAT POST

Some good tips over at io9 on writing short scifi stories. Even brings up flash fiction, my current obsession.

BOOK EXPERIMENTATION

Two types.

1. Neil Gaiman's American Gods available for viewing. No downloading.

2. Already booked my free copy of Scalzi's Old Man's War, and waiting on my other eight books on .pdf from Tor.

As experiments go, I prefer Tor's efforts.

LEATHER BOUND FLAT BED SCANNER

This is a flatbed scanner that was built into a custom fabricated leather-bound tome. Link

(I was dumb enough to buy a non mac osx compatible printer, so I'm in the market for a new one)

FREE SCHWAG

In honor of his blog's birthday, Neil Gaiman is hostong a contest to see which book we'd like to see online, for free, for a month. I voted "American Gods"

GOOGLING AND GUESSING WITH BARNETT

Inside the sausage post by Thomas P.M. Barnett on the progress of his third book. Geek that I am, I laser in on this line: ...leather-bound manuscript container... Using leather manuscript folder as my search string, I come up with these: Sweetness. I want one.

THE SIZE OF THE TOME: PERSPECTIVES

Adam Greenfield's Speedbird awhile back. He's into his second book and posts about word count. I feel him; I'm a word count junkie also. This line struck me: (Everyware, admittedly a slim volume, is only 70,000-odd words.) Now, Everyware*, available at amazon, is about 272 pages. Granted, title pages, indexes et al. But a slim book? Conceptually, I like small and fast; I prefer pocket battleships to dreadnoughts in most regards. So I'm always asking, can I write in 30,000 words in what normally takes a 100,000? Does the seriousness of the subject increase with the word count? Do words bury reason? Maybe that's why I like the phampletguys and this new cambridge based arthouse. The market's far from there, but it's trending... *This is not a critique of Greenfield or Everyware.

FUTURE FROM THE PAST

Nice link from Boing Boing pointing to some 1970 mag scans of possible futures.

I grew up on this stuff.

SCI FI AS CONTEMPORARY LIT II

True enough: Clive Thompson on Why Sci-Fi Is the Last Bastion of Philosophical Writing

BLITHELY RIPPING OF BOING BOING

All links from BB. Posted for my easy reference:

World Ending Scenarios

Write a book in two months: tips.

Free Bruce Sterling short.

Science Fiction as Contemporary Lit

Second Life for future Martians.

The International Child Bearing Economy: Outsourced Wombs

Life is fun.

3000 Words

Back to work. I've got to cobble together a paper on the Democratic Peace Theory, Kant and the Yom Kippur War. By next Sunday.

Good thing I did the bibliography first.

Here's Catherine Deveneu in that Louis Vuitton ad linked earlier.

Picture Time: Boothbabes

I'm basically booking this time waster under 'research'. Really.

>

Stream

The Excepted Service

Messing around with half a thought, here. Just booking for later.

Came about reading how the FSO's at State are upset about deploying to Iraq, and the choice words from AMB Crocker:

"That's, in my mind, simply a condition of service. You don't debate it, you don't argue over it. You're entitled to your own views, but... you're under an oath to serve, and people need to just go forward and do that."

Writers nibblet

Sometimes I come up with lines that make me laugh, but I'm not, like, there in whatever it is I'm writing. Often I'll forget it and continue churning out turgid prose. I want to remember this one:

"A Grunt stands ready to kill anyone who stands in the way of the Empire."

"What about Human Support Missions," asked Mordechai.

"Hmmmph. A Grunt stands ready to feed anyone who stands in the way of Empire. With the option to kill them later."

On writing

I just submitted my first essay for my Masters. The assignment called for about 500-750 words. I came up for air around 2,500 words. Edit, edit, edit.

From the 83 things in my rucksack: 37. Put the Bottom Line Up Front. Use bullets instead of paragraphs. Just because you have all day to write an email, doesn’t mean your boss has all day to read it.

I'm still learning that.

I (almost) won!!!!!!!

I entered a short story into Medgadget's Sci-Fi writing contest. They say just being considered is an honor (I wanted that iPhone). I'm glad to get first runner-up (I really really wanted that phone). A great story, called 'Immigrants', by A'Llyn Ettien (who now has my phone) won. Congratulations :)

Here's a link to (I WANTED THAT PHONE) the winning entry "Immigrants' ,my short, called 'Dr. Luscious Franks And The Amazing Recyclotron', and the second runner up, 'Eternal Irony' by Lane Billaes.

Jokes aside, thanks to Medgadget and to the judges.

(phone?)

7 Tips for becoming a better writer:

Yeah, I could use this advice:

When you revisit your text it´s time to kill you darlings and remove all the superfluous words and sentences. Removing will declutter your text and often get your message through with more clarity and a bigger emotional punch.